Why Corn?

A couple of days ago I had the opportunity to visit with a very pleasant woman with a very interesting job. She's involved in community wellness and was particularly interested in trying to promote healthier eating in our schools.  As readers of this blog know, it is an interest of mine as well. Jamie's Food Revolution (His Not Mine). But as we visited it quickly became apparent that as farmers we need to do a better job explaining to people why we grow what we grow.  What often seems obvious to us is decidedly not so to much of our consumer public.

In our conversation she was eager to understand why farmers like me weren't working hard to grow fresh veggies and fruit for the dietary needs of our local schoolchildren.  There IS (thankfully!) a movement afoot to get healthier, fresher, less-processed food into our schools and she obviously felt a perfect storm existed where our local farmers could shift their production to such food and supply a great local market.  In her mind it was a WIN-WIN.

If only it were that simple.

And there lies the rub.  I think many good-intentioned consumers mistakenly think it is that simple.  They want to eat fresh, eat organic, eat locally-grown.  Oh, and don't forget -- they want to eat affordably too!  And make sure everyone else in the world has plenty of food they can buy and eat too.

This is why farmers need to speak up.  We need to explain ourselves.  We need to explain to consumers that there needs to be efficiencies in production.  There are real differences between the soils, climate, infrastructure, markets etc. that allow certain foods to be produced in certain geographies.  There are important reasons I grow corn and not cauliflower in Northern Illinois.  Likewise a California cauliflower producer probably shouldn't be growing corn either. Our short growing season, our temperatures, our soils, or insect and disease profiles, etc. do not favor growing fresh market fruits and veggies.  Sure we could grow some for a short period of time during the summer.  But what do we eat the rest of the year?  And what do we do about the fact that because of my climate, soils, insects, diseases etc. I can only grow half as much cauliflower as that farmer in California?  At the same time, the farmer in California can't efficiently grow corn.  He might only get half the crop I can get and doesn't have the natural rainfall nor infrastructure to handle the huge volume of commodities produced.

Sure, I'm over-simplifying here.  Global food production is immensely complex.  But over time markets have a way to naturally adapt to create efficiencies.  I grow corn here because there are few places in the world where someone else could grow as much, as cheaply, and as able to transport it around the world to those who need it.  Bucking those natural efficiencies can be done.  I can grow cauliflower.  I can supply fruits and veggies to my local farmer's market.  I can even grow organically.

But there is a cost to our global society in doing so.

The next time you see a hungry child in Africa or a food riot in the Middle East, pause for a moment and think about the organic cauliflower you bought at your local farmer's market.

Was it worth it?