 |
||
 |
||
|
Return to Area Profiles Table of Contents
Corn: Vegetable Gold
We completed this season's corn cycle by giving the stalks to a friend for his pigs. Because people, pigs, cows, and others like corn and because corn is used in thousands of products, it's a valuable crop. After wheat, it is the most cultivated plant in the world.
Corn, like beans, squash, melons, tobacco, and tomatoes is indigenous to the Americas, but corn, unlike many of our familiar plants, is a domesticated plant. The plant from which corn was domesticated was a wild grass known as Teosinte. The seeds, or kernels, of the Tesinite grass were small, and rather than being fused together, were covered by their own flower parts. The kernels of the genetic ancestor of modern corn clumped on the stalk much like the kernels of wheat and barley.
Natives of Mexico's western Sierra Madre began domesticating corn about 4,000 B.C. By about 1,400 BC, corn was being cultivated on both Mexican coasts. Over the next several thousand years Mesoamerican natives systematically collected and cultivated plants that favored the formation of ears and rows of kernels. Corn production spread throughout North and Central America. By about 1,000 AD corn was being grown in New England. Archeological studies have found evidence that corn was grown in Ontario before 1,200 AD.
Corn was highly valued by Native Americans. The Mohegans and the Iroquois had ceremonies of thanksgiving for the planting and harvesting of corn. Native tribes made a variety of dishes including corn bread, corn puddings, fried corn cakes, and soups. From the husks they made bed mats, bags, and moccasins.
It is estimated that the 2007 U.S. corn production will be 13.1 billion bushels. Of the 11.8 billion bushels of corn produced in 2006, more than half, 6.1 billion bushels, was used for animal feed, 1.6. billion bushels were converted into ethanol, 755 million bushels were used to make corn sweeteners, 190 million bushels were used to produce breakfast cereals, and 135 million bushels were fermented to make alcoholic beverages. Corn syrup is used in soft drinks, yogurt, and candies. The powder from finely ground corncobs, which is relatively dust free and highly absorbent, is used in cosmetics, vitamins, animal litter, and as a carrier for pesticides. Tetrahydrofurfuryl alcohol, a resin developed from processing corncobs, is used as a solvent for dyes, resins, and lacquers. An oxidized corn starch paste is spread in a thin layer over aspirin tablets and other medications. Raw corn starch is used in the manufacture of remoistenable gums for postage stamps and packaging tape. Sorbitol made from corn sugar dextrose is used in toothpaste as a water-soluble bulking agent. Corn starch is used in the manufacture of cake mixes, the porcelain part of spark plugs, and in the production of rubber tires.
There is not a crop with more end uses than corn, and in late summer many of us in Northern New England think there is no tastier crop.
Return to Area Profiles Table of Contents
|
||
Maize, which is the word often used to describe Native American corn, is thought to have come from the Taino word mahis which meant "source of life." The Taino people inhabited the islands of the Northern Antilles where Christopher Columbus first landed. At the time of Columbus's landing, corn had been cultivated to such an extent that a family with a small plot of land could grow enough corn to provide most of their family's food for an entire year.
