Deep-green ears of sweet corn were stacked like cordwood, the first of the year.
“Is this local?”
I asked the skinny, sunburned fellow who was pulling ears from a burlap bag.
He averted his eyes.
“Nope,” he mumbled, “my cousin grew it over in Monkton.”
Monkton is the neighboring town, about three miles away.
His frankness could have been motivated by either honesty or self-preservation.
A generation ago, corn dictated a strict locavore policy, long before the term was invented.
I wanted to know more about that corn my grandparents grew up on.
So I went to visit Kevin Smith, who runs Sycamore Farms in upstate New York.
And it’s not just any sweet corn.
“I love everything about sweet corn,” he says.
“It’s almost like nature’s fast food.
It comes in a neat little package.
You just snap it off the stalk.
There’s nothing better.”
Smith often shucks a cob and eats it raw in the field for breakfast.
“I think my customers were lumping all corn into the same bucket,” he says.
There’s a lot of confusion over corn.
Unlike with field corn, growers of sweet corn have been slow to plant GMO seeds.
Most is canned or frozen.
The corn we eat fresh is grown on only 250,000 acres.
Monsanto hopes to change all that.
Monsanto is aiming its marketing muscle at iconic corn on the cob.
“Our sweet corn is a fresh-market product that will be sold on the ear.”
said Carly Scaduto, vegetable communications manager at Monsanto.
She wouldn’t divulge how much will be planted this year.
Fatal to insect larvae, most experts say Bt is harmless to humans and animals.
“More research is needed.
There are also environmental concerns around GMO crops.
More than 26 species of weeds in 20 states are now resistant to Roundup.
Similarly, the Environmental Protection Agency has found Bt-resistant corn root worms in four states.
I asked farmer Kevin Smith about his take on GMO sweet corn.
“I won’t grow it,” he said flatly.
(Syngenta’s Attribute and Monsanto’s Performance are the two varieties sold in North America.)
Another way: choose USDA organic corn.
GMO crops are forbidden under organic standards.
(To learn more, visit nongmoproject.org.)
As for choosing the best-tasting corn, Smith abides by a self-imposed “one-day rule.”
He won’t sell a cob that’s more than 24 hours out of the field.
Although corn lovers often profess to have favorite varieties, Smith says variety is far less important than freshness.
Time is corn’s great enemy.
“Any corn can be ruined if it’s old,” he says.
Fortunately, corn has its own way of enforcing discipline.
The season passes quickly, and when there is no longer local corn available, I abstain.
Barry Estabrook’s book Tomatoland delves into problems with modern agriculture.
