Agricultural History Review, Volume 65 Part 2 (2017), p. 350

My grandmother, from England, turned up her nose at corn-on-the-cob, which she thought was food only for horses. I regarded this as a curious attitude as our family eagerly anticipated the corn season each year, the ‘Taber corn’ of Alberta and the ‘peaches and cream’ of Manitoba. This book helps to explain my grandmother’s attitude and it provides fascinating insight into corn history, culture, and economy with a focus on how this crop transformed the Midwest, which is often called the ‘Corn Belt’. Confusingly called maize in Britain (where ‘corn’ refers to cereals such as wheat, barley and oats), corn is today the number one cereal crop worldwide and the major agricultural crop of the United States.

Midwest maize is a lively popular account of the importance of corn. It is a sweeping survey based mainly on secondary sources. Cynthia Clampitt writes that, while many of the topics and issues she covers have been addressed in other books, hers is the first to tie them together. This book belongs in many ways to the recent genre of studies that focus on how products or crops such as cod, salt, coffee and cotton transformed the world. Clampitt argues that corn was an ‘empire builder’, practically creating the Midwest and making it successful.

A food historian and travel writer, Clampitt covers a remarkable range of topics beginning with the history of maize in Mesoamerica, its first appearance in Europe, the diversity and adaptability of corn, changing technologies in planting, harvesting, processing and preserving, corn as fodder and the rise of stockyards, trains, and cities due to the demands of the corn economy. Clampitt brings to light the multiple uses of corn, as breakfast cereal, starch, oil, syrup, and as ethanol for gasoline. Careful attention is paid to the material culture of corn history with discussion and photographs of technology now found only in museums such as the hand-cranked corn shellers. There is a chapter on popcorn: Americans consume an astonishing 16 billion quarts or more of popped corn each year. In the chapter, ‘Celebrating Corn’, Clampitt discusses the many ways humans celebrate this crop and show their gratitude, from the ceremonies of the indigenous people of the Americas to state fairs, and the Corn Palace that has made Mitchell, South Dakota famous. There is a chapter of recipes for preparing, for example, corn oysters, cornbread, and cornmeal pudding. A final chapter examines thorny questions and issues of the present-day including genetic modification, with a focus on how more people of the world can be fed while still retaining ideals of food quality.

While I like the way corn as an indigenous crop is dealt with in several places in the book, I wish there was greater acknowledgement of the work of indigenous women farmers in what became the Midwest. The best book on corn culture, and the most detailed ever published on indigenous agriculture, is Buffalo Bird Woman’s garden by Hidatsa farmer, Maxi’diwiac, who in 1912 left a meticulous account of corn farming according to ancient methods. The crops of these women farmers were the main economic drivers of their region’s economy. They excelled in the art of plant domestication, developing hardy, early maturing varieties of corn that could flourish even in the short growing season of the northern plains, and that could withstand hail and drought as well as early frost. In an approach that is similar to Clampitt’s, Maxi’diwiac demonstrates how corn determined where people lived, their architecture, sacred ceremonies, courtship customs, and relations with neighbours. The farming methods and crops that Maxi’diwiac and other Hidatsa, Arikara and Mandan women developed over centuries endure to this day.

A map would have been useful for those not acquainted with the Midwest. It is unfortunate also that there is little venturing north of the 49th parallel. We learn that ‘Canada was not initially part of corn’s sweeping conquest of the prairies’ (p. 13), but in the Red River Settlement of Manitoba in the nineteenth century, corn was a much more successful and reliable crop than wheat. So, there is much to be learned from this book about the profound reach and influence of corn. And I learned that Grandma was not alone, for Europeans still often view corn as animal fodder.