Having grown up in the rural Midwest, I was used to seeing miles of corn dominating the landscape between the villages of southern Minnesota. As a child, I wondered who ate all this corn. My family ate a side dish of corn maybe once a week and that seemed like the norm.
Of course, the vast majority of this corn is fed to cows, pigs, chickens and the other animals we eat, who then convert it into a much tinier amount of meat.
Most of this corn is genetically modified, and each cell contains a bacteria called BT (Bacillus thuringiensis) which is a deadly herbicide shown to decimate Monarch butterfly populations by destroying the milkweed that is the main diet of Monarch caterpillars. The crops are also sprayed with copious amounts of pesticides that are carried by rainwater into our streams and rivers that provide much of our drinking water or infiltrated into our groundwater and aquifers that supply the rest of it.
This corn and the billions of animals it feeds are also responsible for habitat loss, shrinking biodiversity and species extinction, coastal algae blooms, air pollution and climate change. Not only that, but the bright, rich ears of corn that we eat aren't even the same kind of corn. They are sweet corn, as opposed to the field corn that we feed to animals, convert to ethanol for our cars and turn into oil for frying French fries and chicken nuggets.
If we could get everyone to stop eating animals, we could convert most of these cornfields into growing vegetables, fruits, legumes and grains and have millions of acres left over to convert into rich prairie and savanna ecosystems.
Our Source for this meme is the Prairie Rivers Network .
Of course, the vast majority of this corn is fed to cows, pigs, chickens and the other animals we eat, who then convert it into a much tinier amount of meat.
Most of this corn is genetically modified, and each cell contains a bacteria called BT (Bacillus thuringiensis) which is a deadly herbicide shown to decimate Monarch butterfly populations by destroying the milkweed that is the main diet of Monarch caterpillars. The crops are also sprayed with copious amounts of pesticides that are carried by rainwater into our streams and rivers that provide much of our drinking water or infiltrated into our groundwater and aquifers that supply the rest of it.
This corn and the billions of animals it feeds are also responsible for habitat loss, shrinking biodiversity and species extinction, coastal algae blooms, air pollution and climate change. Not only that, but the bright, rich ears of corn that we eat aren't even the same kind of corn. They are sweet corn, as opposed to the field corn that we feed to animals, convert to ethanol for our cars and turn into oil for frying French fries and chicken nuggets.
If we could get everyone to stop eating animals, we could convert most of these cornfields into growing vegetables, fruits, legumes and grains and have millions of acres left over to convert into rich prairie and savanna ecosystems.
Our Source for this meme is the Prairie Rivers Network .
Meme, Corn, Animal Feed, GMO, BT, Nightmare, Midwest, Cornfields, Monarch Butterflies, Climate Change, Biodiversity, Habitat