I’ve oversimplified the story a bit; corn’s rapid rise is not quite as self-propelled as I’ve made it sound. As in so many other “self-made” American successes, the closer you look the more you find the federal government lending a hand—a patent, a monopoly, a tax break—to our hero at a critical juncture. In the case of corn, the botanical hero I’ve depicted as plucky and ambitious was in fact subsidized in crucial ways, both economically and biologically.
