Corn Futures: Consumer Politics, Health, and Climate Change

Abstract

The Mexicans have long been known as the Corn People, but that label perhaps provides a better fit for modern day Americans. The simple seeds of corn play a fundamental role unprecedented in the history of human agriculture. Corn now underpins two major sectors, arguably the two most important sectors, of our modern economy - food supply and energy supply. How we choose to consume this seed has far-ranging consequences for pressing issues as far apart as climate change and diabetes, energy policy and immigration, tropical deforestation and food riots.