Although the exact origins of Indian corn, or maize, are unknown, American Indians probably first grew it in prehistoric times in Peru, Bolivia, or the highlands of Mexico. By the time Europeans arrived in the New World, Indians on both American continents grew a variety of corn types, including sweet corn and popcorn. Indians helped secure the survival of the Jamestown and Plymouth settlements by supplying them with corn, and later taught English settlers to grow their own in hills fertilized with fish. Corn proved itself an ideal frontier crop. The grain could be eaten green, or parched and ground into meal to make cornbread or johnny cakes. It also made an excellent feed for hogs, cattle, and poultry. Finally, any surplus corn could be distilled into whiskey, either for home consumption or for sale.
In areas north of Virginia, settlers found a variety of corn known as flint, an early maturing type that continued to be grown well into the nineteenth century. This corn, usually yellow in color, kept well because of the hardness of its kernels. Farther south, white gourdseed corn dominated. The soft-kerneled gourdseed matured later and produced a heavier yield than the northern flint variety. Prior to the Civil War, corn was the South's most widely grown agricultural product, exceeding even cotton as the region's most valuable crop.
Although haphazard mixing of these two varieties undoubtedly occurred from time to time, the first record of their conscious mixing came in 1812. John Lorain of Philipsburg, Pennsylvania, demonstrated that particular mixtures of gourdseed and flint varieties yielded much greater harvests while retaining many of flint's desirable qualities. The varieties resulting from the work of Lorain and others were known as "dents." One famous variety, Robert Reid's yellow dent, came into being in 1847, largely by accident. The previous year, Reid had planted in Illinois a light reddish-colored variety that he had brought with him from Ohio; when a poor stand resulted, Reid used a small early, yellow variety, probably a flint, to replant the missing hills. The Reid family then developed the resulting successful mixture into a yellow dent that later came to dominate the Corn Belt.
Even as the yellow dents were making the American corn belt one of the most productive agricultural areas in the world, research workers were developing hybrids to replace them. Drawing first upon the theories of Charles Darwin and then upon those of Gregor Mendel, a number of American researchers published studies showing how corn could be bred for certain characteristics, including high yield. They included William James Beal of Michigan State College (1876), George Shull of Princeton University, and Edward M. East (1908), H. K. Hayes (1912), and Donald F. Jones (1919, working with East) of the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station. In 1926 the Pioneer Hi-Bred Corn Company offered hybrid-corn seed for sale on a continuing commercial basis, and thereafter more and more companies competed to provide the new hybrid seeds. As farmers adopted the new hybrids, corn yields increased at a spectacular rate, and by the end of World War II, the hybrids dominated American corn growing. From 1910 to 1919 the average acre yielded 26 bushels of corn; by 1971 it was 87 bushels. Yield increased to 118 bushels per acre in 1990 and to about 140 bushels per acre in 2000.
Corn spred throughout the world from the Americas. Just prior to World War I, the United States produced two-thirds of the world supply—about one-half of the national total originating in Nebraska, Iowa, Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio. Mexico, Hungary, Argentina, Rumania, and Italy were the next leading nations in corn production. The production of corn as a food crop on a worldwide basis expanded greatly after 1950. The Rockefeller Foundation made a particular effort in an experimental center in Mexico to develop improved hybrids and methods for worldwide production, with emphasis on the tropics and subtropics. By 1973 the United States produced only one-half of the world total (143,344,000 metric tons), followed by the People's Republic of China (25,000,000), Brazil (15,200,000), and the Soviet Union (13,440,000).
Of the nearly 80 million acres of corn harvested annually in the United States, 86 percent is used for grain and the remainder for forage and silage. About 40 percent of the grain is fed to hogs, 25 percent to other livestock, and 15 percent to poultry. About 10 percent of the grain is exported, and the remaining 10 percent is industrially processed. Processed corn contributes to the manufacture of many products, including breakfast foods, corn meal, flour, and grits, as well as cornstarch, corn syrup, corn sugar, corn oil, and alcohol. Alcohol, lactic acid, and acetone are in turn used in the manufacture of hundreds of different products.
Since 1933, federal agricultural legislation has attempted to adjust production to demand and to ensure fair prices to farmers, affecting both the size and the value of the country's annual harvest.
Bibliography
Mangelsdorf, Paul C. Corn: Its Origin, Evolution, and Improvement. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1974.
Wallace Henry A., and William L. Brown. Corn and Its Early Fathers. Ames: Iowa State University Press, 1988.
Weatherwax, Paul. Indian Corn in Old America. New York: Macmillan, 1954.
—Wayne D. Rasmussen/C. W.
