Beautiful Corn: America's Original Grain from Seed to Plate

Introduction: Falling for Corn

Ayers Creek establishes the western boundary of the farm where my wife, Carol, and I live in western Oregon. We are located in the Wapato Valley, between the city of Portland and the Coast Range, just a bit south of the town of Gaston. The creek provides the farm’s name as well as the water for irrigating our crops. The land is a mixture of rolling oak savannah, marshy wetland, and about eighty acres of good-quality arable soil on a bench above the creek. We operate as a market farm, selling what we harvest to local stores, restaurants, and directly to the public. Our crops include many types of plums, tart cherries, walnuts, chestnuts, table grapes, legumes, grains, and a variety of vegetables. Among the crops we grow is corn.

Since childhood, I have enjoyed sweet corn from the garden. Eating fresh corn on the cob is a sensual pleasure that takes the sad edge off of the dwindling days of summer and, when I was a boy, the bittersweet start of school. I still grow sweet corn and love the rituals attending its harvest and consumption. As middle age approached, a deep appreciation for more mature corn crept up on me. While the tender kernels of sweet corn embody the fleeting days of late summer, the fully mature, tough, dry kernels of grain corn, or what I knew in my youth as cow corn, are a gift of autumn. They sustain us through the lean months of winter, cooked up as cornbread, cornmeal mush, and hominy. Grain corn is a crop that requires more time and patience than sweet corn but rewards the effort generously. It came to our farm obliquely and unplanned.

Seeking a break from the farm after a busy season several years ago, Carol and I went on a holiday to the city of Cuneo in the Italian Piedmont to attend a chestnut festival. Italian food festivals are a wonderful mixture of Renaissance pageantry and modern marketing. Amid the fragrance of roasting chestnuts, the gaily dressed acrobats and singers of madrigals, and the horns and drums announcing some event or another, were rows of stalls selling the signature cheeses, cured meats, and fruits and vegetables of the mountain valleys fringing the Po River plain.

Many of these stalls displayed ears of corn familiar to Carol and me as the richly colored Indian corn our families used to brighten up the house during autumn. At other stalls, we saw ears similar to another ornamental corn of our youth, strawberry popcorn, with its small red kernels. Other than the occasional house mouse, no one we knew had ever contemplated eating those decorative types of corn, though we had heard it was possible to pop strawberry popcorn. But in Cuneo, these corn varieties were stone-ground into cornmeal and sold as cherished regional specialties under the name of the farm or cooperative that produced them. We were there to learn about and enjoy chestnuts, and they were the primary ingredient on every menu. Corn has it own festival later in the autumn, so in my mind those brightly colored ears remained mere ornaments.

Later, home at Ayers Creek, we recalled those beautiful ears of corn treated as culinary treasures and started thinking about growing highquality corn, something special and delicious beyond the yellow and white cornmeal of uncertain origin found in the supermarket. That trip to Cuneo dislodged the negative associations I carried regarding corn as an industrial grain, and weakened my inclination to dismiss beautiful forms of corn as quaint ornamentals. The trip carried me past the debates about corn’s role as sweetener, animal fattener, and the first genetically modified grain. We asked a couple of seed importers about the possibility of getting some of those special varieties from the Piedmont. Forget it, we were told; the legal importation of seed corn is nearly impossible. Disappointed, we relegated our thoughts about corn to the back burner over the summer as we tended to other crops. Later, at seed ordering time, a catalog entry stirred memories of that week in the Piedmont, and again we entertained the idea of growing a delicious grain corn on our farm.

The conventional wisdom in western Oregon is that our climate, with its short ripening season and wet autumn, is not good for grain corn, an observation underscored by the fact that none of the market farmers we knew were growing corn for grain. On the other hand, Italy’s Piedmont and the Wapato Valley are at the same latitude and share a similar climate. Some of our neighbors have planted the famed nebbiolo wine grape of the Piedmont in their vineyards, recognizing the similarity between the climates. Our seed order that spring included five pounds of grain corn. Our hunch was confirmed, the right grain corn will grow well in northwest Oregon, and it is now a well-established crop at Ayers Creek Farm. A decade later, we are still testing new varieties.

When we started, I had many questions and could find few satisfactory answers. I wanted to know the plant better. I dusted off my old copy of Paul Mangelsdorf’s Corn, Its Origin, Evolution and Improvement (1974) and refreshed my knowledge. Mangelsdorf was a professor of botany at Harvard University and a pioneer in the study of corn genetics. Although molecular analysis has since shown that Mangelsdorf’s theory on the origin and evolution of corn is wrong, the book is otherwise a fine work of scholarship and provides a good entry into the extensive literature of corn. Ultimately, the information I wanted was scattered hither and yon, often buried in scientific texts or old journal articles. My bookshelf now has a six-foot-long section devoted to corn.

As a college student, I had passed a portrait of Professor Paul Mangelsdorf on the way to the classroom and laboratory. Academic portraits often include props underscoring the professor’s area of study, and my eye always fell upon the glowing, yellow ear of corn, a focal point of the painting. Mangelsdorf recognized the indigenous Americans as expert plant breeders, but he could not accept the fact that these early cultivators possessed the same keen observational and analytical skills found in every good scientist and plant breeder. In an interesting digression, he speculated that their love for the plants overcame the challenge of managing their complex genetics. He was a man educated in the age of genetics, statistics, and analytical biology contemplating the most magnificent achievement of plant breeding who recognized that anonymous individuals guided by custom, folklore, and affection accomplished this enduring achievement.

Mangelsdorf was right about the emotional pull of corn, and that pull is not limited to the early cultivators; I’m besotted. As my research progressed, I discovered that many of those corn ears we saw displayed in the stalls at Cuneo were varieties that had their origin in the northeastern United States. Cultivated into the early years of the twentieth century, the varieties disappeared from the region almost overnight. Changing farm practices and the abandonment of the local gristmills led to the demise of New England’s traditional corn varieties, even as the same varieties were being cultivated and milled widely around the world, from the northern provinces of Spain to Sapporo, Japan. By the time I was born, just a few old types of corn remained, in the protective custody of dogged traditionalists. In fact, this scenario occurred across the United States, with old regional varieties of corn slipping away from the landscape. Now, quietly and slowly, the trend has reversed, as more gardeners and farmers as well as home cooks and chefs seek out the rich flavors of these varieties.

As corn in its many forms found its way onto our farm, its presence engaged the farm’s staff, many of whom were born and raised in the southern Mexican highlands of Oaxaca. American agriculture has its origins in those highlands roughly eight thousand years ago. Our staff’s families continue to cultivate many types of corn, as well as vegetables and legumes. In Oaxaca, they grow corn to feed the family; it is not just a commodity for sale but the basis for the family’s well-being. Moreover, the land where corn is cultivated provides a range of food for the family, not just corn. Cheap commodity corn subsidized by the Mexican government is available, but where possible, Oaxacans grow their own grain because they consider it superior in every respect. Although the climate and soils of the dry tropical highlands of Oaxaca are very different from Ayers Creek, the traditional varieties we grow have the fine flavor familiar to our staff. Many of the other plants associated with corn in Oaxaca, such as tomatillos, beans, and squash, also feed us here as well.

Like many market farms, we send out a newsletter before each market day describing what foods we are bringing to sell. To keep people looking forward to the weekly communication, the newsletter includes an essay. Wide-ranging in content and overtly educational, the essay may include a discussion of the history and natural history of a crop, the machines we use to raise and harvest the food, the natural history of an interesting local wasp or bird, or the arcane details of water law. The spirit of this book was drawn from those market essays about growing food and corn.

The aim of this book is to encourage the appreciation of traditionally grown grain corn in all of its rich diversity. If we take time to return the true beauty and flavor of these corn varieties to our fields, gardens, and tables, our lives will be enriched. This I know from experience.

At our farmers’ market stall, following the example of those we saw in Cuneo, we display a few ears of our corn with their husks tied together with a bit of sisal. One young girl was so entranced by a long ear with eight rows of uniformly deep orange kernels, she returned several times to touch it and tell her mother how beautiful it was. We gave the ear to her and suggested she plant the kernels in the spring. Later, her mother told us she had planted them in the backyard and harvested some ears of her own. When I brought Esmé a box of ears to draw for the book’s illustrations, she was immediately drawn to another type of corn, but with a similar response as she held it: What a beautiful ear of corn. That ear was short with speckled kernels of various colors, all similar to small birds’ eggs. It is a type of corn grown high in the Andes that was coaxed into producing a few ears in Oregon, well beyond its element. Esmé drew that ear first.

The book that follows is a how-to from planting to eating. I provide a practicum of corn growing from seed selection through seed production, based on my experience as a farmer and gardener. If a young person can take a beautiful ear of corn, pry off a few kernels, and grow some new ears in her family’s backyard, the process is hardly beyond the ken of most people. But there is more to appreciating corn than just dropping a seed in the ground.

Corn is remarkable among the grains because it is used as food from the emergence of the flower buds to the time the kernels are mature. Even among the dry, mature kernels, there is a range of colors, textures, and flavors. No other grain provides such culinary elasticity.

More than just a kitchen ingredient, the corn plant is an elegant organism, especially when you know how it functions. When Mangelsdorf talks about the cultivator’s love of corn, he is referring to whole plant and not just the grain. Corn is a grass shaped by the intimacy the cultivator feels for the plant. It is easy to slip into a mystical frame of mind when working among corn plants, especially when you start selecting characteristics for your own seed. Before ascending to that level of thinking, it is important to understand the nuts and bolts of how corn is constructed. I have distilled the botany to its essential details, those that are useful for our appreciation and understanding of the plant.

The cornfield itself provides more than just a crop of wholesome kernels. I am at heart a naturalist who farms and, as such, I prefer to keep the boundaries between the cultivated and natural areas of the farm as indistinct as possible. Consequently, we measure our farm’s productivity not only in crops but also in terms of the birds, weasels, spiders, centipedes, snakes, and frogs that make their home among the cornstalks. In summer and winter, the cornfield offers up a separate bounty of nourishing greens from the many volunteer plants that appear in cultivated fields and gardens.

After describing the tasks of harvesting, cleaning, and preparing the corn, I include recipes to help readers explore the various ways corn can be enjoyed at the table. Some of these come to us from our customers, including local chefs. The most important ingredient in a dish made from corn is always high-quality grain. But you do not need to invest in a mill to make popcorn or fresh hominy, a traditional American food worth reintroducing to our table.

We begin in the lull of late winter and early spring, when there is time to think about the origins of corn and its subsequent spread through the Americas, and then throughout the world.

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The Origins of Corn

ONCE VIEWED AS A GIFT of the gods, corn has slipped under a cloud, a victim of modernity’s prodigal and detached ways. Today few people actively produce corn from seed to harvest, crack the dry corn kernels into small pieces for backyard poultry, grind it for bread or steep it in lime for hominy. Furthering that detachment is the fact that, over the past eighty years, corn has been transformed from a whole-grain dietary staple into an industrial chemistry kit. Most of the corn produced in the United States is made into alcohol, starch, oil, and numerous chemicals used widely in food processing; the by-products are used to fatten livestock. The kernels are treated with a strong acid and milled while still wet, which allows the corn refiner to separate the starches, proteins, and oils. We consume corn all through the day in the form of meat, soft drinks, and processed foods, but only rarely as a whole grain. As early as 1954, the corn-refining industry estimated that 50 percent of our diet was based on corn, and that number has continued to climb. The grain has been bred and engineered to provide certain chemical and energy qualities in astounding quantities, yet the modern cultivars of the grain are barely suitable as human food. Grown for the refinery and feedlot rather than the table, the off-flavors, poor texture, and fishy aromas in these varieties are considered unimportant. In fact, some genetically modified types of corn are not even approved for human consumption.

Virtually all of the corn grown in the United States, and elsewhere, is yellow dent corn. The plants are typically eight to ten feet (2.5 to 3 m) tall and produce one or two ears with golden-yellow kernels. On the ear, these kernels have a distinct and visible dent, hence the name. This yellow dent corn, or Corn Belt Dent, was brought into existence by the industrial age in the United States. The early Corn Belt Dents were developed in the mid-nineteenth century, about the same time armament foundries seeking new business following the Civil War started mass-producing steel farm implements. Farmers sought out characteristics that led to more efficient cultivation and harvest with the new machines. When the armistice ended World War I, the factories manufacturing explosives shifted to the peacetime production of synthetic manures made from nitrogen and phosphorus, our fertilizers of today. The corn breeders responded by selecting the yellow dent varieties that produced better yields when fed these synthesized nutrients. The post–World War II chemical industry created poisons that promised to eliminate insects, disease, and competing vegetation in the cornfield. Once again, the breeders responded with corn plants adapted to fields where these chemicals were used. The characteristics of the Corn Belt Dent corn were thus shaped by steel and chemicals.

Modern corn plants are named after the companies that developed them, establishing corporate ownership of each variety. Across the Corn Belt of the United States, signs identify hybrids such as DeKalb DKC 45–82, Pioneer 16–2, and Roundup Ready. Decades of corn breeding guided by corporate profit has yielded a plant less nutritious and less satisfying than the one handed to us by its original breeders.

Sign identifying proprietary and genetically modified corn.

Paradoxically, with each generation of yield increases — deemed an improvement by farmers and breeders — the plant has grown lazier. It demands more fertilizer to sustain its higher yield; more herbicides, as it is incapable of challenging even modest competition from other plants; regular insecticide applications, as it is unable to ward off insects; and the seed must be coated in fungicides to survive in the soil. By the time it is processed, most of the corn harvested in the world today will have required more energy from fossil fuels than the plant captured from the sun. The crop is fully mechanized: from field to soda can or gas tank, a human will likely never touch the grain.

Traditional corn

As a whole and unrefined grain, corn has nourished civilizations for millennia. In its traditional form, it is the greatest wonder of the world, wrought incrementally by peaceful, agrarian effort. The Taj Mahal, the pyramids, and the other so-called wonders of the world are no more than grand gestures of vanity that subjugated the builders, squandered the societies’ treasure, and provided neither health nor security for the people. In contrast, the builders of corn, modest farmers, thrived on their creative effort, and corn has offered each generation ever-greater nourishment.

Prior to European entry into the Americas, there were no draft animals and no iron tools. The horse and ox, the plow and scythe, belonged to Europe, Africa, and Asia, not the Americas. The small grains of Europe and Asia, such as wheat, barley, and rice, evolved with draft animals and steel. In contrast, hand, wood, and stone shaped corn. Because of this, corn is well-suited to the backyard and the small farm, where the grower’s shadow and hand remain strong. Corn is produced efficiently at a small scale. A single ear of corn will provide nearly a half-pound of grain, whereas almost a hundred ears of wheat or barley must be harvested to yield the same amount of grain.

Corn is classified by the shape and texture of its kernel. Corn with a large, hard kernel lacking a dent is called flint corn. Flour corn also lacks a dent, but has a very soft, starchy kernel. Popcorn has a small and very hard kernel. There are also ancient dent varieties unrelated to modern the Corn Belt Dent. Traditional corn varieties have their own names — Hickory King, Hooker’s Sweet, Sibley’s Sheep Tooth, Amish Butter, Blue Clarage, Roy’s Calais Flint — that set forth history and eating qualities rather than mere genetic ownership. The traditional corn plant is diverse and exuberant in its genetic expression. There are the short, scrappy northern varieties adapted to harsh conditions and short growing seasons, the long-rooted Southwestern types that manage to eke moisture deep from region’s parched lands, the huge kernels of tropical Cuzco corn found at