The Evolution of Corn

It’s August, and we’re in the midst of corn season. It’s easy to take these sweet, juicy kernels for granted, especially when the average American diet doesn’t fully depend on it. However, corn (also known as maize) provides 21% of human nutrition around the world. It hasn’t always been this way – the crop has taken a long and very interesting journey to get to where it is today. Corn started its evolutionary journey as a wild plant called teosinte, which has seven to twelve hard seed-like components, is very hard to eat, and is very low in nutrition. 

Gleaning and Gaining

Last week, I had the pleasure of going “gleaning” at Boulder’s Munson Farms with my friend Bryant. While from the outside it might have just looked like riding in a pickup truck to a cornfield and picking corn for two hours, it was much more than that. We worked with Pete Terpenning, who is the Gleaning Coordinator for Community Food Share, a local food bank. Munson Farms was kind enough to let us glean for free from a cornfield that they had already picked, and once we were finished gleaning, Pete drove a full trailer load of corn to Community Food Share to be available for those who need it the most.