RD201907-08

(avery) #1

Corn


The Most


Important


Crop in


the Land


By Kate Lowenstein
and Daniel Gritzer

S


ay you were to stroll through a
quintessential American land-
scape one summer morning,
looking across vast fields of shim-
mering, swaying cornstalks a dozen
feet tall. Might you be tempted to
sneak down into a row and swipe an
ear so that you could sink your teeth
into my sweet, juicy kernels right
then and there?
If so, I’d almost certainly disappoint
you. The bitter truth is that less than
1 percent of what’s grown in America
is sweet corn. Ninety-nine times out of
a hundred, biting into me fresh from
the field would be like biting into
a raw potato. Welcome to my
world—our world—dominated by
tough, inedible field corn.
And I do mean my world. Even
with minimal contribution from the
buttery kernels that you savor come
summertime, I am by far the nation’s
biggest crop. Chemists have learned

Photograph by Levi Brown rd.com | july/august 2019 27


I Am the

FOOD


ON YOUR


PLATE


Reader’s Digest
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