The Benefits of Corn
Photo Source: Kaldoon
Source: Discovery Channel, “HowStuffworks”
Corn is the single-most productive crop on the planet. A cornfield can yield 200 bushels per acre, which translates into 5 tons of food. Today, fields of corn cover 93.6 million acres of farmland or an area that’s large enough to cover every square inch of Iowa and Illinois. Corn is essential to humans because 70% of the carbon in our bodies comes from the crop. The human body breaks down the starch in corn and coverts it into glucose for energy.
The importance of corn goes beyond providing our bodies with energy. Equipped with both male and female parts, scientist can combine the best traits from any two corn plants. This adaptability allows the crop to be used in many products and in many different ways.
Corn syrup is a kind of liquid corn starch. Sweet, viscous, and loaded with energy it is used in products like sodas, syrups and sweeteners. When corn syrup is fed to the bacteria Xantomonas campestris, the colorless slime Xanthan Gum is formed. Xanthan Gum is used in many commercial applications where water needs to be controlled. For instance, this substance helps control the flow of toothpaste out of the tube and makes drilling for oil safer by lubricating and suspending the rugged materials found in a drill hole.
Just as our food industry has been built upon corn, much of our manufacturing industry is built upon plastics. Most plastic is oil based. 10% of our oil imports go to fulfilling this demand. Corn and its versatility allow us to offset some of this demand with a safer alternative known as bio-plastics. Bio-plastics are created when corn oil is separated from corn starch and the purified corn starch is mixed with other ingredients. Scientists thereby create a long-chained polymer, which is the basic building block for plastics. The end result is a new biodegradable plastic that can be used in many different products.
In the future corn will continue to play a vital role in our economy. Corn is essential to our energy production, food supply and manufacturing industry.