Photo by: Erin Spencer

Where does it come from? Where’s the next stop?
All about local corn crops

Katie Aiken Ritter

Tom and Karen Albright of Jacksonville consider themselves to be mainstream agriculture. They’re not ‘big’ farmers, but this is the only way they earn their living. That’s the reason Tom worked hard to support the new regional agricultural center on Shawan Road, which broke ground late this summer.
It may surprise many people to learn that agriculture is Maryland’s biggest product. That means it’s important to our economy and our state’s financial well-being…so it behooves us to know about it!
Tom relates that not long ago, everybody had a relative on a farm. People would visit their aunt or uncle or grandparents, and have a direct connection to land and the crops that were produced on them.
But now, it’s different. He calculates that most people are now two generations away from a farm family…and that means that they just look at fields instead of running barefoot through them.

He worries about the effect this has on healthy farming and healthy people: people with no connection to the land where food is produced may not put money in the right places. We discussed how coupons are not a real value to families, because they are offered on heavily-processed food low in true nutrition and high in unit-cost, even after the coupon is used. Less than 1% of that food dollar profit goes to the farmer—which means that a lot of the dollar goes to refining, packaging, shipping and storing food—which adds little or nothing to the value it brings our bodies.

Given a lack of connection to the land, we asked Tom to educate us a little about the business of one aspect of farming. Cornfields are beautiful. We all see them. Tell us about a corn crop.

Here it is, the five-minute version:

First, you need to have your soil tested by the nutrient management program. Since we live in the Chesapeake Bay watershed, the state is working to reduce the amounts of fertilizer that go into the bay.

Sediment runoff and fertilizers are two huge Bay problems. Fertilizers that wash off lawns and fields cause algae to grow as well as perfect grass and corn. That algae smothers baby oysters and crabs and underwater grasses - and the whole bay ecosystem gets out of whack.

Once you get the soil tested, you begin to plant. It takes about 28,000 seeds to plant an acre of corn, which you plant in 30-inch-apart rows, 6-8 inches from seed to seed…and you need to get it done between mid-April to early May.

Then you pray. For sun, but not too much; for enough rain, but not too much. For the equipment to hold up. For your back to stay strong. For 110 days, you watch your crop grow from tiny sprouts of green mist across the field, to when golden tassels show at the top, and the corn is in flower.

If you’ve grown up in the Zone, and you drive on a warm mid-summer night with the windows open, you know the smell of green corn in tassel. It is rich and full and sweet.

Then, it’s decision time. Some farmers will cut the corn down while the ears are full but the stalk is still green, then chop it and ferment it to become what is called silage, a tasty food source for beef cattle or goats or sheep. Ruminant animals love silage. So do restaurants. I learned that you can’t get the fine finish desired in marbled beef from strictly grass-fed animals.

Other farms will let the corn ripen and dry, and in October, harvest time, combines will travel from field to field cutting down the corn, shredding the dry stalks, and putting the corn into large trucks in the field. With a good year, you can expect to get from 100-150 bushels of corn per acre. The trucks take it to the dryer – enormous grain silos – and there propane is used to heat the corn kernels until they get the moisture content down to 15.5%.

This corn can be used for feed for the farmer’s own animals—cattle, turkeys, chickens, hogs—or can be sold to a grain mill.

Generally the grain mills are in the Lancaster or Gettysburg regions. There are many of them in the Mt. Joy and Elizabethtown areas. Grain mills on the Eastern Shore almost exclusively supply Purdue, for whom grain is also brought in from the Midwest by train. We live, Tom says, in a ‘grain-deficient’ area. While cattle can ferment grass in their several stomachs and convert it to protein, other animals—poultry and hogs—cannot, so they require a lot of corn or soy grain.

Grain mills store the dried corn until it is needed for food products, and then formulate it in different ways. It can be hammer milled, or crushed, or roasted. There are lots of different processes for treating the corn, depending on what it will be used for.

While a tremendous amount of corn grown goes right back to farmers for meat production, there are three other major uses for corn: dog and cat food, ethanol, and corn syrup.

Lots of corn is grown just for the corn syrup that is ubiquitous in American processed food..but not much of that comes from Maryland farms. This is typically a product of Midwestern crop fields.

Dog and cat food is manufactured from field corn in grain mills around the country. For instance, there is a Purina mill in nearby Pennsylvania. Look at the first ingredient of your animal’s food. What’s it likely to say? Corn.

And ethanol? What about that?

Tom Albright’s opinion as a multi-generational farmer is that ethanol from corn is the equivalent of baby steps: you’ve got to learn to walk before you run. While corn ethanol is not the long-term answer to less dependence on petroleum, it is a necessary foundation that will lead to the next logical step. Tom Albright sees celluronic ethanol—from switchgrass or wood chip waste—as the end solution, but recognizes the need to build a foundation program first while long-term solutions are designed and implemented.

It takes about 1000 acres of grain production to reasonably support a farm family business. If you do the math on cattle instead of corn crops, you can figure $100 profit per cow. That means 500 head of cattle must be raised to produce a $50,000 income. You can feed many more cattle from an acre of silage than grass feeding—but there may be health benefits to eating animals raised on grass. It all comes down to taking the time to make informed decisions.

A farmer sees it all as energy. Bushels per acre, or tons per acre, it’s all carbohydrates and nutrients to the grower of crops. It’s headaches, it’s long hours, worry about weather, managing hired help and mortgaged machinery…and it’s still the most beautiful thing that a farmer, and we, can see, driving down our rural roads.

Tom posed this question, and it literally gives food for thought: seriously, why support local farmers?

And then he answered his own question. Farmland beautifies our area. Open green lands satisfy the soul, and increase the value of our homes. Buying local food, organic or not, is one of the fastest ways you can reduce carbon emissions. And our locally grown food—fruits, vegetables, meats, dairy, and poultry—is the safest you can have anywhere in the country…in the world.

Green acres, baby…it’s the place for me.