Corn

Corn is a wild grass. Over 10,000 years ago, people from Southern Mexico collected and consumed a wild grass called ‘teosinte’, which is now what we call ‘maize’ (field corn). From Mexico, maize spread during migrations, into the southwest areas of the U.S.A and south to Peru. Corn is now America’s biggest crop and a staple of the global food supply.

Native Americans taught European colonists to grow indigenous grains. Since its introduction into Europe by Christopher Columbus and other explorers and colonizers, corn has spread to all areas of the world suitable for its cultivation.

It is grown from 58° N latitude in Canada and Russia to 40° S latitude in South America, with a corn crop maturing somewhere in the world nearly every month of the year. Iowa has approximately 86,900 farms. More than 97 percent of those farms are growing corn.

Besides being consumed corn is also used for corn ethanol, animal feed, and other maize products, such as corn starch, cornmeal, corn oil, and corn syrup. The six major types of maize are dent corn, flint corn, pod corn, popcorn, flour corn, and sweet corn. Only one percent of corn planted in the United States is sweet corn.

Sweet corn is what people purchase fresh, frozen, or canned for eating. It’s consumed as a vegetable. 99 percent of corn grown in Iowa is “Field Corn”. When Iowa’s corn farmers deliver corn from the field, it’s “Field Corn”. Not the delicious sweet corn you might enjoy on the cob or in a can. Field corn is the classic big ears of yellow-dented corn you see dried and harvested in the fall.

It’s called “dent corn” because of the distinctive dent that forms on the kernel as the corn dries. While a small portion of “Field Corn” is processed for use as corn cereal, corn starch, corn oil, and corn syrup for human consumption, it is primarily used for livestock feed, ethanol production, and manufactured goods. It’s considered a grain.

The corn plant is a tall annual grass with a stout, erect, solid stem. The large narrow leaves have wavy margins and are spaced alternately on opposite sides of the stem. Staminate (male) flowers are borne on the tassel terminating the main axis of the stem.

The pistillate (female) inflorescences, which mature to become the edible ears, are spikes with a thickened axis, bearing paired spikelets in longitudinal rows; each row of paired spikelets normally produces two rows of grain. Varieties of yellow and white corn are the most popular as food, though there are varieties with red, blue, pink, and black kernels, often banded, spotted, or striped. Each ear is enclosed by modified leaves called shucks or husks.

A corn cob with an odd number of rows is more unusual than a four-leaf clover. There have even been instances where corn with an odd number of rows has been reported in the news due to its rarity. If you’ve ever counted the kernels on your corn and spotted an uneven row, consider yourself lucky.

Most processed foods contain corn like cereals, potato chips, ice cream, baby food, peanut butter, mayonnaise, marshmallows, cooking oil, margarine, salad dressing, and chewing gum. The production of corn even surpassed rice and wheat. The corn’s secondary products are found in various non-food items such as cosmetics, laundry detergent, soap, aspirin, antibiotics, rust preventatives, glue, paint, dyes, fireworks, shoe polish, ink, and plastic products.

The United States calls the states of Iowa, Illinois, Nebraska, Minnesota, Indiana, Ohio, Wisconsin, South Dakota, Michigan, Missouri, Kansas, and Kentucky its “Corn Belt.” The Corn Belt region of the United has been mass-producing corn since the 1850s.