Farmers Cultivate Futuristic Functions to Eat Up Corn Surplus

From Aztec to high tech, corn’s past is a mystery and its future a challenge.

The nutritious grain that sustained native Americans for centuries became the highly prolific commercial corn that fed a hungry world in the 20th Century.

Now, partly a victim of its own success, corn is being crammed into storage bins at the rate of billions of unwanted bushels a year. The supply of the golden grain is simply increasing faster than the demand.

Growing for Storage

“Good gosh, we’ve just got so much corn on hand,” said John Pellet, who farms 750 acres at Chesterfield, Mo. “The only thing that is saving us now is the government (farm support) payments. But you’d much rather have a real customer for your corn than grow it for government storage.”

Corn yields in the United States have increased dramatically and, with biotechnology, “there is no end in sight,” said Hal Smedley, director of market development for the National Corn Growers Assn.

But industrial technology, which already has created corn-based sweeteners and alcohol, may provide even more relief. Corn now is being converted into industrial chemicals that can do everything from melting ice on roads to helping steering wheels pop out of molds.

‘We’re So Good’

“We farmers can produce so much--we’re so good at growing corn--that I am convinced we cannot (dispose of) it all through (feeding) livestock,” said Pellet, who is excited about the new high-tech possibilities.

But they are a far cry from corn’s traditional use--as food.

“We know now that it was the basic food plant of all of the advanced cultures and civilizations of the New World,” Harvard botanist Paul Mangelsdorf wrote in his 1974 book, “Corn: Its Origin, Evolution and Improvement.”

Many Indians of North America, the highly civilized Maya of Central America, the warlike Aztecs of Mexico and the Incas of Peru “all looked to corn for their daily bread,” according to Mangelsdorf.

George Sprague, a University of Illinois corn breeder, said, “There is a consensus that corn was a New World crop, but beyond that its history gets quite vague.

“The origin of corn is lost in antiquity, and we’re left to speculation,” he said.

Spread Around World

Theories on the genetic origin of the corn plant vary. But the absence of any historical reference to maize before 1492 suggests that Columbus discovered it in the New World and took it back to Europe. In two generations, this wonder crop spread around the world. Fields now are harvested somewhere every month of the year.

In North America, the Indians brought corn in from the wild and noticed that kernels that accidently fell into fertilized soil near their dwellings grew well. Soon, they planted corn, sometimes put fish in the ground as fertilizer, removed competing vegetation and replanted seed from the best-yielding plants.

The crop provided them with roasting ears, cornmeal to mix with vegetables and meat, and even popcorn.

“The Indians did quite a remarkable job breeding corn,” Sprague said. “The white man came and inherited a domesticated crop along with the production practices of the time.”

In the early 1700s, settlers planted two types of corn together and produced a cross that is similar to the commercial dent corn grown today, named for the dimple in each kernel.

And, when the railroads opened the fertile lands of the Midwest, farmers cleared millions of acres and found that they had an ideal place to raise crops.

Commercial Hybrids

With the introduction of the first commercial hybrids in the 1930s and the use of better fertilizer, pesticides and machinery, corn yields increased dramatically and steadily. The U.S. Corn Belt became the most important agricultural region in the world.

A single acre can contain about 25,000 plants of modern corn. Their lush green stalks and leaves rise eight feet above the rich, black prairie soil. Each ear is about the size of a pop bottle, its hard yellow kernels hidden beneath the husk and topped with hair-like silks. And, in the fall, the combines growl through the fields and harvest the grain.

Today, corn is raised primarily to feed livestock. But, because of its critical role in the food chain, it remains a staple.

“True, we consume directly only small amounts of corn . . . but, transformed into meat, milk, eggs and other animal products, it is our basic food plant, as it was of the people who preceded us in this hemisphere,” according to Mangelsdorf.

Exports Boomed

Farmers found a market for their corn not only among cattle, pork and poultry producers in this country, but also overseas. U.S. agricultural exports, including corn, boomed in the 1970s. There were more acres planted in corn and more bushels of corn per acre.

But, it was too much of a good thing. Meat consumption in this country declined. And grain production in other countries increased, boosting competition on the world market from other grain-exporting nations.

U.S. farmers produced 6.1 billion bushels of corn in 1975, with 62% fed to domestic livestock and 22% exported. In 1985, farmers raised a record 8.8 billion bushels of corn, with just 48% fed to livestock and 25% exported. A lot more corn was left over.

The rapidly growing U.S. corn surplus now is expected to be 5.3 billion bushels by the end of this marketing year. That, according to the Illinois Farm Bureau, is enough corn to fill the Sears Tower in

Chicago 124 times.

Storage facilities are overflowing across the Midwest. In Oakley, Ill., for example, grain elevator owner Lynn Clarkson dug a corn storage facility the size of five football fields because conventional storage facilities are still full from last year’s harvest. In Cerro Gordo, Ill., farmer John McRae lined old wire cribs with plastic to hold grain corn because of the overflow.

Corn Pile Growing

“We’ve gotten awfully good at this and we can produce a lot more than we can use,” Smedley said. “The total pile is incredibly larger.’

So the Corn Growers Assn. set its sights on new markets for the grain in the 1980s.

“The only growth area in demand has been industrial applications,” Smedley said.

Those industrial uses of corn increased from 7% of the crop in 1975 to 13% in 1985.

Two of the earliest successes were in the production and marketing of corn-based alcohol and sweeteners. A blend of 10% alcohol and 90% gasoline is used to boost octane and stretch the gasoline supply. The corn sweeteners replace sugar in a variety of products from bakery goods to virtually all soft drinks.

The fuel alcohol industry, which consumed just 10 million bushels of corn in 1979, was expected to convert 250 million bushels into alcohol during 1986. The sweetener industry, which used 190 million bushels of corn in 1975, was expected to buy 510 million bushels during 1986.

Production is done in huge modern facilities like those in Decatur operated by the A. E. Staley Mfg. Co. and by Archer Daniels Midland, two of the nation’s major grain processors.

Nothing Wasted

Nothing is wasted in alcohol and sweetener production. The versatile corn kernel also yields oil for cooking and salads, gluten for livestock feed, hulls for high-fiber bran and starch for the newest carbohydrate-based chemicals.

Staley, a pioneer in corn chemistry research, created a new division in 1985--Horizon Chemical--to produce and market products that will compete with traditional petroleum-based chemicals.

At Horizon, cornstarch is the equivalent of crude oil and is the basis for literally hundreds of compounds. Horizon scientists create them, study their properties and comb the marketplace for possible uses.

“The petroleum industry has about exhausted what it can do, but we’re moving into untouched areas,” Gary Granzow, general manager of Horizon, said. “Carbohydrates can make a lot of things--more than petroleum.”

Scientists say these corn-based chemicals can make detergents more soapy, glues more sticky, paints more glossy and urethane less smoky in case of fire. One Horizon product even makes automobile steering wheels pop out of the molds more quickly and easily.

But Smedley said that is only the beginning. Corn chemicals could produce a non-corrosive salt substitute to de-ice roads, an adhesive that would bind landfill waste into burnable pellets and an alcohol that would remove the sulfur from coal.

“We’re confident that concerns over the environment and over the price and supply of petroleum represent an opportunity for carbohydrate chemistry,” Smedley said.

Optimistic on Future

“We’re lucky if we turn up anything significant in the next five years, but we think the future is very much in our favor,” he said. “I wish we had started this in the ‘70s.”

However, no one suggests that industrial uses for corn will change its main role as food.

“Other uses for corn will set the price,” Granzow said. “Petrochemicals represent a very small part of petroleum use, and the same will be true with carbohydrate chemistry.”

Experts say these high-tech uses of corn will help eat up the surplus in years of bumper harvests.

But the real challenge to keeping the grain bins empty and farmers’ pockets full will be selling a larger percentage of those corn crops at home and abroad for the most traditional of uses--as food.

Pellet said, “We need new uses for corn, but we also have to work harder to regain the traditional markets we’ve lost.”