I am doing something I have never been able to do on the farm. I am sitting back, watching, as a custom chopping crew works together to harvest corn silage for our dairy cows. The speed and efficiency at which the crew operates is breathtaking. Assuming no breakdowns, the entire task will be completed, start to finish, in one day. By comparison, just a few years ago I would have needed upwards of a week to complete the same job using much smaller equipment.
What I am talking about is corn silage, which is the entire corn plant, from ground level to tassel — including the cob and kernels — chopped into forage. Over the course of any given year on the farm, chopping corn silage is a true indicator that summer is winding down. School is back in session. The walnut trees are beginning to shed their leaves. In the corn fields, the kernels on the cob have hardened and are fully dented, but still milky at the base. The leaves are turning brown. When chopped, corn silage has a wonderful sweet smell, unique to itself and a harbinger of farm memories of the past.
What I am not talking about is sweet corn, which we discussed in detail last month and is as different from field corn as rum is to rubbing alcohol. Less than one percent of the U.S. corn crop is sweet corn. Sweet corn is delicious on the grill with butter — the perfect summertime vegetable. Field corn is indigestible unless it is heavily processed. In the simplest terms, sweet corn is food whereas field corn is a commodity.
America, it must be said, has stumbled into a torrid love affair with field corn. According to the USDA, more than 90 million acres — the entirety of the state of California — is dedicated to growing corn. Of this, just under half is fed to livestock, from cows to pigs to fish, and just under half is converted to fuel, in the form of ethanol. Less than 10 percent of corn grown in the U.S. is converted to actual food — think highly processed high fructose corn syrup — as well as a variety of consumer and industrial products.
For the most part, Europeans have rejected field corn since it was brought back from the New World by Christopher Columbus in 1493. The European diet is primarily wheat-based, certainly more pure, and undeniably healthier than the heavily processed American counterpart, which relies heavily on corn. In America, corn is in everything. We slurp it in sugary sodas, and eat it in practically everything. Literally, it would be easier to list the American foods that do not contain corn, than the foods that do.
Field corn is, without question, the perfect commodity crop. Without specialized processing, corn is useless to the farmer and it is useless to consumers. It is shockingly expensive to grow — for 2023, the cost of growing a single acre of field corn will be roughly $800 (not including land rent or land ownership), which is far more than it costs to grow an acre of wheat or soybeans. U.S. Corn is heavily subsidized — anywhere from $2.2 to $4.5 billion per year, depending on the source. If I were to create a world in which farmers and consumers were separated from one another yet both at the mercy of a supply chain — and its connected pricing structure — that neither party enjoyed the slightest influence in, I would push every American farmer as hard as possible to grow corn, and more of it.
Of the changes that have occurred in farming within my lifetime, growing corn is at the forefront. Traditionally, we would dedicate just enough corn acreage in order to supplement our animals, with anything left over serving as a sporadic cash crop. Certainly, we grew more alfalfa and grass than corn. For the cows, the dairy ration of yesteryear would contain two-thirds alfalfa haylage and dry hay for protein and fiber, with mineral supplements added as necessary. Maybe one-third of the cows’ diet would contain corn, in the form of shelled kernels for energy, and corn silage for palatability. After all, corn silage does taste good, hence the sweet aroma of freshly chopped forage, brought to you by the ubiquitous and wholly American high fructose corn syrup.
The dairy ration of today is nearly the opposite: Two-thirds (or more) corn, and one-third alfalfa haylage and dry hay added as an afterthought. For all farmed creatures across the nation, corn is being fed for its obvious benefit as a high-energy source that also tastes good. Market animals are growing fatter, faster, and individual milk production has skyrocketed.
The natural age of a dairy cow should be anywhere from 15 to 20 years. With meteoric productivity comes the inevitable burnout, to where the industry average age for a dairy cow today is only 4 to 6 years. Meaning, cows are producing far more milk than their predecessors, and are living one-third as long to show for it. Dairy cows are simply burning out.
If the goal of farming today is to get fatter faster, and inevitably burning out, so goes the saying — we are what we eat.
— Dan Wegmueller is the owner of Wegmueller Farms and his column appears regularly in the Times. His website is https://www.farmforthought.org.
