1. Webster’s Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary. While the English word corn does not always mean “maize,” it also does not always mean “grain.” The corn that means “grain” comes through Old English from Old Norse, korn, which means “grain.” However, the kind of corn found on a toe comes from Anglo-French cornu, which means “horn.”
2. Ellen Messer, “Maize,” The Cambridge World History of Food, Vol. 1, pp. 97–112.
3. Alan Davidson, “Maize,” The Oxford Companion to Food, p. 470.
4. The Zea in Zea mays comes from the Greek and Latin words for “cereal grain.” However, one often reads that it means “to live” in Greek, which, it is said, would match the idea of the many Native Americans for whom maize means “that which sustains life.” However, as lovely as that parallel would be, Carl Linnaeus was more practical than romantic in creating this bit of scientific nomenclature. Zea just means “grain.”
5. Reay Tannahill, Food in History, p. 204.
1. Betty Harper Fussell, The Story of Corn, p. 17.
2. Anthony Studer, Qiong Zhao, Jeffrey Ross-Ibarra, and John Doebley, “Identification of a Functional Transposon Insertion in the Maize Domestication Gene tb1,” Nature Genetics, (November 2011).
3. Nicole Miller, “Jumping Gene Enabled Key Step in Corn Domestication,” Science Daily.
4. Bruce F. Benz, “Archaeological Evidence of Teosinte Domestication from Guilá Naquitz, Oaxaca,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, February 13, 2001.
5. Tom Standage, An Edible History of Humanity, p. 7.
6. Nancy Gerlach and Jeffrey Gerlach, Foods of the Maya, p. 28.
7. Cherry Hamman, Mayan Cooking: Recipes from the Sun Kingdoms of Mexico, pp. 340–341.
8. Mark B. Bush, Delores R. Piperno, and Paul A. Colinvaux, “A 6,000 Year History of Amazonian Maize Cultivation, Nature, July 27, 1989.
9. “Fact Sheet on Corn,” Iroquois Museum, http://www.iroquoismuseum.org/corn.htm.
10. Beans: http://tinyurl.com/mzjju2k. Squash: http://tinyurl.com/2h2mfe.
11. Maguelonne Toussaint-Samat, History of Food, p. 170.
12. Messer, “Maize,” p. 103.
13. Tom Standage, An Edible History of Humanity, p. 8.
14. Nahuatl Dictionary, http://whp.uoregon.edu/dictionaries/nahuatl/index.lasso.
15. Harold McGee, On Food and Cooking, p. 244.
16. Robert M. Poole, “What Became of the Taíno?” Smithsonian Magazine (October 2011).
17. Betty Harper Fussell, The Story of Corn, p. 18.
18. Jean-Louis Flandrin, “Introduction: The Early Modern Period,” Food: A Culinary History, p. 356.
19. John Cummins, The Voyage of Christopher Columbus: Columbus’s Own Journal, p. 215.
20. Ibid., p. 100.
21. http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/mealies and Fussell, p. 19.
22. Anthony Boutard, Beautiful Corn, pp. 8–9.
23. Brian Cowan, “New Worlds, New Tastes,” Food: The History of Taste, p. 214.
24. Reay Tannahill, Food in History, p. 205.
25. C. Rebourg, M. Chastanet, B. Gouesnard, C. Weicher, P. Dureuil, and A. Charcosset, “Maize Introduction into Europe: The History Reviewed in Light of Molecular Data,” Theoretical and Applied Genetics, February 4, 2002, http://tinyurl.com/m3wggub.
26. Tannahill, Food in History, p. 205.
27. Ibid., p. 205.
28. Messer, “Maize,” p. 108.
29. Daphne A. Roe and Stephen V. Beck, “Pellagra,” The Cambridge World History of Food, Vol. 1, p. 961.
30. Fielding Hudson Garrison, An Introduction to the History of Medicine, p. 299.
31. http://www.uab.edu/reynolds/pellagra/history.
32. R. E. Hughes, “James Lind and the Cure of Scurvy: An Experimental Approach,” Cambridge Journals of Medical History (October 1975).
33. Louis Rosenfeld, “Vitamine—Vitamin: The Early Years of Discovery,” Clinical Chemistry, 1997, The American Association for Clinical Chemistry.
34. Anthony Boutard, Beautiful Corn, p. 15.
35. Roe and Beck, “Pellagra,” p. 960.
36. Messer, “Maize,” p. 109.
37. Dr. Nelly M’Mboga, “Can New Maize Variety Tame Kwashiorkor in Africa?” East Africa in Focus, April 19, 2010.
38. Messer, “Maize,” p. 98.
39. Standage, An Edible History of Humanity, p. 8.
40. Messer, “Maize,” p. 99.
41. U.S. Grains Council, http://www.thegrainsfoundation.org/corn.
42. Messer, “Maize,” p. 98.
43. Corn has made a steady march northward over the centuries since the Corn Belt was first settled, as varieties adapted to colder springs and shorter growing seasons. Today, corn is a major crop in Canada—and with recent warmer summers, it has become an even bigger player in the world corn market. For more on the recent success of corn in Canada, check out “Canada’s Corn Belt Attracts the Hot Money,” by Alan Bjerga in the November 8, 2012, issue of Newsweek. Still, corn is a comparatively new story for Canada.
44. Dorothy Giles, Singing Valleys: The Story of Corn, p. 92.
45. Karen Ordahl Kupperman, ed., Captain John Smith: A Select Edition of His Writings, Introduction.
46. Giles, Singing Valleys, p. 103.
47. Benjamin Franklin, The Gazetteer and New Daily Advertiser, January 1766.
48. Waverly Root and Richard de Rochemont, Eating in America: A History, p. 61.
49. Evan Jones, American Food, p. 12.
50. Messer, “Maize,” p. 98.
51. U.S. Grains Council, http://www.thegrainsfoundation.org/corn.
1. Mondamin was originally a corn deity, but it came to be the word for corn among several Native American groups that lived in the region that became the Midwest, including the Potawatomi. Towns and streets around the Corn Belt, especially near the Great Lakes, often bear the name of Mondamin (also spelled Mandaamin).
2. Arturo Warman, Corn and Capitalism, pp. 13, 16.
3. “Tassel Emergence and Pollen Shed,” Purdue University Department of Agronomy Corny News, July 2010, http://www.agry.purdue.edu/ext/corn/news/timeless/Tassels.html.
4. Warman, Corn and Capitalism, p. 14.
5. Environmental stresses can cause exceptions, but in a normal environment there will be an even number of rows; “Corn Production,” Iowa State University Agronomy Extension, http://www.agronext.iastate.edu.
6. Tom Standage, An Edible History of Humanity, p. 10.
7. Anthony Boutard, Beautiful Corn: America’s Original Grain from Seed to Plate, pp. 22–23.
8. Ibid., p. 21.
9. Nicole Miller, “Jumping Gene Enabled a Key Step in Corn Domestication,” University of Wisconsin–Madison News, September 25, 2011.
10. Warman, Corn and Capitalism, p. 35.
11. Betty Harper Fussell, The Story of Corn, p. 15.
12. Ellen Messer, “Maize,” The Cambridge World History of Food, Vol. 1, p. 101.
13. Edgar Anderson, “Maize in the New World,” New Crops for the New World, p. 30.
14. Purdue Horticulture Department, http://www.hort.purdue.edu/newcrop/crops/corn.html.
15. Andrew F. Smith, Popped Culture: A Social History of Popcorn in America, p. 6.
16. Boutard, Beautiful Corn, p. 74.
17. Harold E. Driver, Indians of North America, p. 68.
18. Boutard, Beautiful Corn, p. 74.
19. Living History Farms, Des Moines, Iowa.
20. Boutard, Beautiful Corn, p. 75.
21. Messer, “Maize,” p. 101.
22. Harold E. Driver, Indians of North America, p. 69.
23. Boutard, Beautiful Corn, pp. 10–11.
24. For example, Roy’s Calais flint corn, valued for its beauty almost as much as for its rich flavor, is part of the Slow Foods “Ark of Taste” program. http://www.slowfoodusa.org/ark-item/roy-s-calais-flint-corn.
25. Boutard, p. 67.
26. Driver, Indians of North America, pp. 69–70.
27. Boutard, Beautiful Corn, pp. 43–44.
28. Andrew F. Smith, Popped Culture, p. 6.
29. Ibid., p. 11.
30. E. Lewis Sturtevant, Maize: An Attempt at Classification, p. 7.
31. Luzie U. Wingen, Thomas Münster, Wolfram Faigl, Wim Deleu, Hans Sommer, Heinz Saedler, and Günter Theißen, “Molecular Genetic Basis of Pod Corn (Tunicate Maize),” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, March 19, 2012.
32. http://www.hort.purdue.edu/newcrop/crops/corn.html.
33. Ohio State University Extension Department of Horticulture and Crop Science: Agronomy Facts.
34. Nicholas P. Hardeman, Shucks, Shocks, and Hominy Blocks, p. 139.
35. Boutard, Beautiful Corn, p. 42.
36. Hardeman, Shucks, Shocks, p. 139.
37. Boutard, Beautiful Corn, pp. 42–43.
38. Ibid., p. 51.
1. Iowa has the greatest sweep of any of the midwestern states of farmable prairie uninterrupted by moraines, sandhills, forests, badlands, lakes, or sprawling urban mega-region. Thus it is and probably always will be the number-one producer. Illinois is traditionally the number-two producer, but in 2012, due to the drought, it temporarily dropped to the number-four spot. Behind Iowa, the top producers, in usual, approximate order (because, other than Iowa, some states will move up or down one spot in any given year—but it’s always the same states) are Illinois, Nebraska, Minnesota, Indiana, Ohio, South Dakota, Kansas, Missouri, Wisconsin, and Michigan.
2. United States Department of Agriculture.
3. John C. Hudson, Making the Corn Belt, pp. 15, 16, 22, 28–30, 43, 62; Hudson also relates that evidence, both historical and archaeological, indicates that burning of fields and girdling and burning of trees actually predated by centuries the Native Americans that Europeans encountered in the 1700s. It is not certain where or when it started, just that the land had long been altered.
4. Roger Biles, Illinois: A History of the Land and Its People, p. 21.
5. Nicholas P. Hardeman, Shucks, Shocks, and Hominy Blocks, p. 21.
6. Proclamation of 1763, http://www.ushistory.org/declaration/related/proc63.htm.
7. James R. Shortridge, The Middle West, p. 14.
8. Arturo Warman, Corn and Capitalism, p. 1.
9. Dennis Byrne, Madness: The War of 1812, pp. 11–14, Mustang, OK: Tate, 2012. This war has also often been called America’s second war of independence. For more on the War of 1812, see http://www.history.com/topics/war-of-1812.
10. Greg Koos, from a speech titled “Corn, Illinois History, and Victorian Life.”
11. Anthony Boutard, Beautiful Corn, p. 3.
12. R. Douglas Hurt, American Agriculture: A Brief History, p. 155.
13. From a letter written by William Brown, Tazewell County, Illinois, “4 mo. 20th 1830,” from the McLean County Historical Museum Archives.
14. Hardeman, Shucks, Shocks, p. 26.
15. Zebulon Montgomery Pike, Exploratory Travels Through The Western Territories of North America comprising a voyage from St. Louis, on the Mississippi, to the source of that river, and a journey through the interior of Louisiana and the north-eastern provinces of New Spain, Performed in the years 1805, 1806, and 1807, by order of the Government of the United States, Denver, CO: W. H. Lawrence, 1889, pp. 230–231. Pike actually saw this as benefiting the young nation. As he wrote, “But from these immense prairies may arise one great advantage to the United States, viz., the restriction of our population to some certain limits, and thereby a continuation of the union. Our citizens being so prone to rambling, and extending themselves on the frontiers, will, through necessity, be constrained to limit their extent on the west to the borders of the Missouri and the Mississippi, while they leave the prairies, incapable of cultivation, to the wandering and uncivilized Aborigines of the country.”
16. Hardeman, Shucks, Shocks, p. 62; Allan G. Bogue, From Prairie to Corn Belt, p. 132, notes that even in cases where the land had been plowed, an axe might still be needed to break up the overturned sod before planting.
17. Biles, Illinois: A History, p. 63.
18. Nebraska History Museum, Lincoln.
19. Hurt, American Agriculture, p. 187.
20. Hardeman, Shucks, Shocks, p. 65.
21. Hurt, American Agriculture, pp. 135–36.
22. John Deere history, http://tinyurl.com/bto7dee.
23. David B. Danbom, Born in the Country: A History of Rural America, p. 131.
24. Larry O’Dell, “All-Black Towns,” Encyclopedia of the Great Plains.
25. Shortridge, The Middle West, p.16.
26. Ibid., pp. 20–21.
27. Ibid., p. 25.
28. Allan G. Bogue, From Prairie to Corn Belt: Farming on the Illinois and Iowa Prairies in the Nineteenth Century, pp. 239–40.
29. “Western Reserve,” The Encyclopedia of Cleveland History, http://ech.case.edu/cgi/article.pl?id=WR2.
30. Hurt, American Agriculture, p. 88.
31. Hudson, Making the Corn Belt, p. 66.
32. Ibid., p. 63.
33. Ibid., pp. 7–10, 44, 57, 67, 71, 97, 141; in addition, Bogue, p. 135, attributes the development of the “common yellow dents” to the pioneers themselves, who crossed white southern dents with northern flints, to create a corn ideal for the prairies of the Midwest.
34. Bogue, From Prairie to Corn Belt, pp. 14–15.
35. Hudson, Making the Corn Belt, p. 10.
36. Ibid., p. 130.
37. Ibid., p. 150.
38. John Tarrant, ed., Farming and Food, “The United States: The Food Giant of the World,” p. 66.
39. Shortridge, The Middle West, pp. 19–20.
40. Hurt, American Agriculture, pp. 156, 172.
1. Karen Ordahl Kupperman, ed., Captain John Smith: A Select Edition of His Writings, pp. 22, 246.
2. Paul K. Conkin, A Revolution Down on the Farm, p. 1.
3. William Cronon, Nature’s Metropolis, pp. 8, 97.
4. Ibid., p. 9.
5. John C. Hudson, Making the Corn Belt, pp. 130, 135.
6. James R. Shortridge, The Middle West, p. 20.
7. Cronon, Nature’s Metropolis, pp. 25, 29.
8. Ibid., pp. 29, 296.
9. Harl A. Dalstrom, “Omaha, Nebraska,” Encyclopedia of the Great Plains.
10. Allan G. Bogue, From Prairie to Corn Belt, p. 131.
11. Cronon, Nature’s Metropolis, p. 111.
12. J. M. Dawes Grain Elevator and Agriculture Museum, Atlanta, IL.
13. Roger Biles, Illinois: A History of the Land and Its People, p. 128.
14. Cronon, Nature’s Metropolis, p. 113.
15. Ibid., pp. 111–119.
16. Ibid., pp. 120–124.
17. Roger Biles, Illinois: A History, p. 126.
18. Ibid., p. 124.
19. Mark R. Wilson, Stephen R. Porter, and Janice L. Reiff, “Montgomery Ward & Co.,” Encyclopedia of Chicago History.
20. Ibid., “Sears, Roebuck & Co.”
21. John Deere Timeline, http://tinyurl.com/bto7dee.
22. Robert Dirks, Come & Get It!, p. 59.
23. R. Douglas Hurt, American Agriculture: A Brief History, p. 173.
24. Roger Biles, Illinois: A History, pp. 126–127.
25. Ibid., p. 125.
26. National Road Museum, Norwich, Ohio. Vandalia was, at the time, the state capital of Illinois. Unfortunately, money ran out before the road reached its intended destination of St. Louis, Missouri. More information about “the road that built the nation” can be found at http://nationalroad.org/history.
27. Biles, p. 59.
28. Ibid., p. 65.
29. Hurt, American Agriculture, p. 114.
30. David B. Danbom, Born in the Country: A History of Rural America, p. 75.
31. William E. Parrish, ed., A History of Missouri, 1820–1860, Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2000, pp. 136–137.
32. Dorothy Giles, Singing Valleys, p. 136.
33. Hudson, Making the Corn Belt, p. 101.
34. Cronon, Nature’s Metropolis, p. 112.
35. Ibid., p. 57.
36. “Clinton’s Big Ditch,” The Erie Canal, http://www.eriecanal.org.
37. Biles, Illinois: A History, p. 59.
38. Ibid., pp. 72–73.
39. Cronon, Nature’s Metropolis, p. 64.
40. Hudson, Making the Corn Belt, p. 105.
41. “Hennepin Canal State Trail,” Illinois Department of Natural Resources, http://tinyurl.com/kf8cs3c.
42. “Illinois and Michigan Canal,” Illinois Department of Natural Resources, http://tinyurl.com/kjv4yym.
43. Christian Wolmar, The Great Railroad Revolution: The History of Trains in America, p. 70.
44. Cronon, Nature’s Metropolis, pp. 65–66.
45. John C. Hudson, “Railroads,” Encyclopedia of Chicago History.
46. Biles, Illinois: A History, p. 73.
47. Wolmar, Great Railroad Revolution, p. 85.
48. In fact, Union Station in St. Louis was, when it opened in 1894, the largest, most elegant rail terminal in the country. Despite the fact that St. Louis had lost its primacy to Chicago, an impressive allegorical stained-glass window in the station’s Grand Hall shows St. Louis as the central (and only) link between New York and San Francisco.
49. Wolmar, pp. 68, 70–72.
50. Ibid., p. 181.
51. Biles, Illinois: A History, p. 78.
52. Weekly Pantagraph, August 21, 1861, McLean County Historical Museum Archives.
53. Donald J. Berg, “Railroads, United States,” Encyclopedia of the Great Plains.
54. Wolmar, Great Railroad Revolution, pp. 172, 178–179.
55. Donald J. Berg, “Railroads, United States.”
56. Cronon, Nature’s Metropolis, p. 77.
57. Dirks, Come & Get It!, p. 35.
58. Cronon, Nature’s Metropolis, p. 79.
1. Frederic L. Pryor, “The Invention of the Plow,” Comparative Studies in Society and History, p. 727.
2. From the manuscript “The History of Samuel Baldridge, Normal, Illinois, A.D. 1831–1916,” dictated to W. R. Baldridge, August 11, 1910—from the McLean County Historical Museum Archives.
3. “Crop Production,” United States Environmental Protection Agency, http://www.epa.gov/oecaagct/ag101/crop.html.
4. Nicholas P. Hardeman, Shucks, Shocks, and Hominy Blocks, p. 62.
5. “About the Almanac,” The Old Farmer’s Almanac, http://www.almanac.com.
6. Anthony Boutard, Beautiful Corn, p. 77.
7. Paul K. Conkin, A Revolution Down on the Farm, p. 108.
8. “Soil Preparation,” United States Environmental Protection Agency, http://www.epa.gov/oecaagct/ag101/cropsoil.html.
9. Hardeman, Shucks, Shocks, pp. 70–71.
10. Nancy Bubel, Grow the Best Corn, pp. 5–8.
11. Boutard, Beautiful Corn, pp. 19–23.
12. Bubel, Grow the Best Corn, pp. 5–8.
13. Ibid., p. 11.
14. “Planting,” United States Environmental Protection Agency, http://tinyurl.com/kzv9q4m.
15. Carolyn Niethammer, American Indian Food and Lore (New York: Macmillan, 1974), p. 134.
16. Hardeman, Shucks, Shocks, p. 197.
17. Conkin, A Revolution, p. 112.
18. Republican River Basin Water and Drought Portal, http://www.rrbdp.org/basin_water.html.
19. John C. Hudson, Making the Corn Belt, p. 138.
20. Allan G. Bogue, From Prairie to Corn Belt, p. 83.
21. “John Johnston: Father of the Drainage Tile in the United States,” http://tinyurl.com/lgguvqm.
22. Roger Biles, Illinois: A History of the Land and Its People, p. 65.
23. Hudson, Making the Corn Belt, p. 138.
24. Bogue, From Prairie to Corn Belt, pp. 84–85.
25. Hudson, Making the Corn Belt, pp. 138–140.
26. Biles, Illinois: A History, p. 65.
27. Hudson, Making the Corn Belt, p. 139.
28. Hardeman, Shucks, Shocks, p. 94.
29. William Cronon, Nature’s Metropolis, p. 99.
30. J. L. Anderson, Industrializing the Corn Belt, p. 169.
31. Hardeman, Shucks, Shocks, pp. 102–4.
32. Ibid., p. 95.
33. James N. Boblenz, “Shucks, It’s Husking Time,” Farm Collector, http://www.farmcollector.com/looking-back/shucks-its-husking-time.aspx.
34. Hardeman, Shucks, Shocks, pp. 41–45.
35. Jack Ravage, “African American Pioneers,” Encyclopedia of the Great Plains.
36. Hudson, Making the Corn Belt, pp. 112–13.
37. Max L. Grivno, Gleeanings of Freedom: Free and Slave Labor along the Mason-Dixon Line, 1790–1860, p. 121.
38. “Paul Laurence Dunbar,” The Poetry Foundation, http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/paul-laurence-dunbar.
39. Hardeman, Shucks, Shocks, p. 78.
40. Ibid., pp. 78–80.
41. Ibid., pp. 81–82.
42. Ibid., p. 110.
43. “Froelich Tractor,” http://www.froelichtractor.com/thetractor.html.
44. R. Douglas Hurt, American Agriculture, p. 243.
45. Conkin, A Revolution, p. 15.
46. “John Froelich,” History, http://tinyurl.com/l9tea5a.
47. Conkin, A Revolution, pp. 15–18.
48. Ibid., p. 18.
49. “Growing a Nation: The Story of American Agriculture,” http://www.agclassroom.org/gan/timeline/1930.htm.
50. Conkin, A Revolution, p. 15.
51. Anderson, Industrializing the Corn Belt, p. 169.
52. Bill Ganzel, “Harvesting Corn,” Wessel’s Living History Farm, York, NE, http://tinyurl.com/krmswlc.
53. Anderson, Industrializing the Corn Belt, pp. 169–70.
54. Archive of farmer interviews, McLean County Historical Museum.
55. Conkin, A Revolution, p. 100.
56. Anderson, Industrializing the Corn Belt, pp. 170–171.
57. Massey-Harris History, http://massey-harris.com/history.php.
58. John Deere Timeline, 1930–59, http://tinyurl.com/bto7dee.
59. William Cronon, Nature’s Metropolis, p. 102.
60. J. L Anderson, Industrializing the Corn Belt, pp. 179–185.
61. Sukup Company History, http://www.sukup.com/History.
62. Bill Ganzel, “Center Pivots Take Over,” Wessel’s Living History Farm, York, NE, http://tinyurl.com/m83o5oc.
63. William E. Splinter, “Center-Pivot Irrigation,” Scientific American (June 1976).
64. Conkin, A Revolution, p. 103.
65. Anderson, Industrializing the Corn Belt, pp. 187–89.
66. Conkin, A Revolution, p. 101.
67. Ibid., p. 101.
68. American Farm Bureau Federation, “Food Facts,” p. 7.
69. “Anti-Corporate Farming Laws in the Heartland,” Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund, http://tinyurl.com/mggfv2s. Typical of these laws is the one that exists in Minnesota, designed to “encourage and protect the family farm as a basic economic unit, to insure it as the most socially desirable mode of agricultural production, and to enhance and promote the stability and well-being of rural society in Minnesota and the nuclear family.” The law strictly limits corporations that want to farm in the state (Minnesota Department of Agriculture).
70. “A Matter of Scale: Small Farms in the North Central Region,” http://ssfin.missouri.edu/report.htm.
1. Dorothy Giles, Singing Valleys, p. 86.
2. Arturo Warman, Corn and Capitalism, pp. 20–21.
3. Nicholas P. Hardeman, Shucks, Shocks, and Hominy Blocks, pp. 119–123.
4. Kline Creek Living History Farm, IL, and the Living History Farms, IA.
5. According to food historian Sandra Oliver, the name johnnycake is not, as popularly believed, a corruption of “Shawnee cake” or “journey cake.” When settlers arrived from Scotland and northern England, they brought with them their tradition of making small hearth-cooked oatcakes, which they called jannocks, bannocks, or jonikens. The delicate pancakes they made of ground flint corn were identified with these familiar hearthcakes from home. Besides, the fragile johnnycake would not be much use on a journey, and the Shawnee made pone, a term that entered English unchanged. Oliver published an article on this etymology in a 1998 issue of Food History News (vol. 9, no. 4), for those who might wish to read more on how and why this longstanding mythology about johnnycakes arose.
6. There is debate as to whether lye was used at the outset to create hominy, or if it was introduced later, or if some used it but not everyone. Lye has been used for centuries, and is used today, but some historians state that it is rarely mentioned in the earliest colonial writing. Overnight soaking is described in early documents, but there is little mention of lye. The question has been raised as to whether it is possible that alkaline and non-alkaline processes existed at the same time, and possibly in the same place. For more on this discussion, see “The Samp and Hominy Problem,” by Sandy Oliver, in the June 2009 issue of Food History News (vol. 20, no. 4). Further complicating the discussion is the fact that, in the United States, pozole, which is translated as “hominy,” is treated with lime, so it is nixtamal, not hominy. (For more on this, see the article “Pozole,” by Dr. Cheryl Foote, in the same 2009 issue of Food History News where Sandy Oliver’s article appears.) Then there is the fact that nextli means “ashes” in Nahuatl, so while lime was and is commonly used to make nixtamal, there must have been a time that lye from ashes was used. Perhaps it is easiest to simply remember that anything called hominy, pozole, or nixtamal, or any processed corn from Mexico, will have been treated with some alkaline substance—because the results are the same.
7. Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary, “hominy.”
8. Anthony Boutard, Beautiful Corn, p. 140.
9. Sharon Tyler Herbst, Food Lover’s Companion, pp. 164–165; in Mark Kurlansky’s The Food of a Younger Land, the description of making hominy includes the need to scrub the lye-soaked kernels over a washboard to wash out the lye and remove the pericarp (p. 299,). So while the lye was necessary for the processing, it was gone before the hominy was consumed.
10. Herbst, Food Lover’s Companion, p. 302.
11. Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary, “samp.”
12. Hardeman, Shucks, Shocks, pp. 125–131.
13. Giles, Singing Valleys, pp. 186, 189.
14. Nelson Algren, “A Short History of the American Diet,” from The Food of a Younger Land, pp. 298–299.
15. Robert Dirks, Come & Get It!, pp. 40–45.
16. Cookbook historian Janice Bluestein Longone, who is curator of American Culinary History at the University of Michigan’s Special Collection Division at the Hatcher Library, suggests that this era of charity cookbooks was the beginning of the empowerment of women in the United States. Women had to collect and organize the contents, find advertisers, hire typesetters, printers, and sometimes artists. For many, this was the first time they would work together for a common cause—but it was not the last time. The cookbooks went on to support not only charities (the homeless or sick), but also causes including temperance, workers’ rights, and, in time, suffrage and equal rights. (From Longone’s presentation “The Old Girl Network: Charity Cookbooks and the Empowerment of Women.”)
17. “Invention,” Can Manufacturers Institute, http://www.cancentral.com/content/nicolas-appert-father-canning.
18. Waverly Root and Richard de Rochemont, Eating in America, p. 190.
19. Edward S. Judge, “American Canning Interests,” 1795–1895: One Hundred Years of American Commerce, pp. 396–397.
20. Root and de Rochemont, Eating in America, p. 190.
21. “The First U.S. Can Opener,” Connecticut History, http://connecticuthistory.org/the-first-us-can-opener-today-in-history.
22. David A. Fryxell, “History Matters: The Can Opener,” Family Tree Magazine, June 24, 2014.
23. Judge, “American Canning Interests,” pp. 397–398.
24. Root and de Rochemont, Eating in America, p. 190.
25. Albert E. Wilkinson, Sweet Corn (New York: Orange Judd, 1915), p. 158.
26. “Lincoln’s Agricultural Legacy,” USDA National Agricultural Library, http://www.nal.usda.gov/lincolns-agricultural-legacy.
27. Paul B. Frederic, Canning Gold: Northern New England’s Sweet Corn Industry (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 2002), p. 56.
28. http://www.cityofhoopeston.com/our-rich-history/.
29. “Closing of 122-Year-Old Canning Plant the ‘End of an Era’ for Town,” The Southeast Missourian, February 1, 1998.
30. http://www.hoopestonjaycees.org/festival/history/default.html.
31. “Minnesota’s Canned Corn,” The Outliers, http://tinyurl.com/kzrmyvb.
32. Frederic, Canning Gold, p. 57.
33. Root and de Rochemont, Eating in America, p. 191.
34. “Who Invented Frozen Food,” Everyday Mysteries: Science Facts from the Library of Congress, http://www.loc.gov/rr/scitech/mysteries/frozenfood.html.
35. “Clarence Birdseye,” Inventor of the Week Archive, MIT School of Engineering, http://web.mit.edu/invent/iow/birdseye.html.
36. “Who Invented Frozen Food,” Library of Congress Science Reference Service.
37. “Bird’s Eye Roots,” http://www.birdseye.com/birds-eye-view/history.
38. Tevere Macfadyen, “The Rise of the Supermarket,” American Heritage, Volume 36, Issue 6, October/November 1985. A related development was the invention of the “folding basket carrier,” or shopping cart, in 1937.
39. “Timeline of Green Giant History,” http://www.greengiant.com/Our-story.
40. “General Mills History of Innovation: Green Giant” (corporate history).
41. Debra Levey Larson, “Supersweet Sweet Corn: 50 Years in the Making,” News Bureau, University of Illinois, http://news.illinois.edu/ii/03/0807/sweetcorn.html.
1. From a speech by Richard Crabb, author of The Hybrid-Corn Makers, given on October 7, 1944, at a meeting of the State Historical Society, from the archives of the McLean County Historical Museum.
2. Arturo Warman, Corn and Capitalism, p. 22.
3. Allan G. Bogue, From Prairie to Corn Belt, p. 129.
4. Ibid., pp. 75–80.
5. Anne Dingus, “Barbed Wire,” Encyclopedia of the Great Plains.
6. Dr. Dell Allen, meat scientist.
7. William Cronon, Nature’s Metropolis, p. 100.
8. Waverley Root, Food: An Authoritative and Visual Dictionary of the Foods of the World, p. 370.
9. Nicholas P. Hardeman, Shucks, Shocks, and Hominy Blocks, p. 236.
10. Kenneth C. Dagel, “Cattle Ranching,” Encyclopedia of the Great Plains.
11. R. Douglas Hurt, American Agriculture, pp.173–174.
12. John C. Hudson, Making the Corn Belt, pp. 141–142.
13. Waverly Root and Richard de Rochemont, Eating in America, p. 192.
14. Dorothy Giles, Singing Valleys: The Story of Corn, p. 147.
15. USDA, National Agricultural Statistics Service, statistics for December 28, 2012.
16. Betty Fussell, The Story of Corn, p. 313.
17. Hardeman, Shucks, Shocks, pp. 97–98.
18. Ibid., p. 100.
19. Ibid., pp. 96–99.
20. Homer B. Sewell, “Corn Silage for Beef Cattle,” University of Missouri Extension, October 1993.
21. Hardeman, Shucks, Shocks, p. 129.
22. William Cronon, Nature’s Metropolis, p. 237.
23. Robert Dirks, Come & Get It!, p. 24.
24. Ibid., p. 34. While this may seem like an excessively large amount of meat, remember that the intense physical labor involved in farming, as well as in digging canals and doing the other heavy lifting of the era, required a far higher calorie intake than we consider normal today. Farm workers commonly ate five meals a day, and 6,000- to 8,000-calorie diets were common. With no inventions to ease the work, every activity burned calories. This is not peculiar to people living on the American frontier, but was true of most people prior to the twentieth century, and is still true of these doing heavy labor. For example, estimates of calories needed by a medieval peasant range between three and five thousand per day (http://tinyurl.com/2pda7j). Of course, the per-capita amount of meat consumed declined as work became less physical. However, because the country’s population continued to grow rather dramatically (from about 30 million in 1860 to more than 300 million today), the overall amount of meat needed to meet demand also continued to increase.
25. Hardeman, Shucks, Shocks, p. 241.
26. Cronon, Nature’s Metropolis, pp. 225–226.
27. Ibid., pp. 227–229.
28. Hardeman, Shucks, Shocks, pp. 232–233.
29. Root and de Rochemont, Eating in America, p. 207.
30. Cronon, Nature’s Metropolis, p. 229.
31. Ibid., p. 230.
32. Roger Biles, Illinois: A History of the Land and Its People, p. 126.
33. Chicago Union Stock Yards: History of the Yards 1865–1953, p. 15.
34. Cronon, Nature’s Metropolis, p. 233.
35. Ibid., p. 237.
36. Ibid., pp. 250–251.
37. “The Birth of the Chicago Stock Yards,” Slaughterhouse to the World, Chicago Historical Society, http://www.chicagohs.org/history/stockyard/stock1.html.
38. “Meatpacking Technology,” Slaughterhouse to the World, http://tinyurl.com/m5bfmxn.
39. Chicago Union Stock Yards: History of the Yards 1865–1953, p. 41.
40. Louise Carroll Wade, Chicago’s Pride: The Stockyards, Packingtown, and Environs in the Nineteenth Century (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1987), p. xiv.
41. “Slaughterhouse Jobs,” Slaughterhouse to the World, http://tinyurl.com/kglknr3.
42. Cronon, Nature’s Metropolis, pp. 222–223.
43. Ibid., pp. 257–259.
44. “Death of the Stock Yards,” Slaughterhouse to the World, http://tinyurl.com/mqutwbc.
45. John C. Hudson, Making the Corn Belt, pp. 186–187, and Roger Horowitz, Putting Meat on the American Table, pp. 142–145.
46. Ryan Goodman, “Ask a Farmer: Does feeding corn harm cattle?” Agriculture Proud, September 27, 2012.
47. “The Rise of Dairy Farming,” Wisconsin Historical Society, http://tinyurl.com/n5rygga.
48. “The Story of Wisconsin Brick Cheese,” http://tinyurl.com/km67xfs.
49. “Fairmont Foods Company,” Nebraska Historical Society, http://tinyurl.com/kluc7mz.
50. “Company History,” http://www.beatriceco.com/about_history.htm.
51. “Fair Oaks Farms,” The Global Dairy Agenda for Action, http://tinyurl.com/myyb93j.
52. “Fair Oaks Farms—America’s Heartland,” http://tinyurl.com/lax7fxd.
53. Dirks, Come & Get It!, p. 34.
54. Hardeman, Shucks, Shocks, p. 155.
55. http://www.localharvest.org/organic-duck.jsp.
56. “A Brief History of Chicken Flocks in the US and Some Useful Tips on Raising Them,” University of New Hampshire Cooperative Extension.
57. “U.S. Chicken Industry History,” National Chicken Council.
58. “Leghorn Chickens,” https://www.omlet.us/breeds/chickens/leghorn.
59. “A Brief History of Chicken Flocks in the US and Some Useful Tips on Raising Them,” University of New Hampshire Cooperative Extension.
60. “Counting Chickens,” The Economist, July 27, 2011, http://tinyurl.com/3cfombe.
1. C. Cretors & Company: The First Hundred Years, 1885—1985, p. 2.
2. Kenneth E. Ziegler, “Popcorn,” in Specialty Corns, p. 200.
3. Andrew F. Smith, Popped Culture, pp. 4–5.
4. Ibid., p. 11.
5. Anthony Boutard, Beautiful Corn, pp. 53–54.
6. Smith, Popped Culture, pp. 13, 17.
7. Ibid., pp. 25–29.
8. Ibid., pp. 30–31.
9. Ibid., pp. 43–44.
10. “Cracker Jack Co.,” Encyclopedia of Chicago History.
11. Smith, Popped Culture, p. 85.
12. C. Cretors & Company, pp. 8–13.
13. “Department Stores,” Encyclopedia of Chicago History.
14. Popcorn Board, “History of Popcorn Poppers,” http://www.popcorn.org.
15. C. Cretors, p. 9.
16. Ibid., pp. 17, 22.
17. Ibid., pp. 36, 43.
18. Smith, Popped Culture, pp. 74–75.
19. “American Popcorn Company,” Sioux City History, http://tinyurl.com/lfaopmd.
20. C. Cretors, pp. 82–85.
21. Popcorn Board, “History of Popcorn.”
22. Popcorn Board, “Industry Facts,” http://www.popcorn.org.
23. “Popcorn Profile,” Agricultural Marketing Resource Center, Iowa State University, http://tinyurl.com/n268ab6.
24. Boutard, Beautiful Corn, p. 56.
25. Ziegler, “Popcorn,” in Specialty Corns, pp. 203, 213.
26. Boutard, Beautiful Corn, pp. 54–55.
27. OSHA, http://www.osha.gov/dsg/guidance/diacetyl-guidance.html.
28. Harold McGee, On Food and Cooking, p. 242.
29. Popcorn Board, “How to Make Stovetop Popcorn,” http://www.popcorn.org.
1. Mary Miley Theobald, “When Whiskey Was the King of Drink,” Colonial Williamsburg Journal, Summer 2008, http://www.history.org/foundation/journal/summer08/whiskey.cfm.
2. Henry G. Crowgey, Kentucky Bourbon: The Early Years of Whiskeymaking (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 2008), pp. 2–4.
3. Richard Foss, Rum: A Global History. (London, Reaktion Books, 2012), pp. 27–34. Another excellent source on the Rum trade and its impact on world trade and the American colonies is Wayne Curtis’s And a Bottle of Rum (New York: Three Rivers Press, 2007).
4. Theobald, “When Whiskey Was the King.”
5. “Whiskey,” Online Etymology Dictionary.
6. Nicholas P. Hardeman, Shucks, Shocks, and Hominy Blocks, pp. 161–163.
7. Hard liquor was not consumed all day by everyone. Small beer, which is extremely low in alcohol (more like thin gruel than actual beer), would be the main drink for children, and for many adults during daytime activities, but stronger drink, generally mixed with water, became increasingly common as America grew, starting with rum in pre-Revolution days and moving to whiskey as people spread westward. The conviction that alcohol was potent medicine, held by most Europeans prior to the late 1800s, is actually not as far-fetched as it might sound. Recent research has shown that adding alcohol to water can kill a wide range of germs, including cholera and E. coli, so there would have been an obvious, observable connection between alcohol and health long before people knew germs existed. There were widespread abuses, especially in more urban settings, but a lot of the drinking was innocent in its intention.
8. Theobald, “When Whiskey Was the King.”
9. W. J. Rorabaugh, The Alcoholic Republic: An American Tradition (New York: Oxford University Press, 1981), p. 101.
10. Jennifer S. Everett, “Distilleries and Breweries,” Historic Peoria, http://tinyurl.com/msdgdjj.
11. Jerry Klein, “Made in Peoria: The Birth of Industry,” Peoria Magazines (January 2011), http://tinyurl.com/n4fbkur.
12. Brian Fox Ellis, “Peoria’s Whiskey Barons,” Peoria Magazines (November/December 2009), http://tinyurl.com/mtrbs76.
13. Theobald, “When Whiskey Was the King.”
14. Roger Biles, Illinois: A History of the Land and Its People, p. 204.
15. “Women & Temperance,” Library Company, http://tinyurl.com/lvzd97v.
16. Theobald, “When Whiskey Was the King.”
17. Corn and Livestock, National Corn Growers Association, 2012.
18. History of Argo Corn Starch, http://www.argostarch.com/about_us.html.
19. C. Wayne Smith, Javier Betrán, and E. C. A. Runge, Corn: Origin, History, Technology, and Production, p. 161.
20. Pamela J. White, “Properties of Cornstarch,” in Specialty Corns, p. 34.
21. Arturo Warman, Corn and Capitalism, p. 25.
22. Thomas J. Aurand, “Food Constituents from the Wet Milling of Corn,” in Cereals and Legumes in the Food Supply, p. 167.
23. White, “Properties of Cornstarch,” p. 34.
24. Aurand, “Food Constituents,” pp. 167–168.
25. “Argo History,” http://argostarch.com/about_us.html.
26. William Shurtleff and Akiko Aoyagi, “A. E. Staley Manufacturing Company,” http://www.soyinfocenter.com/HSS/ae_staley_manufacturing.php.
27. Warman, Corn and Capitalism, pp. 25–26.
28. Robert L. Wolke, What Einstein Told His Cook, p. 26.
29. Alan Davidson, The Oxford Companion to Food, p. 218.
30. Aurand, “Food Constituents,” p. 169.
31. “A Brief History of the Corn Refining Industry,” Corn Refiners Association.
32. Warman, Corn and Capitalism, p. 26.
33. Wolke, What Einstein Told His Cook, pp. 25–26.
34. Aubrey J. Strickler, “Use of Cereal Products in Beverages,” in Cereals and Legumes in the Food Supply, p. 187.
35. Hilary Parker, “A Sweet Problem: Princeton Researchers Find That High-fructose Corn Syrup Prompts Considerably More Weight Gain,” News at Princeton, January 17, 2014.
36. Kimber L. Stanhope, Steven C. Griffen, Brandi R. Bair, Michael M. Swarbrick, Nancy L. Keim, and Peter J. Havel, “Twenty-four-hour Endocrine and Metabolic Profiles Following Consumption of High-fructose Corn Syrup-, Sucrose-, Fructose-, and Glucose-sweetened Beverages with Meals,” The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition (August 16, 2007).
37. “Liquid Candy: How Soft Drinks are Harming America’s Health,” http://www.cspinet.org/sodapop/liquid_candy.htm.
38. Luc Tappy, Kim A. Lê, Christel Tran, and Nicolas Paquot, “Fructose and Metabolic Diseases: New Findings, New Questions,” Nutrition (November/December 2010).
39. Fiona Macrae and Pat Hagan, “Just One Glass of Orange Juice a Day Could Increase Risk of Diabetes,” The Daily Mail, August 14, 2008.
40. “A Brief History of the Corn Refining Industry,” Corn Refiners Association.
41. Aurand, “Food Constituents,” p. 168.
42. Hardeman, Shucks, Shocks, p. 178.
43. Mike McCormick, Terre Haute: Queen City of the Wabash (Chicago: Arcadia, 2005), p. 51.
44. Hardeman, Shucks, Shocks, p. 184.
45. “Vitamin C (Ascorbic Acid),” University of Maryland Medical Center, http://umm.edu/health/medical/altmed/supplement/vitamin-c-ascorbic-acid.
46. “Maltodextrins + Corn Syrup Solids,” Grain Processing Corporation, http://tinyurl.com/mjg5oxc.
47. “What Exactly Is Maltodextrin,” PopSugar, March 24, 2008.
48. Jeffrey M. Pilcher, “Food Fads,” The Cambridge World History of Food, p. 1489.
49. “The Battle Creek Idea,” Heritage Battle Creek, http://www.heritagebattlecreek.org.
50. Pilcher, “Food Fads,” p. 1489.
51. “Charles William Post,” Long Island University, http://www.liu.edu/CWPost/About/History/Charles-William-Post.
52. Kellogg Company Timeline, http://www.kellogghistory.com/timeline.html.
53. Margaret Visser, Much Depends on Dinner, p. 43.
54. “The Making of Corn Flakes,” http://tinyurl.com/mhqxu4v.
55. “The Birth of the Frito,” NPR: The Kitchen Sisters, October 18, 2007.
56. “Potato Chips, Corn Chips, and Similar Snacks: Industry Report, 2013,” HiBeam Business, Gale Publishing, 2013.
57. “The History of Frito Corn Chips,” http://www.fritolay.com/about-us/history.html.
58. “The Birth of the Frito,” NPR: The Kitchen Sisters.
59. Gustavo Arellano, “How Doritos Were Born at Disneyland,” adapted from Taco USA: How Mexican Food Conquered America, OCWeekly, Thursday, April 5, 2012.
60. Octavian Burtea, “Snack Foods from Formers and High-Shear Extruders,” in Snack Foods Processing, p. 287.
61. Edmund W. Lusas, and Khee Choon Rhee, “Extrusion Processing as Applied to Snack Foods and Breakfast Cereals,” in Cereals and Legumes in the Food Supply, p. 201.
62. Ibid., p. 201.
63. General Mills corporate site, http://www.generalmills.com/Brands/Snacks/Bugles.aspx.
64. “Right Time for Corn,” National Corn Growers Association, http://corncommentary.com/2012/05/07/right-time-for-corn.
65. “CornBoard Sets Speed Record,” National Corn Growers Association, http://corncommentary.com/2011/06/13/cornboard-sets-speed-record.
66. “Renewable Energy Has an Icon: Henry Ford,” Associated Press, October 12, 2006.
67. “The Secret Cost of U.S. Ethanol Policy,” Daily Herald, November 13, 2013.
1. Paul K. Conkin, A Revolution Down on the Farm, pp. 185–188.
2. Roger Biles, Illinois: A History of the Land and Its People, p. 67.
3. Funk Prairie Home, http://www.funksgrove.org/PrairieHome/home.html.
4. Biles, Illinois: A History, p. 67.
5. R. Douglas Hurt, American Agriculture, pp. 192–194.
6. “Celebrate the Morrill Land-Grant Act’s 150th Anniversary,” http://www.lib.iastate.edu/news-article/2025/100663.
7. Morrill Act, Library of Congress, http://www.loc.gov/rr/program/bib/ourdocs/Morrill.html.
8. “Forces: The Shaping of Manhattan, Fort Riley, and Kansas State University,” http://rileycountyhistoricalmuseum.weebly.com/kansas-state-agricultural-college.html.
9. Biles, Illinois: A History, p. 121–122.
10. “History of Iowa State,” http://www.public.iastate.edu/~isu150/history/history.html.
11. “Ohio State History and Traditions,” http://www.osu.edu/news/history.php.
12. “Purdue History,” http://www.purdue.edu/purdue/about/history.html.
13. “UW-Madison Timeline,” http://www.wisc.edu/about/history/timeline.php.
14. “Ohio State History and Traditions,” http://www.osu.edu/news/history.php.
15. Betty Holzhauer, from a speech titled “Corn In History,” given in 1973, the transcript of which is in the archives of the McLean County Historical Museum.
16. Eugene D. Funk, “Ten Years of Corn Breeding,” Journal of Heredity 3, no. 4 (Fourth Quarter 1912).
17. Richard Crabb, from a speech titled “Hybrid Corn: Was It Born in Illinois?,” given in 1944, the transcript of which is in the archives of the McLean County Historical Museum.
18. Edgar Anderson, “Maize in the New World,” in New Crops for the New World, p. 33.
19. Conkin, A Revolution, p. 120.
20. Crabb speech, “Hybrid Corn: Was It Born in Illinois?”
21. “Funk Bros. Seed Company, Historical Sketch,” McLean County Historical Museum online, http://mchistory.org/old/find/funkseed.html#history.
22. Crabb speech, “Hybrid Corn: Was It Born in Illinois?”
23. Crabb, The Hybrid Corn-Makers, p. 31.
24. Ibid., p. 31.
25. John C. Culver and John Hyde, American Dreams: A Life of Henry A. Wallace, pp. 11–12.
26. Crabb, The Hybrid Corn-Makers, p. 31.
27. Pioneer Corporate History, “Our Heritage,” http://www.pioneer.com/home/site/about/business/who-we-are/our-heritage.
28. Crabb, The Hybrid Corn-Makers, p. 33.
29. “Lester’s Legacy,” Pfister Seed, http://www.pfisterseeds.com/our-story/lesters-legacy.
30. “Improving Corn,” USDA Agricultural Research Service, http://www.ars.usda.gov/is/timeline/corn.htm.
31. Ken de la Bastide, “Area Students Detasseling Corn,” The Herald Bulletin, August 10, 2009.
32. Crabb, The Hybrid Corn-Makers, p. 37.
33. Ibid., p. viii.
34. “Corn Planting Guide,” Iowa State University, p. 2.
35. Conkin, A Revolution, p. 119.
36. “Improving Corn,” USDA.
37. “Corn Planting Guide,” Iowa State University, p. 2.
38. Nicholas P. Hardeman, Shucks, Shocks, and Hominy Blocks, pp. 30–31.
39. Conkin, A Revolution, pp. 108–111.
40. J. L. Anderson, Industrializing the Corn Belt, p. 51.
41. “From the New Deal to a New Century,” Tennessee Valley Authority, http://www.tva.gov/abouttva/history.htm.
42. Conkin, A Revolution, p. 111.
43. Ibid., p. 110.
44. J. L. Anderson, Industrializing the Corn Belt, p. 53.
45. Conkin, A Revolution, p. 111–112.
46. Ibid., p. 115.
47. J. L. Anderson, Industrializing the Corn Belt, p. 35.
48. Ibid., p. 36.
49. Conkin, A Revolution, p. 115.
50. Ibid., p. 116.
51. Ibid., p. 112.
52. J. L. Anderson, Industrializing the Corn Belt, p. 15.
53. Conkin, A Revolution, p. 112.
54. J. L. Anderson, Industrializing the Corn Belt, pp. 16–21.
55. Conkin, A Revolution, p. 113.
56. Toxic Substances Portal—DDT, DDE, DDD, Center for Disease Control, http://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/toxfaqs/tf.asp?id=80&tid=20.
57. Conkin, A Revolution, p. 113.
58. J. L. Anderson, Industrializing the Corn Belt, p. 27.
59. Conkin, A Revolution, p. 113.
60. J. L. Anderson, Industrializing the Corn Belt, pp. 29–30.
61. Ibid., pp. 31–32.
62. Maureen Langlois, “Organic Pesticides: Not an Oxymoron,” Health News from NPR, June 17, 2011.
63. “Tobacco and Nicotine: They’re Good—as a Pesticide,” Science News Daily, October 27, 1010.
64. Conkin, A Revolution, p. 113.
65. “Bacillus thuringiensis Fact Sheet,” Colorado State University Extension, http://www.ext.colostate.edu/pubs/insect/05556.html.
66. Conkin, A Revolution, p. 114.
67. Theresa Phillips, “Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs): Transgenic Crops and Recombinant DNA Technology,” Nature Education (2008).
68. Anthony Studer, Qiong Zhao, Jeffrey Ross-Ibarra, and John Doebley, “Identification of a Functional Transposon Insertion in the Maize Domestication Gene tb1,” Nature Genetics (November 2011).
69. A moldboard is a curved iron plate attached above a plowshare (the broad blade that cuts the furrow). The moldboard lifts and turns the soil as the plow cuts through a field. This is in contrast to disk plows, also known as harrow plows.
70. David H. Freedman, “Are Engineered Foods Evil?” Scientific American 309 no. 3 (September 2013).
71. Phillips, “Genetically Modified Organisms.”
72. Freedman, “Are Engineered Foods Evil?”
73. William Cronon, Nature’s Metropolis, pp. 140–142.
74. Biles, Illinois: A History, pp. 189–190.
75. Rae Katherine Eighmey, Food Will Win the War, p. 23.
76. Herbert Hoover Presidential Library and Museum.
77. Eighmey, Food Will Win the War, pp. 15–21, 52.
78. Conkin, A Revolution, pp. 51–67.
79. “The Rural Electrification Act Provides a ‘Fair Chance’ to Rural Americans,” Homestead National Monument of America, Nebraska, National Park Service, http://www.nps.gov/home/historyculture/ruralelect.htm.
80. “Rural Electrification Act,” Ohio History Central, http://www.ohiohistorycentral.org/entry.php?rec=1439.
81. John Tarrant, “Farming and Government,” Farming and Food, pp. 64–65.
82. “Former Purdue Agriculture Dean Earl Butz Dead at 98,” Purdue University News, February 2, 2008.
83. John C. Hudson, Making the Corn Belt, pp. 199–203.
84. Tarrant, “Farming and Government,” p. 65.
85. Hudson, Making the Corn Belt, p. 203.
86. As President Dwight Eisenhower stated in 1956, in a special message to Congress on Agriculture, “The proper role of government is that of partner with the farmer—never his master. By every possible means we must develop and promote that partnership—to the end that agriculture may continue to be a sound, enduring foundation for our economy and that farm living may be a profitable and satisfying experience.” http://www.eisenhower.archives.gov.
87. Tom Philpott, “A reflection on the lasting legacy of 1970s USDA Secretary Earl Butz,” Grist, February 8, 2008.
88. Both government and private studies reaffirm this. “Thought for Food,” The Economist, March 12, 2013, offers comparisons: http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2013/03/daily-chart-5. This chart from Washington State University, which uses figures from the USDA, graphically demonstrates differences worldwide: http://wsm.wsu.edu/researcher/WSMaug11_billions.pdf. And this February 1, 2012, article in Mother Jones underscores the importance of corn in creating those lower prices: http://www.motherjones.com/blue-marble/2012/01/america-food-spending-less.
1. Betty Fussell, The Story of Corn, pp. 295, 298.
2. George Catlin, Letters and Notes on the Manners, Customs, and Conditions of North American Indians, Vol. 1, pp. 189–190.
3. Ethno-historian Helen Roundtree, in her book The Powhatan Indians of Virginia (1989, University of Oklahoma Press, p. 162, note 110), relates that English records from Virginia mention nothing about fertilizing corn. She relates that the evidence points to Squanto having learned about fertilizer from Europeans, during his captivity.
4. Some argue that because the Pilgrims referred to it as a harvest celebration, and not as Thanksgiving, it was somehow divorced from the concept of giving thanks. Even if it weren’t customary in England to acknowledge gratitude for the harvest at these events (which was generally the case), anyone who knows anything about the Pilgrims would understand that a celebration for anything was intended as a way of giving thanks to God for whatever good had come their way.
5. Kathleen Curtin, Sandra L. Oliver, and Plimouth Plantation, Giving Thanks: Thanksgiving Recipes and History, from Pilgrims to Pumpkin Pie (New York: Clarkson Potter, 2005), pp. 15–16.
6. USDA National Agricultural Library, http://www.nal.usda.gov/lincolns-milwaukee-speech.
7. “Washington Local Preserves History of Tallest Corn Stalk,” The Kalona News, July 15, 2009, http://tinyurl.com/l8rn8qh.
8. “World’s Tallest Cornstalk Memorialized in Washington, IA,” KWWL News, http://tinyurl.com/pqcu52e.
9. Pamela H. Simpson, Corn Palaces and Butter Queens, pp. 114–115.
10. Jan Cerney, Mitchell’s Corn Palace, pp. 9–10.
11. Fussell, The Story of Corn, p. 314.
12. “First Day of the Corn-Palace Jubilee in Sioux City, Ia.,” Chicago Daily Tribune, October 5, 1887.
13. “Sioux City Corn Palace,” Chicago Daily Tribune, September 23, 1888.
14. “Sioux City Corn Palace,” Chicago Daily Tribune, September 21, 1889.
15. Simpson, Corn Palaces and Butter Queens, p. 115.
16. “1889 Corn Palace,” Sioux City History, http://tinyurl.com/mdrugmx.
17. “1891 Corn Palace,” Sioux City History, http://tinyurl.com/k38y3jc.
18. Simpson, Corn Palaces and Butter Queens, p. 114.
19. Cerney, Mitchell’s Corn Palace, p. 14.
20. Ibid., pp. 23, 41, 57.
21. “Corn Palace History,” http://www.cornpalace.org/Information/corn-palace-history.php.
22. The World’s Fair Museum, http://www.expomuseum.com.
23. Robert W. Rydell, “World’s Columbian Exposition,” Encyclopedia of Chicago History.
24. William Cronon, Nature’s Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West, p. 342.
25. “The Columbian Exposition and the Women’s Building, Chicago, 1893,” http://tinyurl.com/pg8o5me.
26. Cronon, Nature’s Metropolis, p. 343.
27. “Trans-Mississippi & International Exposition,” Omaha Public Library, http://www.omaha.lib.ne.us/transmiss/about/about.html.
28. Omaha Exposition Agricultural Building, http://www.cassgilbertsociety.org/works/omaha-agri-expo/ and Agricultural Building, Omaha Library, http://www.omaha.lib.ne.us/transmiss/buildings/agriculture.html.
29. Agriculture Events at the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair, http://www.lyndonirwin.com/1904fair.htm.
30. “Corn Murals of the Missouri Exhibit,” http://www.lyndonirwin.com/04murals.htm.
31. West Point Sweet Corn Festival: Shuck Fest, http://www.westpointsweetcornfestival.com/shuckfest.
32. http://www.farmcollector.com/community/national-cornhuskers-hall-of-fame.aspx.
33. Fussell, The Story of Corn, pp. 306–311.
34. “Contest for Corn Husking Crown No Place for Anything but He-Man,” The Milwaukee Journal, November 10, 1935.
35. http://www.cornhusking.com.
36. http://olivia.mn.us/community-info/attractions.
1. Dorothy Giles, Singing Valleys, p. 242.
2. Linda Keller Brown and Kay Mussell, Ethnic and Regional Foodways in the United States, p. 5.
3. Robert Dirks, Come & Get It!, p. 34.
4. Barbara G. Shortridge and James R. Shortridge, The Taste of American Place, p. 7.
5. Giles, Singing Valleys, pp. 120, 124.
6. Ibid., pp. 103–104.
7. William Cronon, Nature’s Metropolis, p. 103.
8. Greg Koos, from a speech titled “Corn, Illinois History, and Victorian Life,” outline for which is in the McLean County Historical Museum Archives.
9. Roger Biles, Illinois: A History of the Land and Its People, p. 56.
10. Giles, Singing Valleys, p. 87.
11. Ibid., p. 85.
12. Koos, from speech “Corn, Illinois History, and Victorian Life.”
13. Biles, Illinois: A History, p. 60.
14. Ibid., p. 68.
15. Living History Farms, Des Moines, Iowa.
16. Germans made up the largest non-English-speaking group in the colonies and then United States in the 1600s and 1700s. By the time this new wave of German immigrants spread across the Midwest, German food was so mainstreamed it was no longer thought of as ethnic food, or even as German food. For more information on foodways and ethnicity across the developing Midwest, see “Food” by Lucy M. Long in The Greenwood Encyclopedia of American Regional Cultures: The Midwest.
17. Dirks, Come & Get It!, p. 61.
18. Emily Hahn and the Editors of Time-Life Books, The Cooking of China, p. 67.
19. Interestingly, one of the primary sources of starch for cooking in China, tapioca, was also a food introduced into Asia from the New World. Tapioca is the South American root vegetable also known as manioc, cassava, or yuca.
20. Tracey N. Poe, “The Origins of Soul Food in Black Urban Identity: Chicago, 1913–1947,” in Food in the USA, edited by Carole M. Counihan, p. 97.
21. Biles, Illinois: A History, pp. 62–63.
22. Dirks, Come & Get It!, p. 37.
23. Biles, Illinois: A History, pp. 63, 72.
24. Harvard University Library, “Immigration to the United States,” http://ocp.hul.harvard.edu/immigration/scandinavian.html.
25. Giles, Singing Valleys, p. 108.
26. Biles, Illinois: A History, p. 69.
27. James R. Shortridge, The Middle West, p. 3.
28. “Was the Homestead Act Color Blind?” http://www.nebraskastudies.org/0500/stories/0501_0205.html.
29. Trina R. Williams Shanks, “The Homestead Act of the Nineteenth Century and Its Influence on Rural Lands,” Center for Social Development, p. 6.
30. John Radzilowksi, “Poles,” Encyclopedia of the Great Plains.
31. Renee M. Laegreid, “Italians,” Encyclopedia of the Great Plains.
32. Bruce M. Garver, “Czechs,” Encyclopedia of the Great Plains.
33. Lucy M. Long, “Food,” The Greenwood Encyclopedia of American Regional Cultures: The Midwest, p. 310.
34. “History, Chinatown Chicago” http://www.chicago-chinatown.com/cgi-bin/view.cgi?li=6.
35. Long, “Food,” p. 310.
36. Ying-Chen Kiang, “Chinatown,” Encyclopedia of Chicago History.
37. Larry O’Dell, “All-Black Towns,” Encyclopedia of the Great Plains.
38. “Nicodemus, KS,” Washburn University, http://tinyurl.com/pb272pa.
39. Poe, “The Origins of Soul Food,” p. 92.
40. For an interesting look at the way in which kinship and social connections among Tejano workers in the Midwest are established and cemented by the making and sharing of tamales, read “Why Migrant Women Feed Their Husbands Tamales” by Brett Williams, in Ethnic and Regional Foodways in the United States, edited by Linda Keller Brown and Kay Mussell.
41. Leah A. Zeldes, “The Unique Chicago Tamale: Tuneful Mystery,” Dining Chicago, http://tinyurl.com/kre92ce.
42. Gustavo Arellano, “When We Were Red Hot: S.F.’s Tamale Industry Once Ruled America,” SF Weekly, April 11, 2012.
43. Amy Evans Streeter, Southern Foodways Alliance Oral Historian, “Hot Tamales & the Mississippi Delta,” http://www.tamaletrail.com/introduction.shtml.
1. Environmental Protection Agency, Ag 101, “Major Crops Grown in the United States.”
2. Robert Dirks, Come & Get It!, p. 100.
3. Pat Dailey, “The Midwest,” Culinaria: The United States, p.134.
4. Ibid. p. 134.
5. Betty L. Wells, Shelly Gradwell, and Rhonda Yoder, “Growing Food, Growing Community: Community Supported Agriculture in Rural Iowa,” Food in the USA, p. 407.
6. “New Americans,” Growth of a Nation (Glenview, Ill.: Pearson Scott Foresman, 2005), pp. 185–189.
7. Rudolph J. Veccoli, “Italians,” Encyclopedia of Chicago History.
8. Arturo Warman, Corn and Capitalism, pp. ix–x.
9. Robert M. Harveson, “History of Sugarbeet Production and Use,” Cropwatch, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, http://cropwatch.unl.edu/web/sugarbeets/sugarbeet_history.
10. “Latinos in Michigan,” Los Repatriados, University of Michigan, http://tinyurl.com/okxngdz.
11. Bruce Corrie, “People of Mexican Origin in Minnesota,” Twin Cities Daily Planet, April 17, 2008.
12. “Latinos in Michigan,” Los Repatriados.
13. Louise A. N. Kerr, “The Mexicans in Chicago,” Illinois Periodicals Online (project of Northern Illinois University), http://www.lib.niu.edu/1999/iht629962.html.
14. Jim Kabbani, “Welcome and Overview,” 2011 TIA Technical Conference.
15. Nicholas P. Hardeman, Shucks, Shocks, and Hominy Blocks, p. 38.
16. To side-dress a crop is to place nutrients in or on the soil near the roots after the crop has begun growing.
1. Robert Dirks, Come & Get It!, p. 71.
2. Rae Katherine Eighmey, Food Will Win the War, p. 52.
3. Nancy Bubel, Grow the Best Corn, pp. 4–5.
4. Mark Kurlansky, The Food of a Younger Land, p. 298.
5. Dirks, Come & Get It!, pp. 36, 65–66.
6. “Gold and White Tasty Cornbread” is from the book The Cornbread Gospels, Copyright ©2007 by Crescent Dragonwagon, Used by permission of Workman Publishing Co., Inc., New York. All Rights Reserved.
7. Dirks, Come & Get It!, p. 34.
8. Courtesy of Argo Corn Starch, a division of ACH Food Co. Inc.
1. Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) of the United Nations estimated at the end of 2012 that there are 870 million people who are hungry.
2. Elizabeth H. Ormandy, Julie Dale, and Gilly Griffin, “Genetic Engineering of Animals: Ethical Issues, Including Welfare Concerns,” The Canadian Veterinary Journal, May 2011.
3. Danielle Simmons, “Genetic Inequality: Human Genetic Engineering” Nature Education, 2008.
4. Zen-Noh Grain Corporation brochure, “Zen-Noh—World and USA Presence.”
5. USDA Economic Research Service, http://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/crops/corn/trade.aspx.
6. Arturo Warman, Corn and Capitalism, p. 12.
7. For example, Al Jazeera published an article on October 10, 2012, titled “US Corn Ethanol Fuels Food Crisis in Developing Countries.”
8. Paul K. Conkin, A Revolution Down on the Farm, pp. 187–188.
9. Ibid., p. 191.
10. Daniel Kish, “EPA’s Ethanol Mandates are Costing Consumers,” U.S. News and World Report, February 7, 2013.
11. “Ethanol,” EPA Office of Transportation and Air Quality, http://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/ethanol.shtml.
12. Matthew Yglesias, “The Great Chicken Wing Shortage of 2013,” Slate, February 1, 2013.
13. Zack Colman, “Lawmakers Push EPA to Waive Corn Ethanol Requirement,” The Hill, August 2, 2012.
14. “U.S. Drought Drives Up Food Prices Worldwide,” http://money.cnn.com/2012/08/09/news/economy/food-prices-index.
While the impact is widespread, it has been most keenly felt by the four countries that receive the majority of U.S. corn exports: China, Japan, Mexico, and South Korea. Mexico was in the middle of its own drought in 2012–2013, so the problem of import shortages was compounded by their own crop failures.
15. “Genetically Engineered Crops Benefit Many Farmers, but the Technology needs Proper Management to Remain Effective,” News from the National Academies, April 13, 2010, http://www8.nationalacademies.org/onpinews/newsitem.aspx?recordid=12804.
16. “A Genetically Modified Crop Benefits a Nonmodified Crop by Killing Pests, University of Minnesota Study Finds,” University of Minnesota News, October 7, 2012, http://www1.umn.edu/news/news-releases/2010/UR_CONTENT_256624.html.
17. “Corn Borer Resistance Management with Bt Corn.” UK Entomology, University of Kentucky, http://www.ca.uky.edu/entomology/entfacts/ef140.asp.
18. USDA Biotechnology Regulatory Services, http://www.aphis.usda.gov.
19. Jeremy Fleming, “No Risk with GMO Food, Says EU Chief Scientific Advisor,” EurActive.com, July 24, 2012, http://tinyurl.com/c2el6vb.
20. “Genetically Engineered Crops Benefit Many Farmers.”
21. “Lecture to Oxford Farming Conference, 3 January 2013”—you can read the full text of the speech or watch a video of the presentation at Mark Lynas’s website: http://tinyurl.com/b5tpyhr.
22. Margaret Visser, Much Depends on Dinner, p. 53.
23. Claire Hope Cummings, “Rogue Corn on the Loose,” Word Watch Magazine 15, no. 6 (November/December 2002).
24. Warman, Corn and Capitalism, p. 19.
25. “What Is Happening around the World to Affect the Sale of US-produced GMOs?” American Corn Growers Association GMO Brochure, Section 2.
26. For those not familiar with CSAs, they are systems in which a consumer buys what is in effect a share in a farm. Payment is made to the farmer at the beginning of the season for the whole season, and then fresh, often organic food is delivered by the farmer to the consumer throughout the growing season. Most states in the Midwest now have CSAs, as they benefit both urban and rural communities, offering fresher food and greater variety to “investors,” while helping offset growing-season costs for the farmer. For more background on the concept and its virtues, read “Growing Food, Growing Community: Community Supported Agriculture in Rural Iowa,” by Betty L. Wells, Shelly Gradwell, and Rhonda Yoder, in the essay collection Food in the USA, edited by Carole M. Counihan. (And to get involved with a CSA, an Internet search should turn up information and opportunities in your state.)