Word: cornelis
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Driving his Ford Explorer through fields of severely stunted corn, Roberts, 67, says, "You're looking at a sad man." Stalks that should be 12 ft. high are less than 3 ft. In the next field over, a handful of tiny, withered sorghum plants--the only ones that grew--fight an obviously losing battle against cloudless skies...
There's little doubt that many U.S. farmers are suffering. So far this year, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, wheat production is down 14% from last year, and corn, soybean, and cotton production have also experienced big drops. Dave Frederickson, president of the National Farmers Union, says the low harvest yield will almost certainly mean higher grocery-store prices, perhaps even before stores actually feel the pinch. Says Frederickson: "Sometimes folks will use a perceived shortage to push prices...
...home state of Nebraska in August, Senator Chuck Hagel was flabbergasted by what voters were buttonholing him about. Nebraska is one of the most patriotic and pro-Bush Republican states in the Union. There's a saying here that the Cornhuskers are proud of three things: their corn, the University of Nebraska football team and a nuclear-armed Trident ballistic missile submarine the U.S. Navy named after their state. The first questions voters asked Hagel, predictably, was what could be done to protect farmers from the devastating drought attacking their corn. But the second question he kept getting at each...
Likewise, the components of our diet have undergone a radical change. The flesh of the wild game that made up our ancestors' diet had just 3% to 4% fat, whereas prime beef has 30% or more. And prior to the domestication of crops such as wheat and corn, humans consumed a variety of wild grains filled with fiber, which slows digestion. The process of highly refining foods, which allows carbohydrates to be quickly absorbed by the digestive system, wasn't widespread. As Rutgers University anthropologist Lionel Tiger puts it, human metabolism "did not evolve for prime beef, but, one would...
...broader population, the remedy must be sought elsewhere. And as we can't change the genes we are born with, we are left with one alternative--to change the environment that our genes have proved so ill equipped to handle. We, the species that invented barbecuing, that domesticated corn and wheat and that created foie gras and French fries, have powered through a series of food revolutions, says Oxford University historian Felipe Fernandez-Armesto in his recently published book, Near a Thousand Tables (The Free Press). The purpose of the next revolution, he predicts, will be to undo the excesses...