Since I hadn’t seen the Middle West for a long time many impressions crowded in on me as I drove through Ohio and Michigan and Illinois. . . . No matter what the direction, for good or for bad, the vitality was everywhere. . . . Almost on crossing the Ohio line it seemed to me that people were more open and more outgoing. . . . I had forgotten how rich and beautiful is the countryside—the deep topsoil, the wealth of great trees, the lake country of Michigan handsome as a well-made woman, and dressed and jeweled. It seemed to me that the earth was generous and outgoing here in the heartland, and perhaps the people took a cue from it.
—from Travels With Charley, by John Steinbeck
One reads often these days about huge, corporation-owned industrial farms, and while those do exist, they are actually a remarkably small part of the corn story. In fact, the vast majority of corn is grown on family farms. According to the 2012 Corn Fact Book, produced by the Corn Farmers Coalition, 90 percent of all corn grown in the United States is produced on family farms. Many of the more than 400,000 U.S. farms that grow corn1 have been in those families for generations.
As one travels around the Midwest today, one finds that those families have deep roots and a great love for the land. However, one also discovers that farmers are not the only people involved with corn. Along corn’s path from field to table, responsibility for the grain passes from farmers and farm communities through co-ops or traders to processors or cooks. One finds tremendous diversity among the people associated with corn, not just different jobs, but different ages, histories, outlooks, and ethnicities. Yet all are connected to, and have a healthy respect for, the grain that still largely defines the Midwest.
By the beginning of the 1900s, the Midwest had become the nation’s bread-basket. Its cities and towns were wonderfully diverse ethnically and culinarily, and its farms were amazingly productive. These things would continue. However, the country was in for a rough ride. In 1917, the United States entered World War I. The Roaring Twenties offered a brief economic upswing (though Prohibition hurt corn farmers, as whiskey makers were shut down), and then the Great Depression hit. The economic devastation of the Depression lasted from 1929 until after the nation went to war again in 1941. World War II may have helped end the Depression, but it brought rationing and other privations, including the draining away of workers, especially from farms. Food programs during both world wars helped save resources to feed soldiers and starving Europeans, but the culinary scene in the Midwest suffered.
Bursts of hysteria during World War I temporarily diminished the popularity of German dishes in some areas. Just as French fries became freedom fries in a more recent bout of anger, so sauerkraut temporarily became liberty cabbage.2 During the Great Depression, people lacked money, and during both world wars, food was limited, with those meatless and wheatless days during World War I and strict rationing during World War II. People learned to “make do” with what they could afford or what they were allowed. Many of the noodle casseroles and Jell-O salads for which the Midwest is occasionally mocked arose during this time, because they made it possible to stretch limited resources—not that the Midwest was by any means alone in making some of these dishes, but these recipes often lingered in rural areas. While peace and prosperity returned to much of the land when World War II ended, many farms had not yet recovered from the Great Depression, and others languished because of the lack of workers. So Depression-era foods hung on a bit longer in farming areas—and among many who grew up during the Depression.
Immigration continued to play a role in altering the foodways of the Midwest. In fact, given the diversity of the population, especially in the cities of the Midwest, it’s hard to imagine how the image of boring food in the Heartland has persisted. It certainly doesn’t reflect reality.3 (Not that there’s anything wrong with a nice roast of beef and a pile of fresh, hot, buttered sweet corn!) Adding to the already substantial multiethnic base in the region, Mexicans became an increasing presence in the region throughout the twentieth century, as did their foodways, which are anciently tied up with corn. Toward the end of the 1900s, Asians from countries other than China (Vietnam, Indonesia, Thailand, Korea, Cambodia, and more) and Hispanics from farther south than Mexico began to immigrate to the Midwest.
Population levels will always have an impact on culinary diversity. While there has been something of a trend in recent years of chefs returning to their hometowns, making higher-level cuisine available, it would be impossible for small towns in rural areas to boast the variety of restaurants and food options found in big cities. Still, today, all but the smallest towns have some diversity among restaurants and in grocery stores, and the Internet and air travel have made more foods available throughout the region, even in areas where population levels are low. But small, rural communities are not supposed to be big cities.
However, people are mistaken in viewing cities and rural areas in the Midwest as separate and unconnected. Their cultures are different, but they are in reality two sides of one coin. The spectacular restaurant scene in Chicago is as much a part of the Midwest identity as the corn festivals in Iowa. Farm country needs the cities as markets, and the cities need the farms to eat—and to make money. (Commodities markets in Chicago alone handle about one-third of the world’s agricultural products.)4
One change that had a big impact on the Midwest was the decision in the 1970s to focus on growing more corn. The huge gardens and small orchards that had traditionally been part of family farms diminished or vanished. Supermarkets had already made them less necessary, as one could buy apples, potatoes, and onions, rather than growing them, but now, the land was more valuable if it was growing corn. More recently, in response to this vanishing of homegrown foods, organizations have started up in some rural areas to try to regain some of the quality, independence, and food security that local foods represent to a community. For example, Iowa’s Field to Family Community Food Project was created in 1997 to develop a local, sustainable, and equitable food system that would not only increase self-reliance, but would also help lower-income families.5 So it is not simply in urban settings that people have found the need to pursue fresh, locally grown foods. We are all in this together.
In the 1900s, people continued to arrive in the Midwest, from around the world and from across the United States. The Great Migration—the relocation of more than 6 million African Americans from the rural South to the cities of the North, Midwest, and West from 1916 to 1970—had a huge impact on U.S. urban life. Driven from their homes by unsatisfactory economic opportunities and harsh segregationist laws, many African Americans headed to northern cities, where they took advantage of the need for industrial workers that emerged during World War I.
While the Germans, Dutch, Scandinavians, British, and other groups who had settled the Midwest remained, new groups began to arrive from countries and continents not previously extensively represented. Immigration surged among Southern Europeans, Eastern Europeans (especially Jews escaping persecution), Asians, and Hispanics.6 While everyone would become part of the corn-based economy of the Midwest, and all would adopt at least some corn products into their cuisines, among these new arrivals, two groups actually brought with them foodways already heavily reliant on corn.
The 1900s didn’t see the first arrival of Italians, but it did see the greatest influx, with a particularly large increase in immigrants from southern Italy. By 1920, only New York and Philadelphia had larger Italian populations than Chicago did.7 As noted earlier, maize/corn was adopted wholeheartedly in Italy almost as soon as it was introduced following Columbus’s voyages. By the time Italians arrived in the United States, they had nearly four hundred years of experience with corn, primarily in the form of polenta. So an urban culture that had left behind cornmeal mush was reintroduced to essentially the same dish by newcomers who had a different name and use for it.
The group that would have the biggest impact on corn as part of the foodways of the Midwest would, in fact, be the group that came from the land where corn originated: Mexico. The history of Mexico was shaped by corn and corn farming, and it has been said that corn is the basis of Mexican culture.8
A few Mexicans arrived before 1900, but large Latino communities did not begin to form until the early 1900s. A large amount of the sugar produced in the United States was (and still is—more than half of the sugar produced here) from sugar beets, and some of the largest regions for growing sugar beets are in the Midwest.9 Around the turn of the century, Michigan10 and Minnesota11 both saw large influxes of Mexicans who arrived to work in the sugar-beet fields. Growing cities and industries needed workers, and thousands of Mexicans came to pursue the American Dream in factories, stockyards, railroads, and other areas with high demands for labor created by the region’s rapid growth.12
In Chicago and surrounding areas, Mexicans began to arrive in the early 1900s, coming as entertainers or itinerant workers. However, the greatest influx was during World War I, when they came as contract workers to replace those who had gone to war. The steel mills in Gary, the meatpacking houses of the Union Stock Yards, the railroad companies, and even candy makers and clothing manufacturers suddenly needed help.13 Wherever Mexicans settled and communities grew, they began to open restaurants that would create familiar foods from home—most of which involved corn. While the Mississippi Delta tamale may have taken over the streets in some cities, Mexican tamales were now being made in small family-run restaurants all over the Midwest.
“My dad started a jukebox business in 1937,” relates Arthur Velasquez, one of the founders of Azteca Foods and its current chairman. “He operated them in Mexican restaurants, and during the next 30 years, his business grew by leaps and bounds, as the number of restaurants was growing wildly during that period, due to increased immigration.” Velasquez could hardly be more midwestern. His mom was born in Iowa. His paternal grandparents migrated to Gary, Indiana, and then his father moved to Chicago. Velasquez went to Notre Dame, and two of his daughters (out of six children) went to the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. So Velasquez bridges the world’s two most corn-dependent regions, and his business, in a way, unites them, using midwestern corn to produce tortillas for a market that has grown far beyond the Mexican community it originally served. “Millions and millions of tortillas are being produced daily in the Chicagoland area,” Velasquez enthuses. “There are 10 or 15 manufacturers just in Chicago, but there are probably a hundred tortilla companies across the Midwest. The tremendous growth in this industry led to the creation of the Tortilla Industry Association, a national organization that I helped found.
“Azteca Foods is still a family-owned company,” Velasquez explains. “We started it in 1970. We originally called it Azteca Corn Products, because we originally worked primarily with corn. Now, we also make flour tortillas, so it’s Azteca Foods. My daughter Renee is the company president. Originally, we used white corn for our tortillas, but now we often use yellow corn or a yellow/white blend. I expect the company to continue to grow, because these days, you can’t go anywhere that serves food and not see tortillas.”
Velasquez is not alone in his enthusiasm for the growth of the tortilla industry. Jim Kabbani, CEO of the Tortilla Industry Association (TIA), shared information from his presentation for the 2011 TIA Technical Conference. It details the growth of the industry and includes the fact that, even though the U.S. Hispanic population is growing, the truly explosive growth has been among non-Hispanic buyers. This is attributed partly to “dietary diversification among all ethnic groups” (people are eating more adventurously), partly to the increasing interest in gluten-free foods and therefore of corn-based alternatives to bread, and partly to the availability of more types of tortillas, including kosher and organic. Even more conservative food outlets, such as school cafeterias, are now major purchasers of tortillas. As a result, the tortilla market topped $10 billion in 2011.14 (And, it should be noted, house-made tortillas prepared in restaurants are not included in these numbers. Just those commercially made.)
While Mexican food on the whole has become increasingly popular in many cities, corn tortillas and tortilla chips have become so common that they are almost not thought of as Mexican. They have become mainstream and often appear far from an identifiably ethnic setting, from the nachos now sold at many movie theaters and sporting events, to the chips and salsa common at parties of every sort, to the tortilla salad bowls at many casual restaurants. The people from corn’s homeland have given us a new way to enjoy corn, and Americans have adopted it wholeheartedly.
Eric Williams, chef/owner of popular Momocho Restaurant in Cleveland, Ohio, is very enthusiastic about both Mexican influence on Midwest cuisine and having a Mexican restaurant in corn country:
When you think of Mexican food, you think tequila, chiles, and corn. Corn just goes with the culture—and we use quite a bit of corn here. It’s one of the key things we highlight on our menu. We always have corn tortillas and house-made tortilla chips, and masa for tamales, but otherwise, corn use is seasonal. We use local Ohio sweet corn from mid- to late summer. Grilled corn on the cob with jalapeño-citrus butter, queso cotija, and pico de gallo is a popular presentation. We also pickle some of the sweet corn. One of our guacamoles has pickled corn, along with crab and chile chipotle. Actually, pickled corn is kind of a necessity, as we don’t freeze anything and don’t even have walk-in coolers. Everything is made from scratch every day. So pickling gives us a way of saving that summer sweetness. Then, in winter, we focus more on pozole and masa. But there’s always corn here. We even use corncobs to smoke our trout and to create vegetarian broth.
“A bonus of using corn is it allows us to offer a gluten-free menu. I think that the gluten-free aspect of using corn is increasing its popularity,” Williams notes. “But seriously, if you use a lot of corn and you want the quality to be exceptional, you want to live somewhere that you’re surrounded by people growing corn.”
A sense of history, love of family, connection to the land, and willingness to share it with others were noticeable in every farm and every state I visited in pursuit of a deeper, more human understanding of what corn means in the Midwest. In some cases, the people I met were descended from the first pioneers to make their way onto the great prairies. Some had recently come to farming; others had recently left it behind. However, even those who left still feel a connection to the land. Farming makes people different. Steinbeck’s observation at the top of this chapter seems to still define the people of the rural Midwest.
It has been said that family farms helped define the character of Americans, making them independent, self-reliant, and disciplined, acquainted with hardship and hard work, resilient, determined, and family-focused.15 One sees these traits still when traveling through the rural Midwest. One also learns that there is a lot more to corn than farming. Corn touches, and is touched by, a wide range of people who help grow it and then move it from field to market to consumer.
People still alive have lived through the revolutionary changes that have occurred in farming. Horses and wood-burning stoves are not ancient history to them; they’re where their lives began.
“We grew field corn,” recalls Marie Sila, who grew up on a farm in McLean County in Illinois. “However, we got out before the new hybrid corns came along.” Marie, a still-energetic five-foot-tall octogenarian, leans forward as she warms to the topic:
You know, the farmers have to buy their seed now every year. And the machines are so expensive now. It has made it hard for farmers to survive. If you can’t afford the equipment, you have to hire someone who has a machine to come and do the harvesting. It’s not as nice as it was when we farmed. We grew field corn. We fed it to the animals, but we ate it, too. There was a gristmill just south of town, and they’d grind it for us. Sweet corn was grown in the garden. We had a nice garden, where we grew lots of vegetables. When I was little, I’d help Dad dig up the potatoes, but it was so hot, I told my dad that next time he should plant trees, so we’d have shade. We also grew tomatoes and watermelon. Not a lot of big gardens on farms anymore.
Ed Zimmerman and his wife Sylvia (who was introduced in Chapter 7) have a farm in central Ohio. It’s 6:00 A.M. and the beginning of a long day. It’s harvest time, so the workday will run from 8:00 A.M. until well after dark. Sylvia will take lunch to the men in the field, and her daughter-in-law will take dinner. Over breakfast, Ed Zimmerman shares about his farm, family, and how agriculture has changed.
We have about fourteen hundred acres planted, pretty evenly divided between corn and soybeans. With the combine, we can harvest about seventy-five acres of corn per day or about one hundred acres of soybeans. Corn harvest takes a little longer than soybeans, because we can harvest faster than the drier can dry the corn. The wet corn bin only holds about nine thousand bushels, and we can get ahead of it. The drier can do about five hundred or six hundred bushels per hour. Fortunately, the drier can run through the night.
The combine does an amazing job during harvest. As it shells the corn, it measures the moisture content of the corn and gives a report of yield. It uses GPS technology to create a map while it harvests, so you can see where there might be problems, where more water or fertilizer is needed next year.
We try to plant corn in late April, if the weather looks positive. That way, it’s ready to pick by October, in plenty of time before snow is a threat. For planting, we have to buy seed each year, which actually offers big advantages. It helps keep the fields clean. Saving seeds over the winter attracts mice. And germination of saved seeds is not as reliable. The biggest advantage is that the new seed is more uniform. The big machines need uniform seeds to work well, so new seed plants more evenly. It’s also guaranteed to resist fungi in the soil that could cause the seed to rot before it germinates. Even then, not every seed comes up, and we know we’ll lose some corn to deer. We plant enough seed to ensure that, by maturity, we are going to have at least thirty thousand plants.
With the big machines, we have to have a specific traffic pattern. When planting, side dressing, and harvesting, we need to drive over the same tracks every time. That way, the weight of the machines only compacts soil you aren’t planting. We do no-till farming on highly erodible land. The Farm Services Agency has an aerial map of all farms, and they classify land by the degree of erodibility, and they let us know how our land is classified. In order to qualify for government programs on those acres deemed highly erodible, no-till is a requirement.
Actually, a lot of what we do is to protect the soil, and a lot of what we do is to protect the environment. We rotate crops every year to limit certain crop diseases. To build up the soil, we leave fodder and crop residue on the surface in no-till areas, and in minimum-till areas, we incorporate some of it into the soil and leave some for cover.
Commercial fertilizer is now formulated for individual fields, to make sure it matches a field’s needs. However, we can be even more precise than that. The planting machines receive information via satellite, telling them where to release more or less fertilizer. This helps cut down on the amount of fertilizer used, which cuts down on runoff. With nitrogen, we side-dress16 the corn when it’s about six inches high. We don’t add the nitrogen until the corn needs it, so it doesn’t leach into the soil. The machines make a map as they plant, and then, when side-dressing or spraying herbicides, the GPS makes sure you don’t spray too much or overlap your spraying.
Zimmerman (who is Ed Jr.) insists that his son, Ed III, is a better farmer than he is. “He’s a computer whiz. Farming is largely about management and marketing today. It’s still a lifestyle and about family and all that, but there’s so much more business, plus all those computer programs. However, sometimes things get broken or an area isn’t growing, and I can fix it or tell my son how I handled it when I saw it before. That’s satisfying. I can still be useful.”
Thinking back over the decades and how farming has changed, Zimmerman reminisces about life and farming during the Great Depression and changes that have occurred.
I was born on my grandfather’s farm, but during the Depression, the farm was lost. My father then rented small rural homes with back yards big enough for a large garden, a pig, some chickens, and a cow—though the cow often grazed along the roadside. When I got out of the army in 1947, my father and I were able to rent a good farm. We established a small dairy herd and were able to grow most of our crops. Unfortunately, that farm passed to another owner, so we had to relocate. We moved from southeast Ohio to central Ohio, and we’ve been here ever since.
When Dad and I started, we farmed with a team of mules and a twelve-inch walking plow. Then we got a horse. While I was in the army during World War II, my dad bought his first tractor.
In the 1930s, most farm families didn’t go shopping at the grocery store. We had a big garden. We butchered our own hogs and made sausage and bacon. We picked wild fruits and canned them or made preserves. We had sweet corn in the garden. Cornmeal mush and cornbread were staples.
We still eat green corn and baby corn. You usually get several ears on a stalk, but only one matures, so we take off the baby ears. We don’t worry about picking all the extras, but when we see them, we enjoy them in our salads and lightly boiled.
There are things I miss from earlier times. You really did have more of a community life, with family and neighbors. We still get some of that, but not as much. Back then people would get together for shucking, putting corn in the corncribs, cutting ensilage, filling the silo. They’d move from farm to farm. Today, we have the machines, and much higher yields. Actually, it has to be that way. There are too few farmers for the amount of population we have now, so the farmers who are left have to raise more.
Most people have an idea of farming that is outdated. Current farmers are a couple of generations removed from what most people think of when they think of farmers. Farming is still a lifestyle, but it’s a business, too, and today’s farmers understand that. Clothing has changed, too. Originally, we covered up, to avoid the sun. Then everyone went to T-shirts, which led to skin-cancer concerns. Now we’re back to hats and long sleeves, but it’s still a more modern look.
Farming is a natural life. Watching things grow, raising animals—it’s satisfying. And I love searching for wildlife and birds while I’m out there, driving the combine across the broad fields. I love the out-of-doors, and I love this life.
Illinois farm owner Sharon Perry was born and raised on a farm purchased by her maternal grandparents in 1940. Perry’s parents grew field corn and soybeans on the farm, but her dad also grew sweet corn in the garden. “We’d eat sweet corn with dinner every summer,” Perry remembers, “and share it with the neighbors.” Life and her career took her away from the farm for thirty years, when she became a self-described city slicker. Then, seven years ago, she inherited the farm, and when she got laid off from her corporate job, she decided to reexamine her career choices. Today, Perry says, “I am a farmer’s daughter who is now a farm owner. I didn’t realize it for a long time, but clearly, farming is in my blood. The farm has become my passion.”
Diving wholeheartedly into farming, Perry has been pleased to discover the involvement of other women in agriculture. She has twice attended conferences hosted by Executive Women in Agriculture and notes that even women in their twenties and thirties are figuring out what they are good at and bringing that to the discussion of agriculture.
Perry also joined the Chicago Farmers, attends conferences on agricultural issues, has taken college classes on farm management, and goes to University of Illinois summits. “Farming is a wonderful way of life, but it has also become more complicated,” Perry explains. “Farmers have to learn how to manage risks. For example, we can’t change the weather, but we can take it into account. Nutrient management and water runoff are issues at the forefront for all farmers these days. I need to know what opportunities and challenges face me. I need to keep learning about farming, commodity marketing, and technology. You can’t know everything, so advisers and networking are vital.” Perry relates that her father cultivated key farm advisers, and she inherited those, as well. “I thank him every day for that.”
Among her advisers is the tenant who actually works Perry’s farm. “We have a crop-share lease arrangement, where we share the costs and share the profits. My share of the crop is my source of income now. My tenant brings a lot of operational expertise to the job. He has actually been involved with the family for some time, as he began renting our land as my father got older.”
Perry observes, “Those involved in agriculture are becoming aware that they have to tell their stories. There are a lot of people who don’t really know what farming is like today. For example, the term ‘factory farm’ does not always have a good connotation, but even the big factory farms are mostly family owned. They’re just taking advantage of economies of scale. They need to do everything they can to make farming pay. There’s a reason so many farmers refer to farming as a form of gambling. Between market volatility and the weather, profit isn’t a sure thing.”
Perry says that, in the world of row crops, her 334-acre farm is relatively small. Corn from her farm probably goes to the East or West Coast, huge containers carrying the grain to Joliet, Illinois, where it becomes part of the golden river that flows constantly out of the Midwest across the country and around the world. Perry says happily, “Aren’t we lucky to have the land and technology to grow our own food—and have enough to feed others?”
Cathy Weber’s grandparents helped establish and develop Arapahoe, Nebraska, in the late 1800s. One grandfather was a surveyor and corn farmer, as well as an early engineer. Her other grandfather and his wife were professional journalists, and their family owned the local newspaper for seventy years.
Weber also rents out farms she inherited, although she inherited them from her late husband, Melvin, who was a farmer. (Weber’s daughter, Dr. Jane Hanson, adds, with obvious pride, that her father was a farmer of considerable skill and foresight. He was named Outstanding Young Farmer when he and his wife were newlyweds, and he was among the first in the area to install pivots on his farms, a task considered by many to be too difficult on the uneven terrain of the High Plains.) The farm where Weber raised her children is “two sections over” from where she lives currently. The central structure of the house she lives in today was, from 1880 to 1904, the post office of Ceryl, a hoped-for town that never developed. It sits on the highest point in the county, with unobstructed views in every direction of the handsome rolling countryside. In the distance, meandering lines of trees show where rivers or streams cut across the landscape, but everything else is farms, with the green of cornfields occasionally interrupted by the gold of ripening wheat. The sky on this June day is clear, with no sign of clouds—unfortunately.
In town, the conversation is mostly about the weather. Everyone knows everyone else in this town of one thousand, and everyone stops to talk. Weber’s farms are irrigated, but some of the farmers in this region are still dry-land farmers. All are wondering if it will rain and if the rain will come soon enough to save this year’s corn crop. (Even those with pivots need to be concerned, because if the weather is dry for too long, limits are set on water usage.)
“We’re on the High Plains here. The soil is black loess. It’s very rich, but the eastern part of the state, which was glaciated, has even richer soil. Still, you can grow anything here,” Weber notes. “But you do need rain. The wind makes it worse, as it dries out the land.” Weber then adds, philosophically, “It’s been a while since we had a really bad year. Maybe we’re due.”
Talking over coffee with her daughter and friend and fellow farmer, Shirley Smith, the discussion turns to corn, family histories, and the people of the region.
“We grew up eating cornbread,” Weber says. “Most people in this area did. We often ground our own corn. All the corn grown around here is dent corn, which is grown for livestock feed or for grinding to make cornmeal.”
Smith chimes in, “My mother made wonderful cornbread. I always enjoyed it, but especially loved it when she had some sour cream to add to it. It was wonderful with sour cream, though you need to use more baking soda with the sour cream.”
The people in the area don’t just know each other; they look out for each other. In describing the kind of people who farm the region, Hanson relates that the renters who farm her mom’s property, after a particularly good year, suggested that they should pay more rent for her farms, because they thought it seemed fair. This actually doesn’t seem surprising, after having been here for a few days. The people all seem as open and honest as the land.
Weber agrees: “Transparency and honesty are vital in an area where everyone’s life depends on helping one another.”
In corn country, one does not escape corn simply because one is not a farmer. Iowa native Amy North relates that her hometown of Marshalltown, Iowa, is surrounded by farms, and even though she’s not from a farming family, corn was still a big part of her youth:
At fourteen, I went out into the corn fields—because detasseling was a job you could have when you were fourteen. My mom detasseled corn, too, so she knew the people who hired, and she got me in with a group from another junior high school. It’s hard work, but it expanded my horizons. So many people from the area did it as a summer job that I met people I would never have met otherwise.
You really have to be thorough when detasseling. Kids go through the fields first, then crew chiefs follow, checking to make sure the detasselers pulled the tassels off every corn stalk. You had to do the job well, or you wouldn’t be there for long. For two summers, I did detasseling, then, after a break, I returned as a crew chief. Detasseling is done in the summer, so the weather is hot. There are a lot of bugs, including huge spiders. The ground is uneven and can trip you up. We were told to cover up, because the blades of corn have sharp edges. However, if you wanted a tan, you toughed it out—but your forearms would get slashed. In the mornings, we wore garbage bags, to keep from being drenched by the dew. It wasn’t easy, but I remember it as being fun. The camaraderie was great.
My second year in college, I worked for Lynks, a small hybrid seed company, in their test fields. I poked stalks, counted kernels, and did other science-based tests.
After the harvest, we gleaned the corn, but that wasn’t for pay. We’d go into the fields after the combines had gone through and pick up all the ears of corn that had fallen on the ground. The money made from selling that corn all went to charity. People simply opened their fields to us, so we could collect the corn that had been left. I don’t know if every area did it, but they did it where I lived.
The work was very formative, and it was great for teaching accountability. My mother-in-law, who was in the corporate world, said she’d hire anyone who had worked at detasseling. It showed a strong work ethic and that you weren’t afraid of hard work. If I could have, I would have had my kids detassel corn.
While some are looking back on a lifetime of experience, Greg Peterson is very much looking forward. He’s a fifth-generation Kansas farmer and recent graduate of Kansas State University. He’s also an agricultural videographer, creator of the “The Peterson Farm Bros” channel on YouTube and composer/creator of the clever parody videos “I’m Farming and I Grow It” and “Farmer Style,” which went viral in 2012. He’s the perfect example of young and hip meets old-fashioned midwestern values. The Peterson Farm grows about one hundred acres of corn to create silage to get their one thousand head of beef cattle through the winter. “Before the silage is harvested, however, we can eat roasting ears from our fields,” Peterson notes. “I like being able to do that.”
Asked why he loves farming, Peterson replies, “It’s a wonderful way of life. You can work with your family, you’re outdoors most of the time, and you’re working with your hands. It’s very creative. For those who like technology, there’s a lot of that involved in farming, too. For me, it’s also important that we’re making a difference. The population is growing worldwide, and we need to grow more food. I can be part of that.”
In college, Peterson majored in agricultural communications and journalism, because he wants to get the message out about the importance of farming. He plans on both farming and writing. Peterson explains, “I want to be able to communicate farmers’ needs. Laws get passed all the time by people who have never been on a farm and have no idea what farming is like. So educating lawmakers is one aspect. The other is educating the public. I want to tell people that we’re not a bunch of hicks with pitchforks. This is not a bottom-of-the-ladder job. People think you farm because you can’t do anything else, and they’re wrong. It takes a lot of skill, not just in farming, but also in technology and management. Plus, without us, no one eats.”
Mike Temple tells a story that echoes Peterson’s concern regarding the occasional incomprehension within the nonfarm public. “A woman visiting the area asked a farmer why he worked so hard. ‘After all,’ she said, ‘grocery stores have everything you need.’ That’s the kind of disconnect we see sometimes. People really don’t know where food comes from.”
Temple is the branch manager for the Heritage Cooperative in Richwood, Ohio. A former farmer, he is now part of an organization that makes farming work better for others. “We provide a service to our members. The farmers own the cooperative. Their income is from farming. Our income is from taking care of the farmers.” By “taking care of farmers,” Temple means truly taking care of everything that supports the farming process.
We raise the seed corn for the farmers. To do that, we have to work with the big seed companies, but we raise the seed right here. We send it to agronomists for testing, and then we package it under our own brand name, Shur-Grow. We also purchase everything the farmers need: fuel, animal feed, supplies, fertilizer. That helps ensure high quality while keeping costs down for individual farmers. Then, once the crop comes in, we take in the corn. Sometimes, the farmer has already sold the corn, and we just move it. We can also store the corn, if the farmer wants to wait for a better price. Sometimes, we buy the corn from the farmers. Our storage capacity is in the millions of bushels.
Our Manager of Grain Purchasing and Risk has the job of pricing grains that we buy. Then our Grain Merchandising Manager handles the selling of any grain we have purchased. We sell a lot of corn here, but we also sell it all over the world—Vietnam, Hungary, and elsewhere. We work hard to get the best prices for our members.
We have a lot of equipment for testing corn. We test for moisture level, weight, foreign matter, and damage to the corn. We also do random tests for molds. So far, everything is clean in most of Ohio, but some drier areas have had problems this year. Aflatoxin is a concern in drought years, like 2012 was. This mold is bad for humans and animals. So we keep a sharp lookout for any signs of it.
Temple also underscores the human connections that underlie much of what he does. The co-op is a gathering place, where Temple can disperse information that will help the farmers. He also helps farmers’ widows, guiding them in any area where they need assistance, helping with decisions regarding buying and selling. “The co-op makes connections for people,” Temple sums up. “We connect with our farmers, but we can also help them connect with what they need, from services to trades people to buyers, and so on. It’s all about connecting and about helping our members be successful.”
The Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT) is where corn changes from being a crop to being a commodity. Corn is the main agricultural product traded at the CBOT. Traders make their living moving corn from producer to end user. “Corn is used in everything from feed for livestock and chickens to ethanol,” explains Justin Steinberg, a corn trader at the CBOT.
There are many industries that are affected by the price of corn, and that is why it’s such a robust marketplace. I’ve been in the trading business for ten years now, and I’ve been trading corn futures and options since 2007. The corn market is fascinating to me because of the dynamics of the market. I take the other side of trades from farmers looking to sell their crops, moving the corn to cattle farmers looking to feed their cattle, to ethanol producers, or to speculators. There are international government agencies trading corn contracts at the CBOT, hedging their country’s food prices for their people.
The futures contracts that we trade at the CBOT represent a future price on delivery. That means that if I buy a corn future, I control 5,000 bushels of corn at the price at which I bought the future contract. But that’s just one contract. We handle thousands.
The seasonality of the corn market always keeps me on my toes. Weather markets—energy markets where consumption varies based on weather—are always an unpredictable trade. The U.S. government created a mandate that a certain amount of ethanol needs to be blended with gasoline to run our cars. As the price of corn fluctuates, the ethanol-blend-percentage debate continues. As a trader, I watch the price of the crude oil futures as a gauge for corn. Corn can rise and fall as crude oil rises and falls, because of the close correlation of their uses.
There are so many factors that are at work at one time that help create massive price swings for corn. There are busy days and slow days just like in any business. In 2008, we would trade an average of 100,000 options contracts daily in my pit. That held up through 2011. Then, in 2012, the volume was more like 50,000 options contracts daily. But we did have some huge volume days on or before the USDA report days.
Most of us in the corn market are looking forward to some more crazy summers ahead of us with all of this crazy weather. As traders, we want price fluctuations. We look to capitalize on the price fluctuations of the futures contract—that’s how we earn our money. I’m sure I’m only speaking for us traders and speculators, as the farmers and end users probably want a little more of a stable environment.
One individual whose life connects field with table is farmer’s son and award-winning chef Michael Maddox. The central Illinois farm on which Maddox grew up is still in the family, as it has been since his great-grandparents started it after emigrating from England. “We grew sweet corn and popcorn for the family and field corn to sell and to feed to our animals—cows, sheep, pigs, and chickens. Our large garden supplied, and still supplies, fresh vegetables and herbs to add variety and flavor to meals.” Maddox still visits the farm regularly and says it had a huge impact on his career, shaping his attitude about foods.
I appreciate pure, clean flavors and good ingredients, and even now as a chef, I grow as much as I can of the herbs and vegetables I need. Growing up on a farm teaches you to respect the ingredients.
We used to make our own corn flour. We had an old-fashioned corn sheller, one of those hand-cranked ones. You have to husk the corn and then feed it one ear at a time through the sheller. We’d do this with the popcorn, or we’d dry the sweet corn, shell it, and grind it for flour. It was a lot of fun.
A lot of memories are made around the table. I remember corn muffins and sweet-corn casseroles. Mom made corn chowder. That was perfect in the fall—it warms your heart as well as your body. It’s a real “welcome home” flavor. Sometimes people forget that simple cooking can be really good cooking.
Most people seem to take things for granted these days. They can get everything ready-made. I think everyone should make something from scratch at least once, just to appreciate what goes into it.
My grandmother was still putting up vegetables at age ninety-four. I remember helping her pickle beets when she was ninety-four—the same year she died. She worked right up to the end. Those were not just great products; they were great memories. My great-grandmother, Gladys Worsfold, who lived in the tiny town of Dunlap, Illinois, always made popcorn balls for Halloween. She’d make the popcorn, add the heavy syrup and form the popcorn into balls, then wrap them in cellophane and tie them with orange yarn. We loved those popcorn balls. I haven’t thought about those in years. [Maddox has shared this recipe for popcorn balls; you’ll find it in Chapter 14.]
We own about two hundred acres and rented additional land to farm. It’s hard to own all the land you need. Lots of farmers rent land. Today, my father is retired, so now we are the owners renting out our land to others. My uncle still puts in a few acres of sweet corn. We like to make corn cakes with his sweet corn.
Because Maddox’s cooking is high-end and brings top prices, ingredients have to be exceptional. “Knowing where your food comes from is important with high-quality foods,” he notes. “Mass-produced foods don’t have the same flavor. Due to market demands, animals are now raised for consistency of flavor and no fat. People want leaner meat and less marbling. Those meats are where you need rubs and marinades. Organically raised foods don’t need as much attention. With organic food—meat or vegetables—you work to bring out the natural flavor, rather than trying to give it flavor.”
As a chef, Maddox still considers corn a good ingredient in creating excellent food and lasting memories. “I use corn often, especially sweet corn in the summer and fall. When I think of corn, I think of garlic and thyme. They’re a great combination with corn. I created corn soufflés for my restaurant. There’s nothing else quite like good sweet corn.
“I suspect this comes from my upbringing on the farm,” Maddox states, “but I think it’s important to have pride in what you do. You have to work hard and take the extra step. And whether you’re a farmer or a chef, you have to care about ingredients.”