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corn 
Wed Sep 29, 2010 at 06:00:00 AM PDT
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Today is "Día nacional del maíz 2010" in Mexico. Below, I've posted a translated (by me, which means the translation might be slightly incorrect) press release from the Sin Maiz No Hay Paiz (Without Corn, There Is No Country) campaign.
The text of the press release, when translated, sounds a little silly, but after having visited the Mexican countryside, I know full well that there is nothing silly about this event or the issue it highlights. Corn is more than just a staple food to Mexicans. It is a part of their culture. A living and evolving part of their culture, as the Mexican people have co-evolved with the corn that they domesticated from wild teosinte and carefully bred to produce corn in all varieties and colors.
Today, these native "criollo" varieties of corn are under threat of being wiped out by hybrid corn sold by multinational corporations. What's more, the agricultural methods promoted by the multinationals (Monsanto, Bayer, Dow, DuPont, and John Deere, to name a few) have resulted in chemical contamination and erosion in a big way in parts of Mexico where they have been heavily adopted. Pesticide poisonings (including deaths) are not uncommon in rural Mexico. And once the "modern" agricultural methods pushed by these companies are adopted and the soil is killed, Mexican peasants often have little recourse besides going to America to work in the fields. For more information, see my pictures and experiences from a trip to the Mexican countryside earlier this year. (Important to note is that my experience represents the area I visited in the state of Jalisco, and there are other areas of Mexico where the situation is quite different.)
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Sun Aug 15, 2010 at 20:44:19 PM PDT
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I've got a few things to add or correct from my posts about Mexican cooking from this past week.
First, I checked a label from a bag of organic blue corn chips at the store. They aren't dyed. I realized when I fried some of the blue corn tortillas I made that they turn a darker blue when fried.
Second, I took a bag of Maseca brand (a.k.a. Archer Daniels Midland) masa harina to the farmers' market today to give it to Juanita, the woman who makes tamales there. She doesn't claim her tamales are organic, so I figured she'd use it. I bought that bag at first, before I found the organic blue corn masa. When I offered it to Juanita, she told me she grinds her own masa. Then she told me why: The Maseca brand masa is made from half corn kernels and half corn cobs. I don't have confirmation that that is true, but it's certainly something to investigate.
Third, I visited OB People's Co-op today and found that they sell yellow organic masa there for $.99/lb. That's definitely going to be convenient if I can't get it together to buy a 50 lb bag of the white or blue organic masa to split with several friends.
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Mon Aug 02, 2010 at 20:42:57 PM PDT
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This diary series covers my trip to the Mexican state of Jalisco to study the effects of NAFTA and the Green Revolution on subsistence farmers in rural areas. The trip began with a few days in Guadalajara, the largest city in the state. Then we headed to the rural town of Cuquio, about an hour and a half away, for the remainder of the trip. This diary is about our talk with a local microlending cooperative.
If reading about the people I've visited inspires you to help, you can donate to the Center for Farmworker Families. Every penny given goes directly to these families for clothes, shoes, food, school supplies, and more.
Day 1: Guadalajara
Day 2 Part 1: Breakfast and the EcoStore
Day 2 Part 2: Jalisco Ecological Collective
Day 3: The Flea Market
Day 4: The Drive to Cuquio
Day 5: Delivering Aid to a Village
Day 6: The Second Aid Trip to a Village
Day 7: Conversation with a Corn Expert
Day 8, Part 1: Visit to a Rich Man's Land and an Explanation of Ejidos
Day 8, Part 2: Tour of the Local Employer, a Shoe Factory
Day 8, Part 3: The Third Aid Trip to a Village
Day 9: The Fourth Aid Trip to a Village
Day 10, Part 1: The Fifth Aid Trip to a Village
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Mon Aug 02, 2010 at 14:56:01 PM PDT
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( - promoted by Jill Richardson)
The Corona mill isn't a grain mill, it's a corn mill. Got that?
Catalog page circa 1929.
I'll admit it took me a long time to figure this out. I've been aware of these mills way back in the early 1970s when I used to subscribe to Mother Earth News magazine and dreamt of a life of subsistence farming to replace the suffocating suburban lifestyle of a twenty year old. Buy whole wheat in bulk and grind your own flour for pennies!
To this day, people buy these things and then complain at how totally useless it is for bread flour.
“I bought this for the sole purpose of making bread flour. I got it, set it up, put some wheat into it, tightened basically as far as it would go, and the berries came out almost exactly as they went in. Plus, there were little iron filings from the burrs mixed in. Great.”
reported an unhappy customer on Amazon's Weston Cereal and Multi-Grain Mill customer review page.
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Sat Jul 31, 2010 at 23:19:13 PM PDT
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This diary series covers my trip to the Mexican state of Jalisco to study the effects of NAFTA and the Green Revolution on subsistence farmers in rural areas. The trip began with a few days in Guadalajara, the largest city in the state. Then we headed to the rural town of Cuquio, about an hour and a half away, for the remainder of the trip. On the 10th day, we visited our last village to deliver aid.
If reading about the people I've visited inspires you to help, you can donate to the Center for Farmworker Families. Every penny given goes directly to these families for clothes, shoes, food, school supplies, and more.
Day 1: Guadalajara
Day 2 Part 1: Breakfast and the EcoStore
Day 2 Part 2: Jalisco Ecological Collective
Day 3: The Flea Market
Day 4: The Drive to Cuquio
Day 5: Delivering Aid to a Village
Day 6: The Second Aid Trip to a Village
Day 7: Conversation with a Corn Expert
Day 8, Part 1: Visit to a Rich Man's Land and an Explanation of Ejidos
Day 8, Part 2: Tour of the Local Employer, a Shoe Factory
Day 8, Part 3: The Third Aid Trip to a Village
Day 9: The Fourth Aid Trip to a Village
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Fri Jul 30, 2010 at 16:05:07 PM PDT
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This diary series covers my trip to the Mexican state of Jalisco to study the effects of NAFTA and the Green Revolution on subsistence farmers in rural areas. The trip began with a few days in Guadalajara, the largest city in the state. Then we headed to the rural town of Cuquio, about an hour and a half away, for the remainder of the trip. On the 9th day, we had a painful reality check when we found out the family we were visiting was desperately poor and hungry.
If reading about the people I've visited inspires you to help, you can donate to the Center for Farmworker Families. Every penny given goes directly to these families for clothes, shoes, food, school supplies, and more.
Day 1: Guadalajara
Day 2 Part 1: Breakfast and the EcoStore
Day 2 Part 2: Jalisco Ecological Collective
Day 3: The Flea Market
Day 4: The Drive to Cuquio
Day 5: Delivering Aid to a Village
Day 6: The Second Aid Trip to a Village
Day 7: Conversation with a Corn Expert
Day 8, Part 1: Visit to a Rich Man's Land and an Explanation of Ejidos
Day 8, Part 2: Tour of the Local Employer, a Shoe Factory
Day 8, Part 3: The Third Aid Trip to a Village
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Fri Jul 30, 2010 at 14:05:42 PM PDT
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This diary series covers my trip to the Mexican state of Jalisco to study the effects of NAFTA and the Green Revolution on subsistence farmers in rural areas. The trip began with a few days in Guadalajara, the largest city in the state. Then we headed to the rural town of Cuquio, about an hour and a half away, for the remainder of the trip. This is my third post about our 8th day, when we visited an incredibly remote village tucked into the side of a mountain, overlooking a gorgeous valley.
The view from the rancho
If reading about the people I've visited inspires you to help, you can donate to the Center for Farmworker Families. Every penny given goes directly to these families for clothes, shoes, food, school supplies, and more.
Day 1: Guadalajara
Day 2 Part 1: Breakfast and the EcoStore
Day 2 Part 2: Jalisco Ecological Collective
Day 3: The Flea Market
Day 4: The Drive to Cuquio
Day 5: Delivering Aid to a Village
Day 6: The Second Aid Trip to a Village
Day 7: Conversation with a Corn Expert
Day 8, Part 1: Visit to a Rich Man's Land and an Explanation of Ejidos
Day 8, Part 2: Tour of the Local Employer, a Shoe Factory
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Thu Jul 29, 2010 at 14:56:15 PM PDT
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This diary series covers my trip to the Mexican state of Jalisco to study the effects of NAFTA and the Green Revolution on subsistence farmers in rural areas. The trip began with a few days in Guadalajara, the largest city in the state. Then we headed to the rural town of Cuquio, about an hour and a half away, for the remainder of the trip. The seventh day was Sunday in a very religious Catholic country so we didn't go out to visit a village. Instead we had an agronomist who specializes in Mexico's maiz criollo (landrace corn), Juan Alba Quesadas, come visit us. Here's what we learned.
Ann Lopez talks to Juan Alba
If reading about the people I've visited inspires you to help, you can donate to the Center for Farmworker Families. Every penny given goes directly to these families for clothes, shoes, food, school supplies, and more.
Previous diaries:
Day 1: Guadalajara
Day 2 Part 1: Breakfast and the EcoStore
Day 2 Part 2: Jalisco Ecological Collective
Day 3: The Flea Market
Day 4: The Drive to Cuquio
Day 5: Delivering Aid to a Village
Day 6: The Second Aid Trip to a Village
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Tue Jul 27, 2010 at 12:11:48 PM PDT
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This diary series covers my trip to the Mexican state of Jalisco to study the effects of NAFTA and the Green Revolution on subsistence farmers in rural areas. The trip began with a few days in Guadalajara, the largest city in the state. Then we headed to the rural town of Cuquio, about an hour and a half away, for the remainder of the trip. On the fifth day, we visited a rural "rancho" (village) outside of Cuquio to meet with subsistence corn farming families.
If reading about the people I've visited inspires you to help, you can donate to the Center for Farmworker Families. Every penny given goes directly to these families for clothes, shoes, food, school supplies, and more.
Previous diaries:
Day 1: Guadalajara
Day 2 Part 1: Breakfast and the EcoStore
Day 2 Part 2: Jalisco Ecological Collective
Day 3: The Flea Market
Day 4: The Drive to Cuquio
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Sat Jul 10, 2010 at 20:05:33 PM PDT
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If you're from the U.S. there's one bit of good news about NAFTA's impact on Mexican corn farmers: it's not all our fault. Oh, sure, we screwed them over plenty. But it's not our fault that the Mexican government implemented NAFTA in an even more detrimental way to its own corn farmers than the treaty required.
In preparation for my upcoming trip to Jalisco, one of Mexico's top corn-producing states, I have been reading up on the impacts of NAFTA on Mexican agriculture. The first part I wrote up focused on how the treaty was written and how that impacted Mexican farmers. This next part is about how the treaty was actually implemented, which is a whole 'nother story.
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Tue Jul 06, 2010 at 00:56:10 AM PDT
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My dad thinks it's hilarious that the British way to lay off workers is to say "You've been made redundant." Nothing personal or anything, but you're a redundancy and our bottom line says you need to go. Buh-bye. That was essentially what NAFTA did to many Mexican subsistence corn farmers. The negotiators of NAFTA looked at their numbers and decided that those farmers would be more efficient if they grew something else or left farming altogether. This was a naive decision, at best. Here's a postmortem of many of the mistakes they made in their assumptions during NAFTA negotiations.
Note: My source here is "The Environmental & Social Impacts of Economic Liberalization on Corn Production in Mexico" by Alejandro Nadal.
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Tue Mar 30, 2010 at 16:06:01 PM PDT
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Just the title of this alone has me seething: A Race to Introduce GM Corn Before Africa's Climate Worsens. What?!?
Let me summarize the article for you: Bla bla bla... drought-tolerant corn... global warming... Africa really fucked... feed 9 billion people... bla bla bla... Gates Foundation.
There. Now you don't have to read it. It says nothing new and contains zero critical thinking or alternate viewpoints. There was one section of the piece that was right on:
Charles Godfray, a professor at the Department of Zoology at Oxford University who recently co-authored a paper in the journal Science about the challenges of feeding 9 billion people, said that the impact of climate change on agriculture will be negative. Although warming will open up lands in cooler regions for cultivation, it will not compensate for the loss of water and land in areas near the tropics, he said.
"The current system of agriculture is not sustainable," he said. "Water is arterial. We will run out of water in parts of the world."
Yep. The Africa-is-fucked-if-things-don't-change meme is correct. And the African-corn-production-is-in-trouble idea is also correct:
But the continent is drought-prone, with millions of farmers relying on rainfall for their crops grown in small land holdings. Corn is most widely grown, with almost 300 million people in sub-Saharan Africa using it as the main source of food. And it is grown in rain-fed regions prone to crop failures.
Riiight. So how about we grow something other than corn? I'm very disappointed at the New York Times failure to only present one side - a side that is opposed by scientists world wide - on this matter.
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Sat Feb 13, 2010 at 06:35:33 AM PST
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Last month I posted about the controversy surrounding the search for a new director of Iowa State University's Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture. University officials offered the job to Frank Louws, a plant pathologist in North Carolina, although the search committee preferred Ricardo Salvador, the program director for the Kellogg Foundation's Food, Health and Wellbeing program. Salvador is a corn expert and displayed a more "holistic perspective" about sustainable agriculture, which is probably why the Iowa Farm Bureau had expressed a preference for Louws. ISU's Dean of Agriculture Wendy Wintersteen informed Salvador that he would not get the position before Louws had accepted the job. Typically, employers wait until they have a deal with their top candidate before telling other finalists that they didn't get the job.
For about two months, Louws neither accepted nor declined the offer to head the Leopold Center. Meanwhile, ISU President Greg Geoffroy denied that he had been influenced by the Farm Bureau, saying he had followed "very strong advice" from Wintersteen and ISU's Executive Vice President and Provost Elizabeth Hoffman. In the sustainable agriculture community, many people believe industrial agriculture interests influenced Wintersteen's and Hoffman's recommendation.
In any event, Louws has declined ISU's job offer, the Ames Tribune reported yesterday. Wintersteen said North Carolina State University made him "a generous counter offer," and Louws decided not to uproot his family.
According to the Ames Tribune, Geoffroy "advised [Wintersteen] to call Salvador back for a second interview" after Louws turned down the Leopold Center job. That interview has not yet been scheduled.
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Sun Jan 17, 2010 at 08:52:54 AM PST
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Corn Farming and the Human Spirit
"Wanted: recipe for Haitian mud biscuits"
I gave a brief panel presentation on the dramatic topic: "Corn Farming and the World Food Crisis" at a conference of the Community Food Security Coalition in Des Moines Iowa last October. I started with a bit of drama of my own. I offered corn "safety nets" to audience members. I offered two choices, one with a larger farm program "Crop Acreage Base," but a smaller "Program Payment Yield," and one that reverses the two. These were soon rejected by my audience, as they got sort of, well, "hammered."
I further introduced myself by explaining that I was working on a dramatized version of my presentation which I'm calling "Corn Farming and the Human Spirit." For 15 years I have categorized my writings on farm and food issues into a series of unfinished, poorly edited, unpublished books, under the series title: Hog Farming and the Human Spirit: My Sequel to Moby Dick. In these writings I seek, often unsuccessfully, as readers at La Vida Locavore can see, to incarnate a "yes" of renewal beyond what I interpret to be Melville's great "no" of renewal. The "Corn Farming" drama is the latest volume in this larger work. It is built around a wonkish PowerPoint presentation, starkly contrasted with a dramatic interpretation of my family's history as told through farm bill history (cf. my farm folk song and poetry pamphleteering and other materials in HFHS), and also a series of skits on topics from farm and food history (ie. NFO's dramatic throwing of a huge pile thousands?] of Sears Catalogs in response to the 1962 CED report, which I've mentioned here, or mud biscuits from Haiti [does anyone know the recipe?). That's how I'm starting to build it. I believe this work could become a presentation with a series of simple skits, or, with adequate assistance, a powerful play and/or film.
Later last fall I was able to see the artsy farm film, The Real Dirt on Farmer John, at CSPS, a small art and drama venue on the 3rd Street cultural corridor in Cedar Rapids Iowa. After the show I went out with John and a local playwright who puts on a one man show about Grant Wood. (Wood was a leading 20th century Iowa regionalist, and the painter of American Gothic). The film and these conversations inspired me to realistically visualize a production Corn Farming and the Human Spirit at venues like CSPS. Such a vision is probably not possible, however, without significant and holistic help.
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Wed Jan 13, 2010 at 18:19:10 PM PST
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A new study links three varieties Monsanto GMO corn to organ damage in rats. I diaried this in a sampler platter nearly a month ago, but for some reason it's getting all kinds of press attention now.
The biggest question for me is: Are the American people a population of lab rats? Apparently so. These varieties are legal in the U.S. MON810 goes by the trade name YieldGard Corn Borer and MON863 goes by the trade name YieldGard Rootworm Corn in the U.S. and Canada. NK603 sells under the name Roundup Ready corn. If I understand things right, many farmers I met in Iowa used "triple stacked" corn, which means that all 3 of these traits were engineered into the same seeds.
As of 2009, according to the USDA, 17 percent of the corn grown in the U.S. is "Bt" corn, 22 percent is "RoundUp Ready," and 46 percent has more than one trait stacked into it. Altogether, GM corn makes up 85 percent of the corn we grow. Translation: Unless you eat organic (and probably even then because of genetic pollution), congratulations! You are a lab rat! Enjoy the organ damage.
(Of course, Monsanto's already claimed that this study isn't true and that their products do not cause organ damage. I'd like to see further study happen - ASAP! And, in the meantime, how about pulling Monsanto's GM corn off the market until the science is conclusive one way or the other? I, for one, do NOT want to be a lab rat, thankyouverymuch.)
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