A Tale of Two Corns

Today, I saw something that made my blood run a little cold: coming down Rt 6 from Watertown towards Bethlehem, passing a farm I pass almost every day, I noticed a field of corn bordered by a row of white and red signs. I recognized the signs from a distance, and my jaw clenched a bit. I'd seen plenty of the signs, or those like them, before, during the brief time I lived in Iowa. Out there, in the green desert, many fields sprout such warning signs, as unsettling as those demarcating a land-mine zone. As I drove closer, the signs revealed themselves, plastic placards on stakes, red and white, simple. Each one bore the name ConAgra. Hybrid, GMO, copyrighted corn had come to my little corner of Connecticut.

ConAgra, like its bigger brother Monsanto, is one of the chief faces of evil in the realm of industrial agriculture. As well as dabbling in confinement livestock factory farming, ConAgra makes its name building frankenfoods. Now, for what it's worth, I'm not as opposed to genetically modified crops as you might think (I'll devote time soon as to just why), and unsettling as the whole idea may be, what truly upsets me is the industry's tendency to treat their corn as intellectual property.

Farmers planting ConAgra hybrids must register with the corporation, risking legal action if they should try to plant a second year's crop with their own seed corn instead of re-upping from the parent company itself. Worse, should TM corn be found growing in a neighboring farmer's field, even if it hybridizes accidentally or is spread by mistake, that farmer can be sued for illegally possessing the equivalent of stolen corn. In return for high yields and straight rows, farmers forsake their freedom, and the industry reaps the profits.

I always considered Iowa a lost cause; the farmers there seemed just too far indebted to the system, and too weak-willed, to ever get out from under the corporate thumb. But to see the mark of ConAgra greed and a grower's ignorance so close to home was unsettling. It left a bad taste in my mouth.

There was, however, a nice counterpoint to that ConAgra corn field, just a little further down the road. Another sign, though this one a little more welcoming: a giant plywood ear of corn, green and yellow, advertising native sweet corn at Logue's Farm (credit where credit's due, Logue's has the best butter and sugar corn this season, beating Towne's farm hands down). Sweet corn season is one of the most pleasant in northwest CT, late summer when the weather swelters and then cools, and the green of the landscape seems to deepen in its final moments. And the sweet corn itself embodies what's best in local, seasonal eating. As delicious as it is, it comes and goes in a matter of months; you eat all you can and then hope the taste lingers till the following year.

Within half a mile, I saw two very different ends of the agricultural spectrum. One corn crop was good for nothing but high-fructose syrup or cattle feed, an industrial engineered shackle around a farmer's leg. The other, sweet, crisp, fleeting, stood in my mind for a lot of what is right with the local food movement. I know which end of the spectrum I prefer. I drove home, with the giant wooden ear receding in my rear-view mirror. It looked good enough to eat.