Endangered Maize with Helen Anne Curry

The Poor Prole’s Almanac

The role of corn in our diet cannot be overstated, whether it's through animal feed for meat production, ethanol to transport our food, high fructose corn syrup, corn flour, or any of the other ways it has been introduced. Corn is a staple for good reason; it stores well, grows incredibly efficiently, and we've gotten really, really good at growing it. Despite this, there's an underbelly to this industry that often gets overlooked in the conversation about what the future of our food looks like. How did we get here, and how does the modern corn we eat today related to the crops indigenous people across the Americas have been harvesting and breeding for thousands of years?

In this "Tomorrow, Today" crossover episode, we're joined by Helen Anne Curry, author of "Endangered Maize: Industrial Agriculture & the Crisis of Extinction" and Kranzberg Professor of the History of Technology in the School of History and Sociology at Georgia Tech. We chat about this complex relationship between modern corn and its relatives, often called landrace or unimproved corn varieties. But are these actually unimproved varieties? Researchers became aware that the corn we grow today had a very narrow genetic pool, and it was imperative to make sure the diversity of corn that existed across the continents was protected. Like most things, it was more complex than that. How did the cold war, multinational corporations, and the green revolution impact the evolution of corn? Tune in to find out!

Historian Helen Anne Curry on her book "Endangered Maize: Industrial Agriculture and the Crisis of Extinction" from University of California Press.

www.ucpress.edu/book/978052030769…/endangered-maize

Find Helen Anne Curry on Twitter at @HACurry

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