Analytical Reading and Writing

In Corn 's Conquest , Michael Pollan - a journalist and author who has gained critical acclaim in recent years for a handful of books exploring man 's relationship with food and agriculture - expresses his fascination with the ubiquity of corn in the American diet

Pollan begins his essay by invoking the imagery of the supermarket as a microcosm of the American ecosystem paralleling the almost covert omnipresence of corn in it with the nigh inextricable involvement with the agricultural industry . Quite simply , he points out how much of the supermarket biosphere is filled

with corn-based or corn-enhanced material as well as how much of American livestock is fed with corn

This elicits some bemusement on his part , as he implictly suggests that if we are what we eat , then Americans are corn walking . Not that he has any hang ups about that . He wryly points out that the Mayan descendants of Mexico have no problem with calling themselves the corn people and then proceeds to enumerate the ways in which corn has benefitted from its faith-based arrangement with man . Pollan humorously notes that this is only evident of how this relationship is one of opportunism : a highly adaptable plant with an immense yield of versatile grain yet utterly dependent on man 's agriculture ' to survive

Pollan then points out the ways in which corn has evolved itself to meet the demands of the agriculture : growing upright and highly threshable , increasing its yield per acre , becoming highly tolerant to chemical preservatives , fertilizers and pesticides . Pollan then draws a depressing chuckle from the fact not even all these traits could satisfy the capitalist imperative , which demanded that free corn sex ' be abolished in favor of genetically modified seeds that could not reproduce

In essence , patented corn with a copy protection scheme , making farmers dependent on the corporation that produces them , not to mention putting the entire American diet under corporate control

Pollan 's essay isn 't very much of a critique as it is a wry statement of facts . The ubiquity of corn and its influence on the American diet the uncontested idyllism that characterizes perceptions of agriculture and its largely unquestioned affect on ecology have been addressed by many others before him , most notably Richard Manning , author of Against The Grain : How Agriculture Hijacked Civilization . His ironic observation of how corn is one of the only surviving elements of the pre-colonial American landscape (leaving the bison and the Native Americans to the category of indigenous has-beens ) does draw some chuckles

But his essay is still intriguing as it does cover ground on the deep-seated importance of the plant to profit-oriented agriculture . By juxtaposing it against the rise of modern American civilization , Pollan not only establishes its crucial role to its development but criticizes in rather low key fashion , how the homogeneity of the American food industry subjects it to corporate control...