What did you learn about dietary choices from using the footprint calculator? Now imagine that you could translate what you learned into an effective societal policy on food- what would it be? And how would this policy effect the need to alleviate world hunger?
925 million people on earth do not have enough to eat according to the FAO [Food and Agricultural Organization]. That's almost 1 in 7 inhabitants of our planet!
Food & Hunger >
Corn: Harmful or Helpful?
Corn is hidden in almost everything that we eat, whether its processed into a bag of chips or eaten straight off the cob. Farmers nowadays use GMOs and all sorts of other things to help grow more corn for a lower price. Most of the time this is harmful to us, since corn is in almost everything we consume. Hidden ingredients like maltodextrin can raise your blood sugar and ultimately be detrimental to your health. According to the USDA, around 13.6 billion bushels of corn are grown in one year in the U.S. Although corn products can harm our health, corn is not always completely bad for us. Corn can actually be helpful for our atmosphere because it can eliminate carbon pollution caused by combustion of fossil fuels. In one growing season, corn can remove about 8 tons of carbon dioxide from the air. Crops typically yield about 150-180 bushels per acre. With 180 bushels, corn can supply almost an entire year's worth of oxygen for 131 people. Although GMO corn can be detrimental to our health, corn crops can significantly help in removing excess carbon dioxide from our amosph ere.
Sources:
http://www.americasfarmers.com/2014/01/ … bout-corn/
http://www.usda.gov/nass/PUBS/TODAYRPT/cropan16.pdf
Although corn may help with the removal of excess carbon, if they were to cut down a forest or level a pasture to grow the corn, wouldn't they be releasing an abundance of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere?
Revising my earlier comment, I think there would be less trees to absorb carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, and the cutting down of the forest is not the only component to the addition of carbon dioxide in the air.
Would that mean that the percentage of carbon emissions be lower in states that grow more corn, like Iowa and Nebraska, than in states that grow fewer corn?