{"id":90,"date":"2014-06-23T16:55:52","date_gmt":"2014-06-23T22:55:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.academiatica.com\/blog\/?p=90"},"modified":"2019-07-11T22:36:57","modified_gmt":"2019-07-12T04:36:57","slug":"amazingcorn","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.academiatica.com\/blog\/amazingcorn\/","title":{"rendered":"Amazing corn"},"content":{"rendered":"

We\u00a0loaded our\u00a0plates with fresh empa\u00f1adas<\/a>, cheesy tortillas<\/a> and sweet chorreadas<\/a>,<\/span>\u00a0unwrapping huge\u00a0banana leaves to reveal steaming tamales<\/a> filled with\u00a0 veggies\u00a0and meat. We ohhed, ahhed and salivated over\u00a0the tamal asado<\/a>, a sticky sweet cornbread that frankly put me\u00a0over the edge of satisfied, too full to try any more typical\u00a0Costa Rican\u00a0dishes made from maize, the star ingredient in this Tuesday tasting class.<\/p>\n

When we look at any\u00a0Costa Rican table today, chances are at least one thing on it was born of corn,\u00a0that versatile staple vital to life all over the Americas since time immemorial. <\/span>If we were to\u00a0<\/span>dig in the gooey sediment of Guanacaste\u00a0lakes, we would uncover\u00a05,000 year old maize pollens. If we\u00a0dove to the\u00a0bottom of Arenal Lagoon, we might resurface with charred cobs from 2000 BC. But even as technology like carbon-dating and genetic sequencing shuck\u00a0the history of modern maize, its origins remain mysterious and its future uncertain.<\/p>\n

\"Modern
Modern corn with its diminutive ancestor, teosinte.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Most scholars agree maize was domesticated between 7,500 and 12,000 years ago in\u00a0Mexico. Its nearest wild relative is a grass species called teosinte<\/a>, in which each teeny tiny kernel is enclosed in a hard shell. It\u00a0remains unclear how prehistoric Americans managed to cultivate the starchy stuff of tamales\u00a0from this unpromising ancestor, itself\u00a0barely a mouthful, hardly worth the effort for even the most industrious omnivore.<\/p>\n

Mankind’s unlikely mastery of maize has far from run its\u00a0course. In 2013, some\u00a032 percent of corn\u00a0grown in the entire world<\/a> was genetically modified in some way, meaning it contained genes that were altered by humans with the intention of making the crop more productive, resistent to drought, bugs and blights, or some combination of these. About\u00a090 percent of corn grown in the United States that year came from GM seeds, which are typically patented by the multinational corporations that developed them.<\/p>\n

Because of patents<\/a>, farmers can not legally use GM seeds without buying new ones\u00a0every single season. For example, Monsanto, one of the world’s biggest and most profitable GMO producers, pursued 145 lawsuits relating to patent control between 1997 and 2012.<\/p>\n

We need not root around very long\u00a0to get an earful about GMOs<\/a>.\u00a0Many say patent laws foster monopolies that put small farmers out of business while monocultures (single crop plantations) are underming soil longevity and overall ecosystem health as they wreak unintended havoc on human health, too. Others say that GMOs are a necessary innovation in agriculture, one that allows us to use less while producing more, developed in response to ballooning populations and dwindling water supplies.<\/p>\n

The debate<\/a>\u00a0over GM corn is a fiery one in a\u00a0country where extensive agriculture and extremely\u00a0high biological diversity coexist. Currently, Costa Rica does not produce\u00a0GM corn, (however, GM cotton,\u00a0soybeans, pineapple and banana plots are\u00a0grown here). This exclusion could change soon.\u00a0In Jan. 2013 a subsidiary of Monsanto gained approval from Costa Rica’s National Biosecurity Technical Commission\u00a0to grow corn, sparking mass protests and a legal\u00a0appeal, which put the project on hold until Costa Rica’s Supreme Court reviews its\u00a0constitutionality.\u00a0By 2013, 66 out of 82 cantons in Costa Rica had passed laws prohibiting GMOs in some way. Still, no national law backs this popular majority and GMO projects are ultimately approved or denied by the feds\u00a0on a case by case basis.<\/p>\n

The introduction of GM corn\u00a0is especially high stakes\u00a0because unlike soybeans and cotton, corn pollinates on the whims of the wind. Many believe GM seeds will\u00a0contaminate native fields and make it very difficult for farmers to grow heritage crops.<\/p>\n

But when I\u00a0bit into the\u00a0chorreadas at Tuesday’s class, I tasted neither the history of civilization nor its fate, just the indescribable sweetness of American corn, smothered in sour cream.<\/p>\n

Updated 7\/8\/14: Supreme Court readies to decide GM Corn Challenge<\/a><\/p>\n

-Emily Jo Cureton<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We\u00a0loaded our\u00a0plates with fresh empa\u00f1adas, cheesy tortillas and sweet chorreadas,\u00a0unwrapping huge\u00a0banana leaves to reveal steaming tamales filled with\u00a0 veggies\u00a0and meat. We ohhed, ahhed and salivated over\u00a0the tamal asado, a sticky sweet cornbread that frankly put me\u00a0over the edge of satisfied, too full to try any more typical\u00a0Costa Rican\u00a0dishes made from maize, the star ingredient in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":145,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[36,19,33,31,1],"tags":[25,52,38,49,55,4,74,56,50,48,10,53,51,54],"class_list":["post-90","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-culture","category-food","category-on-campus","category-student-life","category-uncategorized","tag-agriculture","tag-chorreadas","tag-classes","tag-corn","tag-corn-meal","tag-costarica","tag-emily-jo-cureton","tag-empanadas","tag-gmos","tag-maize","tag-oncampus","tag-tamales","tag-tasting-class","tag-tortillas"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.academiatica.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/Maiz-square.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/ppNc8-1s","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.academiatica.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.academiatica.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.academiatica.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.academiatica.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.academiatica.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=90"}],"version-history":[{"count":31,"href":"https:\/\/www.academiatica.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1007,"href":"https:\/\/www.academiatica.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90\/revisions\/1007"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.academiatica.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/145"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.academiatica.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=90"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.academiatica.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=90"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.academiatica.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=90"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}