Corn Star
Friday, 13 June
For the last few weeks, I have been watching corn. Not porn. Corn. Although it did start with the above steamy scene.
Actually, it started before that. It started four years ago when Patrice and his son Vincent planted alfalfa, clover and broad beans to restore natural nitrates to the soil and return our fields to their organic roots.
After a couple of years of that and a couple more of leaving whatever grew to the deer...
...before harvesting it for their cattle (whose milk becomes cheese I buy every week at market), they this year delivered the steaming fumier that was then churned into the soil so the seeds could be sown. After a good rain, the first tender shoots appeared.
Every day their trajectories became more emphatic.
As you can see, I can't stop photographing them. Maize is mesmerising in a way that other crops grown around here - barley, say, with its Boris Johnson mop...
or rapeseed, with its spiky Edward Scissorhands mesh...
...are not. In their wiggles and waggles, their change of direction, maize's feng shui lines are a reminder of life itself.
And the young plants stand out as energetic individuals rather than the herd-like heads of other cereal grains.
Yesterday, just as weeds were beginning to blur the contour, Vincent went around with the tractor to turf out the intruders. It was very satisfying. Reassuring even.
Maize was first cultivated 9000 years ago by indigenous people of what would become Mexico. Since it is not particularly nourishing, the starchy cereal was grown alongside beans and squash in what is endearingly called Three Sisters polyculture. By the time Christopher Columbus arrived in 1492, corn had been a staple for thousands of years throughout what would become the Americas. He brought the crop back to Europe where it spread quickly, partly because of its adaptability to colder climates. Not that the path to success was a walk in the park. Corn was scorned in the Old World at first, banned from use in the Sunday-mass communion bread because only wheat had the power to transubstantiate the body of Christ. Who knew?
The prejudice, however, did not last. Today maize is the most cultivated crop in the world: 1.2 billion tonnes at last count. And its uses have evolved from a staple for pre-Columbian villagers to a starring role at American BBQs to fodder (in its popped form) for movie-goers the world over to its by-products being worked into almost every processed food on the supermarket shelf. Beyond the harmful saturated oil in savoury snacks, there's a heady list of derivatives in most packaged victuals (dextrins, maltodextrins, dextrose, fructose or crystalline fructose and sorbitol), all of which are bad for your health and have contributed to the world's obesity problem (another great American export!).
But that's not the corn's fault; it's humans who snuck the stuff into the ingredients, partly to prolong shelf life, partly to entice people to buy more, since the sugary additives make the food addictive. None of which has exactly been discouraged. In the US, the world's largest producer, consumer and exporter of corn, farmers received $2.2 billion in government subsidies in 2023. EU aid isn't tagged by crop, but agricultural subsidies account for €387 billion, a full third of the entire budget. The lion's share in both cases goes to industrial farmers.
Most corn today is turned into animal feed. A growing percentage goes into the production of ethanol fuel, which has been touted as eco-friendly and a way to re-burnish the industry's reputation for contributing to ill-health. The problem is maize needs a lot of water. Though it's funnel-like shape captures all it can...
...the plant needs more than nature provides in most places where it's industrially produced. In France, 25% of all water usage goes to irrigating maïs, and although I can't find the statistic, how could it be any better in the US where much, much more corn is grown?
Then there's the GMO debate, ie whether maize (along with many other plants, though corn has attracted the most attention) should be genetically modified to resist pests, use less water, etc. In Europe, the process of gene fiddling is fiercely contested, with environmentalists and others saying the long term effects on humans have been insufficiently studied. Whoever's right, we're a long way from the Three Sisters method.
Fortunately, I can watch our corn guilt-free. It's an ancient, multi-coloured variety that will not be fed any chemicals. Unirrigated, it will have to cross its ears and hope for more rain like the heavenly downpour we had last night. As the corn grows, the lines in the field will once again get messy. But such is life.