Being a student always leaves you feeling stupid and, here I am again. I'm getting too old for this, maybe. For other newbies out there let me just say that if you are planning on saving corn to plant next year, it had better be open pollinated corn and not hybrid corn. With open pollinated corn you can hand pollinate the corn (no snickering out there, you know who you are) and then bag it (sort of the opposite of what people do) and have corn with the same genome for the next year. With hybrid corn there is no chance. Self pollination only leads to divergent genomes, mixed populations of corn. This is what I am reading in a book called "The Omnivores Dilemma". Besides the above, in spite of $10,000,000,000 annually in commodity supports for corn growers, most of them are just barely getting by, while the low price of American corn is killing Mexican agriculture!!?? Adios Mexico, good morning Juan.
Additionally, Americans consume more corn, in all its' manifestations than Mexicans. There are corn by-products in a quarter of the products sold in the average supermarket, not to mention the construction materials in the building. How do they know that? That's another fascinating exposition.
The book may end-up sucking but it sure starts out like a house afire.
Got mine from the library.
That's my book report for the night.
- Bill Coloribus gustibus non disputatum (mostly)