July 10, 2009
From 1995 through 2006, corn subsidies in the U.S. totaled $56.2 billion, and this spring farmers seeded the second largest amount of land with corn in more than 60 years. According to the WSJ, “The Obama administration is pushing a big expansion in ethanol, including a mandate to increase the share of the corn-based fuel required in gasoline from 10% to 15%. Apparently, no one in the administration has read a pair of new studies, one from its own EPA, that exposes ethanol as a bad deal for consumers with little environmental benefit.” Corn is a killer and darn few Americans have a clue, or so it would appear. Cellulosic ethanol may well deserve subsidies; corn ethanol certainly does not.
Robert Bryce author of Gusher of Lies: The Dangerous Delusions of Energy Independence outlines the following in an article for Slate. “Ethanol contains about 76,000 BTUs per gallon, but producing that Ethanol from corn takes about 98,000 BTUs. For comparison, a gallon of gasoline contains about 116,000 BTUs per gallon. But making that gallon of gas from drilling the well, to transportation, through refining, requires around 22,000 BTUs.”
On the food front, corn is even a bigger blight. Michael Pollan, writing in the Christian Science Monitor, tells us, “We’re producing way too much corn.” So we make corn sweeteners. High-fructose corn sweeteners are everywhere. They have completely replaced sugar in sodas and drinks. They make sweet things cheaper.
We also give it to animals. Corn explains everything about the cattle industry. It explains why we have to give cattle antibiotics because corn doesn’t agree with their digestive systems. It explains why we have this E. coli 0157 problem, because the corn acidifies their digestive system in such a way that these bacteria can survive. The U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention says that about 70% of the antibiotics produced in the U.S. are used on livestock, creating anti-biotic resisting bacteria.
What I have outlined above is just the tip of the iceberg of the horror of corn. In coming weeks, I will expand on this theme in detail, including why I believe we should convert at least half of the 150 million acres used to grow corn and soy to permanent pasture; why a plowed corn field sheds rain water like an airplane runway, helping to create massive flooding; how corn and soy fields are a source of global warming; how most of the beef Americans mistakenly buy in the super market is an engineered product to be disdained; and why corn oil is the worst oil of all, and why you may surprisingly want to include coconut oil in your diet, as I do. In summary, corn joins the RPM (Radical Progressive Movement) and Saudi Arabia’s Salafi Islamic Curriculum and Wahhabi sect as my three most targeted enemies to the American way, as taught to us by Thomas Jefferson, Patrick Henry, James Madison, and the founders.
