EcoHearth: Come Home to the Earth

“People have tried and they have tried, but sex is still not better than sweet corn.” These words, spoken by Garrison Keillor, adorn one of the many banners that hang on an eight-foot-tall imposing steel fence surrounding a parking lot in Seattle’s University District. Six days a week, these banners mark this patch of asphalt as a place of fervent, if not incongruous, support for local organic agriculture. However, each Saturday morning, every square inch of pavement between those banners is covered by trucks, tents, people and, most importantly, food. It was here, at the University District Farmers Market, where I bought the corn that made me consider Mr. Keillor’s quip more seriously.

Corn has been much maligned as of late, thanks in part to its surreptitious takeover of the modern American diet (as described in the film, King Corn, the Michael Pollan article, “Is Corn Making Us Fat?”), et al.. Moreover, corn has become the duct tape of the modern agri-chemical industry: in the hands of engineers backed by big Big Ag money, there’s nothing corn can’t do. Except, perhaps, taste like corn.

Here and there, scattered sparsely across the globe, there still exist a few ears of corn free of genetic engineering and intended to be eaten straight out of the hand. This was the kind of corn people had in mind when they used to bring cooking pots to the field so that they could sink their teeth into the tender kernels within minutes of breaking the cobs from the stalk. Such was the cultural legacy that I unwittingly found hiding within a few dirt-covered husks.

A Reconnaissance Mission
When I bought several ears of corn from the University District Farmers Market, I was skeptical of these legends of the corn of yore. “Corn-fed,” in my mind, was an appellation absolutely inexcusable in the case of livestock, and at least mildly distasteful when applied to humans. The ears I purchased were more of an experiment—a reconnaissance mission to find out more about the enemy—than a true gastronomic endeavor.

That night, I put a steamer pot on the stove to boil and set about de-husking the corn. Although I did manage to get most of the hairlike silks off the cobs, almost none of them ended up in the compost bin as I had intended. With silk strewn all over the floor and counter, this culinary guest was already wearing a thin welcome.

When I finally did reveal what lay within the husks, there were a few surprises. The first was the green earworm that briefly raised its head (if it could be called as such), before returning to the more pressing task of eating my corn. The second unexpected revelation was the size and shape of the kernels upon which the worm was feeding. Every kernel seemed to be bursting forth from the cob, each competing to be the biggest, most rounded and most perfectly formed. Without the husk to hold them in place, I imagine these kernels would have grown to be the size of acorns before leaping from the husk of their own accord. These kernels had an assertiveness about them that could not have come packaged in a can.

I had intended to cut the kernels from the cob before steaming them just enough to get them warm, so after removing the earworm, I began stripping the kernels with a knife. As the huge morsels jettisoned from the cob, the milky lifeblood of their innards slathered the knife. This corn was proving to be much more active in its death throes than most other vegetables that lie down and passively accept their fate on the cutting board.

A Crazed Squirrel Preparing for an Arctic Winter
Out of curiosity, I held the bleeding cob closer to observe the carcass I had just eviscerated. Bits of endosperm still lingered in many of the cavities on the cob, oozing the last of their precious fluids. Never being one to waste food, I took a bite to strip what the knife had missed. There was a pause, as my brain tried to sort out the sweetness that was overwhelming my taste buds. I tried to remember what it was that I had just put in my mouth. This divine candy had nothing to do with the pathetic yet obligatory side dish from the barbecues of my youth. Dropping all precautions and pretensions, I attacked the remnants of the cob like a crazed squirrel preparing for an arctic winter. Another ear disappeared as I stood in the kitchen with the steamer pot boiling away, still empty.

Somewhere around the middle of the third ear, when the initial shock of ecstasy had subsided into mere taste-bud jubilation, it occurred to me that the sensation I was experiencing was largely the product of a particular history. This corn had taken several thousand years of human ingenuity to reach my stomach.

From Grass to Gastronomy
Although its exact origins are lost to ancient history, corn likely began its relationship with humans in southern Mexico sometime between five and six thousand years ago. It was then that a grass with a seed head about the size of a few modern corn kernels captured the imagination of humans. Some of these agricultural pioneers were willing to tend to this lowly grass in exchange for a measly few calories. Once this proto-corn had crossed the psychological divide between scenery and sustenance, it was not long before humans realized that “the kernel never falls far from the ear,” genetically speaking.

Of course, at that time, our modern understanding of genetic inheritance was encapsulated in a seemingly simple but crucially important observation: big, tasty kernels from ears with lots of other big, tasty kernels tend to give rise to plants that produce ears with more big, tasty kernels. Any creature that does not innately understand the importance of big and tasty would have been competed out of existence in short order, humans not excepted, and thus corn had begun inching along the path from grass to gastronomy.

To arrive at this modern creation, generations of farmers had to bite into countless ears of corn, contemplate the flavor and decide whether to save a few kernels to parent the next crop. There are many factors in addition to taste, such as disease resistance and climatic suitability, that influence selection. Nevertheless, I still enjoy the thought that I am but a tiny part of a great corn taste test that has been going on for centuries. Keillor’s quip about the sensuality of sweet corn seemed all the more apt when I realized that I had just experienced the culmination of five to six thousand years of human desire.

Complicit in an Act of Defiance
But perhaps more importantly, I felt that I was complicit in an act of defiance. Industrialized agriculture has embraced a paradigm in which what was once “food” has become “product.” Agriculture has always been, and will forever be, tied to natural biological and ecological processes. However, the role of “nature” in the agribusiness model is to yield corn, chicken and a select few other agricultural products boundlessly, as if they were so many sprockets and wing nuts on an assembly line. With profitability as the sole metric, plants and animals are treated as mini-factories, useful only for converting sunlight and nutrients into saleable goods with direct value to humans.

I could tell that the corn I had just eaten was different. I had just experienced corn with values, and from the taste, they were values that I shared. Perhaps more accurately, I could taste the care that went into this piece of food, grown by humans with the intent of nourishing other humans. These ears offered more than just starch and sugars. I had received a connection, albeit momentary, with a taste that has influenced human history for millennia.

Accountability: Essential Component of Sustainability
I had also achieved a more immediate connection. Because I had bought this corn at the local farmers market from the farmer who had tended it from seed, I knew where to direct my complaints about the earworm. In seriousness though, such accountability is an essential and vitalizing component of a sustainable local food system.

When farmers know who their food will nourish, there is an extra bit of care that goes into the growing process that results in more than just better taste. The relationship between the nourisher and the nourished is often founded in just a few moments of dialog exchanged over a scale each week. Nevertheless, the human connection of the farm with the larger community is essential if we are to remember the simple fact that our food must always come from somewhere and, equally importantly, someone. In my case, when I returned to the farmers market the next week for my few moments of banter and a bag full of green husks encrusted in dirt, I mentioned the earworm, but also that this corn has changed my life, or at least how I felt about being corn-fed.

And so, after years of ignorant abstinence, I have discovered corn. I have reclaimed a food, and a taste, from a food system that has, even in name, replaced the “culture” of agriculture with “business. I take far too much credit, though, for my underwhelmingly intrepid culinary connection was only made possible by the hard work of one of the many farmers who are working to reclaim a food system that values more than just profits.

If, as Wendell Berry has suggested, “eating is a political act,” we must make sure that our dinner plates support our politics. Every act of conscious eating, —an act that respects and acknowledges the values of the farmer as expressed through the nourishment he or she provides—is an act of reclamation, of restoring the culture to agriculture. If not corn, then chicken or green beans or Brussels sprouts. Find food grown by your neighbors and help reclaim a more mindful food system. And don’t forget to thank the farmers, despite the earworms.

[This piece was written by Adrian Down and provided courtesy of the Society for Agriculture and Food Ecology (SAFE). - Ed.]

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