How did we get here? Even
before then US Secretary of Agriculture Earl Butz infamously declared in 1976 that
“food is a weapon,” we find traces of a similar geopolitics in US food policy
and industry. Until the early 90s, the USDA published an annual Yearbook of Agriculture, and for the
better part of the past century, each one of these was on a given theme. (1948
is Grass; 1949 is Trees; 1955 Water; 1958 Land; 1959 Food; 1960 Power to
Produce; 1964 Farmer’s World; 1966 Protecting Our Food; 1973 Handbook for the
Home, and so on.)
Here’s how then USDA Secretary
Orville L. Freeman introduces the 1961 yearbook on Seeds:
“GOOD SEEDS ARE both a
symbol and a foundation of the good life our people have gained. A basic factor
in our realization of mankind's most sought goal, agricultural abundance, good
seeds can be a means of our bringing about an Age of Plenty and an Age of Peace
and Freedom. We can use our good seeds to help end hunger and fear for the less
fortunate half of the human family. So used, our seeds can be more meaningful
to a hungry world than can the rocket that first carries man to the moon
“Finding and developing
better seeds is the oldest continuous service our Federal Government has
rendered to our farmers—indeed, to all our people. We have collected valuable
and curious seeds from all corners of the world. From the founding ninety-nine
years ago of this branch of Government, our Department of Agriculture has
worked continuously to aid the selection, advance the harvest, and further the
development of improved seeds required to produce crops that could better
resist drought, heat and cold, the threat of disease, the attacks of insects.
“What success we have
realized!
“Our plant breeders and
geneticists have accomplished miracles in the development of more useful
plants. In our seeds we have a wealth we all enjoy in abundant foods.
“Now, often to the same foreign lands from which we
gathered the parent plants, we return more useful seeds. We can do more.
“This Yearbook of
Agriculture, compiling our vast knowledge of seeds for greater application in
the United States, also serves well the peoples of the world. By designation of
the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, 1961 is World Seed
Year in an international campaign against hunger. This Yearbook of Agriculture
can be regarded as a contribution of the United States and the Department of
Agriculture to World Seed Year, and to the continuing search by the peoples of
the world for freedom from hunger.”
In other words, here are flashes of a
similar colonial arrogance and technophilic intervention that has run rampant
in the past half century, but still in the earnest, perhaps more honest, salad
days of US-exceptionalist optimism.
Also of interest from the
1961 yearbook, maize-wise, on the way to weaponizing food, and industrially hacking and privatizing its genetics, we first
industrialize it into "products:"
“In the four and one-half
centuries that the white man has cultivated corn, the only important
improvements accomplished are the selection of present day dent varieties and
the development of hybrids. The Indian had already developed the six nations of
corn — popcorn, sweet corn, flour corn, flint corn, dent corn, and pod corn. The
Peruvian Indians bartered maize for other foods. The tools and methods of
preparing corn for food probably were discovered over and over again in many
places. However corn was ground, the resulting meal or dough was the energy
food of the Americas. Cornmeal makes tortillas in Mexico, johnny-cake in the South,
scrapple in Pennsylvania, and corn chips in many places.
“Some corn flour is used
as a component of oil-well drilling muds and other applications in which starch
can be used but high purity is not required.
“The 300 million pounds of
corn oil produced in 1959 from both dry and wet milling in the United States
went mainly into salad and cooking oils and margarine. Most of the byproduct
germ cake, hull, and gluten go into livestock feeds. Some gluten is a source of
industrial protein. Zein, the alcohol-soluble protein from corn gluten, serves
as an adhesive in printing inks, as a coating for wrapping paper for packaging
frozen foods, as a glaze for candy and cookies, and as a coating for pills.
“Cornstarch, the principal
product of wet milling, has numerous uses: In canned foods as a thickening
agent, in puddings, pie fillings, and pastries, and in confections. The starch
also is a diluent or carrier for vitamins and food adjuncts.
“Most wet-milled starch
for human consumption, however, is converted into corn sirup or corn sugar.
Between 800 million and 900 million pounds of corn sugar and about 2 billion
pounds of corn sirup are used yearly as sweetening agents in foods, candies,
confections, and soft drinks and for table use as sirup. Nearly 1.5 billion
pounds of cornstarch, one of the most widely used organic chemicals in this
country, are used each year in industry. The largest outlet is in paper and
paper products, in which cornstarch is an internal bonding agent, surface size,
and coating adhesive. It also is a prime adhesive for corrugating and
laminating boxboard and hardboard. The textile industry consumes large
quantities of starch as a sizing to protect yarns in looming of fabrics.
Laundry starch is applied as a textile finish.
Low-quality starches are components of oil-well drilling muds that lubricate
the bit and carry cuttings to the surface. Starch also is used in explosives,
in gypsum board, and in core binders. Flour, particularly from corn and sorghum,
can replace starch in many applications.
“Corn sugar, obtained from
starch, is converted chemically to sorbitol and saccharic acid and by
fermentation to lactic, gluconic, and ketogluconic acids, which are used as
humectants, food acidulants, metal-sequestering agents in hard water, and as
intermediates in the synthesis of other chemicals.
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