The Reality is that the Real is an Illusion.

Like the flowing river of cheap corn, the negative feedback loop of our food industry to nowhere is maintained by Keynesian economics. One of the most significant side-effects of WWII is the surplus of ammonium nitrate. This excess chemical needed to be consumed: corn, an efficient eater of synthetic nutrients, meets its match. From here, the modern U.S. food economy is born. But corn growth isn’t free; and farmers could not meet the new increases in demand. Pollan clearly shows evidence that farmers actually lose money for every hectare of corn produced. So why is corn King? Thanks to the magic wand of subsidization, a central belief of the economist John Keynes.

Keynesian government corn subsidization--->Artificial demand--->Excess corn supply (birth of HFCS)---->Cheap corn prices (good commercial commodity)--->People buy corn for everything--->and repeat.

The reality of the food economy in this country is Keynesian. It is dependent on illusions created by the government. Economics, like most other components of life, is naturally in a constant state of flux: demand comes and goes, while production grows and weans. However, the key to Keynesian economics is to maintain stability. In order to do this, constant demand is created through artificial means. Although the cycle seems to be consistent, it is just as much directionless.

What’s more disturbing is its ability to infiltrate into virtually every realm of our realities. Corn subsidies lead to cheap prices, making it a good commodity for profit-driven corporations. For every processed food calorie, another ten calories of fossil fuels are burned: clearly a huge energy waste. Despite this, the processing plant’s magical ability to turn four cents of commodity corn into four dollars of processed food makes this source of calorie the preferred one amongst Americans. Because it is “cheap;” but not really, since this builds the basis of the multi-billion dollar problem of the greenhouse effect destroying the Earth’s ozone layer.

The creation of “demand” is at the root of the high fructose corn syrup phenomenon. The most efficient use of excess biomass was achieved by exploiting the human palate for sweetness. In this view, the U.S. obesity epidemic can be viewed as an innocent effort by Americans to consume the country’s excess biomass. But not really, because it is false excess. Excess is what remains after an attempt to fill demand. However, since there was no real demand to start with, there is a purposeless abundance of corn which leaves the American not satisfied, but simply, regrettably, full.

Keynes’s theory is one of interest and money. The U.S. food economy fulfills both components. Farmers can grow crops more efficiently than ever, corporations have access to cheap commodity, and consumers have ready access to cheap calories. Satisfied interest groups are far-reaching: from tractor manufacturers and livestock producers all the way to petroleum suppliers in faraway nations, the Keynesian corn industry forms the basis of multiple other sister organizations.

This is the scary part of the U.S. economy. The “invisible” money lost from creating artificially low prices builds up on every one of these extensions of King Corn. However, as the weight on these branches increases and become susceptible to snapping, there is great uncertainty on how to deal with a break in the circulating wheel of food-or-petroleum-or-obesity-or-politics-and-pretty-much-everything-related-to-reality which will have dire consequences in our near and real future.