The Corn Store

The average American grocery store now carries 48,750 items, according to the Food Marketing Institute, more than five times the number in 1975.  The number speaks to two important issues.  The first is sustainability and our collective need to do more with less.  Where does 91 different shampoos fit into a more sustainable world?  This is probably an example of the type of question that any discussion over sustainability needs to address.  The second is the complex area of decision making.  Choice seduces the modern consumer at every turn - - especially down the supermarket aisles.  Do multiple alternatives produce an environment of people thinking that the perfect choice exists or does it just produce distress?  Send someone to the store to get the rather vague tube of "toothpaste" - - 93 varieties are available.  You will probably get a phone call on which one.  Juice - - the big six in 2004 has exploded to as many as 30 today.  Historically we have been able to link democracy (i.e., freedom) with capitalism (i.e., choose and diversity) in an environment of cheap energy and a view of unlimited resources.  Sustainability kind of spins this in different directions - - all at your local grocery store.  The grocery store is the perfect laboratory for the sustainability expert and the behavioral scientist.

A second issue related to sustainability is also at play in the grocery store numbers.  Our sea of supermarket diversity is rather misleading.  Most of the diversity boils down to one single species of plant - - Zea mays.  Approximately 25% of your grocery store is about corn.  From the pig to cow to cheese to milk to "fruit" drinks to soft drinks to beer.  Corn has a role.  From glucose syrup to HFCS to MSG to xanthan gum.  Your diverse grocery store probably had a start in an Iowa corn field.

Both economics and politics have produced our reliance and commitment to corn.  But biology played the most significant role.  In the 1950s, crop yield was typically in the 70 to 80 bushels per acre range.  Today we speak in terms of 200 bushels per acre.  The only other domesticated species ever to have multiplied its productivity by such a factor is the Holstein cow.  So we are getting much higher yields per acre.  But how?  Is is more kernels per cob or more cobs per stalk?  Neither - - the higher yield of modern hybrids stems mainly from the fact that they can be planted so close together, thirty thousand to the acre instead of eight thousand 50 years ago.  Hybrids have been bred for thicker stalks and stronger root systems, the better to stand upright in a crowd and withstand mechanical harvesting.

It will be very interesting to see how this plays out in a global environment of rising middle classes wanting more and more combined with a shift to interests in bio-fuels.  The paradox and problem with sustainability - - balancing expansiveness in the context of scarcity.