A blight develops or is bioengineered or escapes the lab and hybridizes with wild stuff or God snaps His finger or what have you. The end result is the genus Zea which includes corn/maize and its closest relatives is no longer an edible plant. Say it grows but the seed is toxic to animal life and the sugars no longer can be used for alcohol (drinking or driving) and takes two years to spread globally. If it is a biological issue and takes Big-Agra 10 years to come up with a fix, what happens in the meantime? If corn is no longer a useful product ever, what replaces it? I know hemp and soybeans grow in many of the same areas but that is a boatload of calories removed from the foodchain. Is there any other species that could be economically mass produced to replace it?
Interesting thought experiment. Sweet, plump-kernel corn on th’ cob is - heh - small potatoes compared to corn used for animal feed & production of high fructose corn syrup. Pulling the rug out from under those 2 industries would no doubt have far reaching consequences … but I don’t have data at hand at this moment.
But the impact on the Coca-Cola and Tyson chicken corporations alone would be enormous.
Huh. The sugar industry would pop large, I’ll give you that.
Otherwise, it’ll depend on how quickly farmers - small and large - can pivot to a new crop. But a global recession would be almost certain. You don’t disrupt supply chains that large without throwing people out of work and lowering global production significantly.
I don’t think starvation would occur. Too much of the world relies on other staple foods for a lack of corn to have that effect. The main issues would be disruption of industrial production in the developed world.
Hmm. Looking things up, we’d lose the bourbon industry as well. Some people - not me - would be upset by that but it wouldn’t have long term downside effects.
There are a lot of other products made with corn - lipstick, drywall, matches and others - but I’m not seeing any of those as having the corn as mission critical. Most of those - after a period of supply disruption and low production - would find substitutes and carry on.
With a little time sorghum could take up a lot of the slack, both as livestock feed and sweetener. We already produce lots of it, so it would be a matter of ramping up to fill in the corn gap. It also has better drought and heat resistance than corn.
Yeah, livestock would take a big hit. Beef, pork, chicken, etc. prices would increase dramatically. People replacing those with vegetable choices would drive up the price of many varieties of beans.
While a few farmers here and there switching crops doesn’t affect the prices of the farm equipment necessary to farm the new crops, having so very, very many farmers switching at the same time would prevent most from getting the new equipment for a while.
Plus their existing equipment for planting and harvesting corn would still need to be paid off. More than a few farmers will go under.
In areas of some 3rd world countries there would be near famine, and in certain borderline areas such as in the Sahel there could be a full famine.
Does wheat grow in the same environment as corn, because I’d assume wheat could do much of the same thing corn does. It can be a staple for human food as well as animal feed.
Not quite, although the exact differential in needs will depend on the exact variety; I can tell you that for the varieties grown in Spain, wheat both needs and resists less water; soil needs are different as well. Also, take into account that a lot of people who can eat corn just fine can’t eat wheat: celiac disease / gluten sensitivity weren’t causing any problems in Latin America so long as the most frequent cereals were rice and corn*, but both migration to areas where wheat is common (US, Canada, Europe) and the presence of more wheat in Latin American foods have caused unexpected problems.
- In biochemical terms, “gluten” means “proteins naturally found in cereals”: all cereals have gluten, under this definition. But in medical terms, it means “any substance which triggers celiac disease’s negative response”: under this definition, some of the stuff that’s involved doesn’t come from cereals and neither rice nor corn have gluten (their proteins do not trigger celiac response).
This sort of informed, precise and nuanced comment is a major reason I’m a SDMB regular. Cheers!
The cornsequences would be immense.
This recent article in The Atlantic focuses on allergy to corn, and indirectly gives an idea of how many foods and other objects use it in some form. Of course, other sources could replace corn in most of these uses, but it wouldn’t be instantaneous.
It’s also worth noting that wheat doesn’t ferment as well as corn syrup, so it wouldn’t be as useful for making alcohol. The beer & vodka industries would just have to step up their game. Hmm, that probably means more rice beer, but rice doesn’t grow in the same conditions as corn…
I’d think the hemp advocates would have a field day, finding ways for industrial hemp to replace many of the plastic/structural uses of corn with hemp.
Sorghum may the best best for replacing corn in animal feed. Currently average sorghum yields aren’t anywhere as good as corn, but some of that may be because a lot of producers don’t care about giving sorghum the same resources they give to corn.
To many people sorghum is an acquired taste, though, so there’d be a long period of developing cultivars that tasted right for things like sorghum chips, popsorghum, etc.
One possible indirect impact would be on soybean production (at least here in the U.S.) AIUI, the vast majority of corn farmers here rotate their fields between corn and other crops (primarily soybeans). Corn draws nitrogen out of the soil as it grows, and if a farmer were to grow corn in the same field year after year, the nitrogen in the soil would be depleted. Soybeans, on the other hand, are “nitrogen-fixing,” meaning that they actually deposit nitrogen back in the soil (apparently through a symbiosis with certain bacteria).
If farmers were no longer growing corn (or a similar crop), they wouldn’t have the same incentive to grow soybeans that they have today.
Does this product go by another brand name or any sort of other name? I’ve never heard of it before.
It doesn’t look like it; it’s just that it’s not often used in food products for humans in the U.S. The Wikipedia article indicates that it’s the fifth-most-important cereal crop in the world, but that’s driven by its widespread use in regions other than North America.
The article also mentions “sorghum molasses” as a use of it, and that China had, until the tariff disputes of the past year or two, bought a lot of it from the U.S. for use as animal fodder.
No bourbon?
Life isn’t worth living anymore.
Sorghum is a pain to process, but it grows like a weed and would fill a niche very quickly.
In the U.S., grain sorghum is sometimes called milo. The reason you don’t hear much about is because, when there’s enough rain, corn will yield more and is potentially much more profitable for the same amount of inputs. Sorghum is very popular out West where rainfall is a permanent concern, but corn is more profitable anywhere it rains more than about 22" during the growing season.
There are some other drawbacks to sorghum, so it wouldn’t replace corn on a 1:1 basis.
I’d bet that people would adapt to sorghum much faster than the time it would take to develop corn syrup flavored sorghum.
Sugarcane would more likely be ramped up to fill that nitch.
No one’s considered that Tony would be out of a job?
Dude, so long as there’s sugar cane we have rum. Life will go on.