Children of the Corn...O-O

            As I read through this first part of the Omnivore’s Dilemma, one thought ran through my head again, and again. “Oh dear god, this means…this means we’re all children of the Corn!” For those that don’t know it, children of the corn is a gory, old horror film that I think has been remade several times. Either way, while we certainly are not psychopathic killers, we are indeed children of the Corn it seems.

            It is absolutely fascinating to me that we can trace Carbon through and figure out what percentage of us, came from corn. I’ve known for a long while about C4 plants, but I never realized they took in a certain carbon isotope. This book has already succeeded in not only teaching me about where our corn comes from, but also a good bit of the biology behind it.

            As for how it is written, while a little thick to read, it remains very interesting, and is well written. For the amount of actual science, be it agricultural, biological, or chemical, it’s often spread out into fairly manageable chunks. This lends well to the book itself, and makes it a bit easier of a read. Not only that though, the descriptions from animals to cornfield remains very riveting.

            On that note, while the whole first section was fascinating, what really caught my attention was the subsidation of corn, and how the government more or less trapped Corn farmers in a cycle they cannot get out of. It really struck me just how bad off some of them must have it. When you have to overplant your fields just to barely manage to pay off your bills, it’s time to find a solution. But because of how the system is currently set up to benefit the companies and not the farmers, there is no easy way out of this.

            For how pervasive corn is in our diet, it’s almost a tragedy that those that grow it for us have been treated this way. Sadly, I can see where it’s headed, most likely with large companies buying out farms one by one, and industrializing them, till there are no more farmers left. And I think that will be a very real tragedy, as farmers at least have some incentive to live peacefully with the land around them, large companies defiantly won’t, and the amount of pollution and over taxing of the land will only get worse.

            All in all, this book has been quite the read so far. I honestly am greatly looking forward to diving deeper into this interesting world set forth for us. I hope to learn even more about where the meals I eat in the café come from, and how things work.