Corny corn reporting is punch to gut of sustainability, systems thinking

Some of us in the sustainability field, at large, and most of those in the climate change movement, and, of course, the anti-corporation-taking-over-everything movement, have a difficult time stomaching much of the news and features streaming out of NPR. Sure, National Public Radio gets some things right, but then, there is a superficiality and a corporate-think that these reporters express which at times is exasperating for those of us seeking critical and more advanced thinking in an age of pure marketing and corporate back-watching. It’s more double-think and double-speak when it comes to economists trying to frame things in their unsustainable world. We get why there is an alternative Nobel Prize, given to those who don’t see all of us as commodities or consumers (see Right Livelihood Award at http://www.rightlivelihood.org/). Reporters that hang with Alan Greenspan economists get into the same linear thinking that these charlatans espouse from multi-million dollar rose colored worlds. Last week’s NPR Market Place piece on corn prices going out the roof (Oct. 12, 2010 here) is proof positive that these reporters need to break out of the rose patina created by the purveyors of takeovers, off-shoring, and the ‘too big to fail’ mentality. Treating corn as a commodity is dead wrong; even how the cattle and other industrial-agriculture purveyors, like egg and chicken factory owners, will have to find other grains to push down the gullets of toxic animals, well, it’s back to the mainstream blinders-on thinking. Many tire of the underachieving reporting on a story here that is so much more complex than surface-level reporting. Corn could be an entire series for a show like Market Place. Wouldn’t that be a great project? Think five full days discussing the effects, history of and deeper implications of corn. Market Place gave no mention of giveaways to corn producers – not organic corn growers, to be sure. Think corn producers in bed with Monsanto and the chemical tripe that is industrial mono-crop agriculture. That’s more than $73.5 billion in taxpayer dollars since 1995. No mention of it on Market Place. What’s that tidy sum bought us in the U.S., where more than 95 million acres of corn are planted, mostly in the Midwest? To find out, you can click the “audio” link at the top of this page to hear filmmaker Curt Ellis during his two appearances in Spokane, one for the film, “King Corn,” the other for “Big River.” In a nutshell, that hyper carbon footprint, heavy fertilizer burden, ends up in a runoff deluge, and this year the rains hit the Corn Belt big time, pushing soil and the chemical slurry needed to sustain genetically-altered corn (and soy) into the waterways of our grand old country. Corn and soybean crops in nine states are the leading cause of hypoxia — lack of oxygen — in the Mississippi River Basin and Gulf of Mexico. We’ve discussed this previously at DTE in reference to BP’s ocean and marine life-choking chemical stew and failed efforts to stop the 400 million gallons of crude leaking into the Gulf. But the corn and soy run-off from those corn-and-soy states is responsible for the hypoxia that’s most closely related to the Gulf’s Dead Zone. You won’t hear economists and journalists on Market Place discuss how big that dead zone is (think of the size of New Jersey and you’re right) which every summer kills millions of fish and other aquatic life. Some economists declare that this death and damage of an ecosystem is simply the price of doing business – externalities we pay for through mitigation and higher fuel and food prices. Market Place doesn’t seem to fathom the damage done to the huge fishery industry in the Gulf (70 percent of all US domestic seafood is derived there) because of corn. We did receive 10 seconds of news from a report by the USDA last week that “shocked markets with data” indicating that corn plantings were smaller than predicted in 2010, and that corn “consumption” through October 2010 was far greater than expected. Livestock feeders and ethanol makers are gobbling up the U.S. corn stockpile faster than farmers can grow the crop. Now Wall Street and the commodities guys are pushing prices up. We’ll pay for their profit hoarding through higher gas prices at the pump. For non-organic eaters and those who are not vegetarian, the price of factory meat, eggs, chicken and pig will also go up. Corn ‘pushers’ are in the middle of a huge ad campaign, which some would call out-and-out propaganda and green lying (also called green washing). The National Corn Growers Association and its state affiliates and regional associations in June rolled out a $1 million ad campaign to shine up the tarnished image of corn. The target of the campaign isn’t soccer moms looking for Corn Flakes deals at the market; the P.T. Barnum’s persons of interest are the lawmakers in D.C. who love getting perks from a $73.5 billion dollar handout. The advertisements may “B.S.” some of us into thinking corn farming is a small farm and family-owned business, but the reality is that the biggest 5 percent of corn growers plant 30 percent of all corn, while the largest 20 percent combined accounts for 60 percent of all corn acreage. Wildlife is dying, sensitive habit is covered over in toxic corn, surface and ground water is tainted, and top soil is washed away. Anyone can do the research, once you filter out the lobbyists working for corn and soy, and unplug your nose long enough to get through the manure from the corn growers’ various front organizations posing as science, mostly on the Internet. Here’s an ugly reminder of the consequences of unsustainable agriculture, not mentioned on Market Place, and never considered by traditional economists. Sixty-eight million tons of soil wash into this country’s waterways annually, just from one state alone, one crop alone — 13.7 million acres of corn planted in Iowa. Learn more about the lies, the ad campaigns, the environmental, economic, cultural and human impact of corn and soy grown into Frankencrops by following some the links in the side menu. You provide your own nose plugs.