Corn and Capitalism: How a Botanical Bastard Grew to Global Dominance
288
Corn and Capitalism: How a Botanical Bastard Grew to Global Dominance
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Overview
The book, first published in Mexico in 1988, combines approaches from anthropology, social history, and political economy to tell the story of corn, a "botanical bastard" of unclear origins that cannot reseed itself and is instead dependent on agriculture for propagation. Beginning in the Americas, Warman depicts corn as colonizer. Disparaged by the conquistadors, this Native American staple was embraced by the destitute of the Old World. In time, corn spread across the globe as a prodigious food source for both humans and livestock. Warman also reveals corn's role in nourishing the African slave trade.
Through the history of one plant with enormous economic importance, Warman investigates large-scale social and economic processes, looking at the role of foodstuffs in the competition between nations and the perpetuation of inequalities between rich and poor states in the world market. Praising corn's almost unlimited potential for future use as an intensified source of starch, sugar, and alcohol, Warman also comments on some of the problems he foresees for large-scale, technology-dependent monocrop agriculture.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780807863251 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | The University of North Carolina Press |
| Publication date: | 12/04/2003 |
| Series: | Latin America in Translation/en Traducción/em Tradução |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 288 |
| File size: | 3 MB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
Corn and Capitalism
How a Botanical Bastard Grew to Global DominanceBy Arturo Warman
The University of North Carolina Press
Copyright © 2003 University of North Carolina PressAll right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8078-5437-2
Chapter One
American Plants, World Treasures
Vast riches, born of violence, flowed freely between the New World and the Old since the time of discovery. Those treasures took many and diverse forms. Precious metals and other highly valuable New World commodities such as dyes generated large amounts of ready cash. Plentiful American land and labor allowed for the production of those goods that were craved and coveted in Europe: sugar, coffee, and a whole array of other plant and animal products. The New World provided an open frontier for the Old World's surplus population of undesirables: the poor, the persecuted, the fanatics, the heretics, the bureaucrats, the adventurers of every ilk. America was a place to realize dreams that were otherwise unimaginable in Europe. Successive waves of the hopeful, renewed and reinvigorated, departed to seek their fortunes in the New World. America's plentiful and unique natural resources transformed life, production, and their nexus. The New World generated immense new markets that willingly or forcibly trafficked in everything from European manufactured goods to African slaves. Those markets generated vast resources that then were used to expand and dominate world trade. In the end that wealth, transformed into capital-into a relation of production and of ownership-was a central element, if not the primary element, responsible for uniting many local economies into one immense world market and in the formation and development of capitalism as a hegemonic global force.
In the five hundred years since contact between Europe and America, plants have stood out among the many treasures discovered in the New World. The wealth generated by plants probably has increased at a greater rate and in a more sustained fashion than any other American resource. In any given year-1980, for example-the annual value of American crops, on the order of $200 billion, probably is higher than the total value of all the precious metals exported from the Iberian colonies over the course of the entire colonial period. The seven most important food crops today-wheat, rice, corn or maize, potatoes, barley, sweet potatoes, and cassava-supply at least half of all nutrients consumed worldwide. Four of those plants are from America-corn, potatoes, sweet potatoes, and cassava-and make up half of the total volume of the top seven crops. More than a third of the modern world's food, either fresh or processed, comes from American plants (Harlan, 1976). American plants are a potential source of great wealth, but also of great poverty, misery, and exploitation.
Native American plants came to have a wide range of uses in the Old World. Europeans regularly used the Xalapa or Mechoacan root (Ipomoea purga [Wenderoth] Hayne) in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries as a powerful laxative. The Spanish physician Nicolás de Monardes was responsible for popularizing this Mexican plant. De Monardes wrote a work on American medicinal plants that was published in 1574 and was well received. During this same period, brightly colored fabrics using dyes extracted from cochineal or Brazilwood were a sign of conspicuous consumption. Cochineal was extracted from an insect native to Mexico, while Brazilwood or peachwood (Haematoxylum brasiletto Karsten) was a tree native to the American humid tropics. Cinchona bark (Cinchona species), from a tree native to the Amazonian Andes, was used in a preparation that effectively prevented or treated malaria. This treatment made possible the settlement of vast areas of humid, swampy land the world over (Hobhouse, 1986: chap. 1). Cinchona bark was used in making gin and tonic, the colonial era's signature beverage. This drink had the virtue of being both intoxicating and medicinal, meeting two pressing needs among colonial enclaves. A wide range of native American plants were used for medicinal purposes long before drugs were artificially produced in the laboratory.
Today, native New World plants continue to be enormously important. Cortisone was produced for many years from cabeza de negro (Dioscorea mexicana Guillemin), a plant native to coastal Mexico. Medical advances associated with cortisone may be comparable in significance to those resulting from the discovery of penicillin. Barbasco (Dioscorea composita Hemsley) was used to make the birth control pill. Mexican peasants gathered the plant along the coast, where the plant was indigenous. Without the widespread availability of the pill, it is impossible to explain the sexual revolution of the 1960s that forever changed the way of life and culture in industrialized countries and in certain sectors of underdeveloped countries. The impact of such hormonally based contraceptives also was linked to demographic patterns, some of the most complex and far-reaching trends in modern society. Rubber became indispensable at the outset of the Industrial Revolution. Originally, the resin used to produce rubber was obtained exclusively from American plants, especially from a tree native to Brazil (Hevea brasiliensis). Synthetic forms of rubber were developed during World War II. Some decades later, resins used to produce rubber also were obtained from guayule (Parthenium argentatum A. Gray), a wild shrub native to the arid regions of northern Mexico and the southwestern United States. This use of guayule is undergoing something of a revival today and the production of natural rubber is on the rise as well (Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología, 1978). Precious ornamental woods, other resins, and many pharmaceutical products are part of the extensive repertoire of native American plants.
Plants native to the Americas have a great deal of potential. This is especially true as the world finally comes to grips, economically and intellectually, with the indisputable and unpleasant truth that petroleum is a nonrenewable resource. Plants, on the other hand, are capable of both reproducing and multiplying. Plants native to arid regions of Mexico have become fashionable of late. These include guayule, jojoba (Simmondsia chinensis Link), catkin (Euphorbia cerifera), gobernadora (Larrea divaricata Cavanilles), and peyote (Lophophora williamsii Lemaire). A wax that substitutes for whale blubber in the cosmetic industry is made from jojoba. Another type of wax is extracted from catkin. Gobernadora is used to produce a substance that retards the oxidation of fats and oils. In short, American plants show tremendous promise. Even the history of plants native to the Americas is subject to irony, however. One only need conjure up an image of the typical U.S. tourist, the quintessential Ugly American, methodically chewing gum extracted from the sapodilla tree (Achras zapota Linnaeus), a tree native to the Mayan jungle.
Some of the American plants that have changed our lives and the very course of history were wild, natural products of the gradual evolution of flora on the American continent. People did not play an active part in the appearance of these wild plants. They did play a role, however, in the both the preservation and, in some cases, the extinction of those plants. People also obviously used their knowledge of plants' traits and properties to establish and define the uses of indigenous plants. How native wild plants are used is a product of culture. Daily life and medicine, both past and present, would be very different without indigenous American plants and the knowledge that New World native peoples accumulated in order to exploit them.
The history of the myriad and at times surprising present-day applications of indigenous American flora is a work in progress. Their uses are not the result of happenstance. Neither are they attributable simply to the genius or good fortune of gifted scientists or inventors. Current medicinal or industrial uses are, generally speaking, extensions and adaptations of age-old collective practices and knowledge. Thomas Adams, for example, widely acknowledged as "the king of chewing gum," made a fortune simply by adapting and commercially marketing an indigenous American habit. Likewise, the developers of patent medicines capitalized on discoveries made by those they scornfully referred to as "witch doctors." While indigenous knowledge has been dismissed by Western standards as merely empirical, the cultures that created such knowledge have in fact been systematic in preserving and utilizing their findings. Indeed, written accounts several centuries old have occasionally turned up. None of this detracts from the imagination or commercial genius of Adams or other modern entrepreneurs. It simply recognizes that private parties have at times appropriated collective, historic, and public knowledge.
Indigenous cultures had a profound, systematized knowledge of nature, which is the basis for the past and present uses of American plants. What is perceived as weak, mechanical development in such indigenous societies is often used as a justification for classifying those cultures as savage or barbaric. The depth and complexity of systems of knowledge related to the uses of indigenous plants, however, would seem to amply compensate for any such perceived weaknesses. This outstanding strength in the natural sciences, especially in the realm of genetic engineering, led to the creation and exploitation of a vast repertoire of renewable resources.
The most singular example of the creation of such plant wealth, of biological capital, was the extensive inventory of New World plants exploited and cultivated before contact. Domesticating plants, subjecting plants to human labor through cultivation, was a long process everywhere, extending over thousands of years, during which plants were made to serve the needs of people. Groups of people, for their part, adapted to agricultural life and met the challenge of producing surpluses over and above the minimal cultural and nutritional necessities of the cultivators alone. Thus, permanent settlements and sedentary life arose; cities appeared and with them specialized groups that produced, administered, and governed without concerning themselves with producing their own food. Complex societies developed and classes, ranks, and specialized professions emerged within those societies. The complex process of domestication implied the collection and accumulation of knowledge about plants and plant traits, about factors determining their growth and reproduction, and about the capacity of determined social organizations to direct and organize the development of the plant world. Land, water, temperature, winds, seasonal considerations, heavenly bodies, clouds, mountains, agricultural practices, organization of labor, and the preparation and long-term storage of food became objects of systematic observation, analysis, experimentation, correlation, and explanation. Plants were selected and transformed gradually but dramatically, methodically separated from their wild ancestors under the careful direction and observation of people in order to better serve human needs. The domestication of plants implied, in short, the accumulation of knowledge.
The development of agriculture was neither a universal process nor an obligatory phase in the evolution of all human groups. On the contrary, it was something that happened in very few places and as an exception to the rule. According to Nikolai I. Vavilov (1951), in his modern classic on the origin of cultivated plants, only eight primary centers for the domestication of plants have been documented. From these, agriculture extended outward, whether by example, imitation, or conquest. There were two primary centers for the domestication of plants in the New World, these only recently acknowledged and still subject to dispute, and secondary centers arose around these. Together, these agricultural centers contributed more than a hundred new plant crops to the indigenous American repertoire, a number equal to half the entire agricultural heritage of the Old World (Harlan, 1975: 69-78). Those who domesticated American plants were dealing with an entirely different form of vegetation and extreme variation in environmental conditions as compared to the Old World. These early New World cultivators not only created new crops but also new techniques for production, intercropping, storage, and consumption. In America, new agricultural cultures arose that allowed the development of highly varied and complex civilizations. Above and beyond their mastery of agriculture, these civilizations left behind ample evidence of their knowledge, their experimental boldness, their nonintrusive mastery of nature, and so many other things that made up a valuable heritage, a legacy only barely acknowledged by subsequent generations.
The diets of the large pre-Hispanic population were almost entirely vegetarian. Foods of animal origin were only modestly represented. They were not intentionally vegetarian as we think of it today, but rather they were extremely frugal in the consumption of meats. There were very few domesticated animals in the New World. Nature, so lavishly bestowed with plants, was far less well endowed with edible animals: the humble and prized turkeys, ducks, dogs, rodents, Andean ungulates-llamas and alpacas-bees, and cochineal, that is, if one can speak of the domestication of insects. Of these, only the first five were edible. There was some hunting of wild animals and gathering, including many varieties of insects. These complemented or supplemented what domesticated animals there were in order to supply the animal protein necessary for human nutrition, which in any case was very low. All their other food came from plants. There was no evidence of any severe nutritional deficiencies or hardships. Corn, or more properly maize (Zea mays Linn.), and potatoes (Solanum tuberosum Linn.) stand out among the basic American subsistence foodstuffs as tremendously important. It is impossible to understand the agricultural revolution that spurred both demographic growth and accelerated urbanization, making the Industrial Revolution possible, without considering the impact of corn and potatoes. The tragic Irish potato famine dramatizes the history and importance of the potato. Historians have documented that tragedy in which between eight hundred thousand and a million people died between 1845 and 1851-out of a total population of seven and a half million-when potato smut destroyed their basic food, the potato (Salaman, 1949; Grigg, 1980). Corn has received less attention, although attempts certainly were made to introduce it into Ireland in order to avoid a repetition of such a tragedy.
Corn, cassava (Manihot esculenta Crantz), and the sweet potato (Ipomoea batata Linn.), American maintenance foods, are crucial for understanding the settlement and subsequent demographic growth of tropical regions the world over, a process that has received very little attention from researchers. It is impossible to explain the accelerated growth of the world's population since the eighteenth century without taking into account American maintenance crops and their growing productivity. Population growth in burgeoning regions has not abated even today and for many nations constitutes a burden for those least able to tolerate it, especially among people of color.
Some basic foods of the American past initially lagged behind in importance but remain a potential source of promise for the future. Among these are quinoa (Chenopodium quinoa Willdenow), native to the Andes and noteworthy for its high protein content. The same is true for sesame (Amaranthus cruentus Linn.), also known as alegría or "joy" for the comfits made from its grain and unrefined sugar cane. This plant, widely eaten in pre-Hispanic Mexico, fell into disfavor during the colonial era when the conquistadors subjected it to systematic persecution by virtue of its association with indigenous religious cults. The labor intensive nature of its harvest, incompatible with the severe population losses in New Spain, also contributed to its decline. Recently, sesame has come to the attention of agronomists and nutritionists alike for its elevated content of high quality protein. Some consider it a perfect source of protein, and today research and experiments are being conducted to increase its productivity and to farm it on a commercial scale (Cole, 1979). Researchers' ongoing efforts indirectly highlight how peasants in Mexico and elsewhere, such as India, have preserved this genetic patrimony over several centuries as part of their agricultural culture and nutritional insight. Sesame, a resource of some renown in the past, can provide hope for the future as an unexpected but welcome source of alternatives.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Corn and Capitalism by Arturo Warman Copyright © 2003 by University of North Carolina Press. Excerpted by permission.
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What People are Saying About This
Fascinating and ambitious. . . explores corn at the places where several disciplines coincide.—Journal of the History of Biology
Indispensable.—Michael Pollan, author of In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto and The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals
An illuminating history of the past 500 years viewed through the evolution and migration of corn.—Foreign Affairs
Arturo Warman's study of maize elegantly documents how a domesticated New World plant could deeply affect Old World farming and eating habits and the lives and pleasures of countless human beings. The genius of Native American farmers made the whole world their beneficiaries.—Sidney W. Mintz, author of Tasting Food, Tasting Freedom and Sweetness and Power
Warman writes as an anthropologist, long concerned with the realities of maize horticulture and rural life in Mexico, but he also employs his close examination of the origins and history of corn to trace out the ramifying effects of its diffusion and spread upon the societies of the world, both New and Old. . . . In the course of this examination Warman does something rare, difficult, and marvelous.—Eric R. Wolf, author of Europe and the People Without History