Geoff Lawton says grain is not really worth the while - what are your thoughts?

Geoff Lawton on grain there is something to be said for it. But I like a good loaf of bread. I would love to grow it myself.
And also permaculture includes animals, and not only herbivore animals. Chicken, ducks and milking cows need a bit of grain to lay or give milk, at least that is what my information is.
What do you think?
How do you go about the processing procedure of grains, which is the biggest hurdle?
What are your yields per m2? Is it really more efficient to grow starchy root crops in terms of starch output?

Today I have seen several posts with M2, what is that?

I like his way of thinking in the video.  Makes good point for his own desires.

If a person lives in the desert growing grain is good.

So according to the video growing grain where you live would be good, (zone 10a).

Anne Miller wrote:Today I have seen several posts with M2, what is that?

m2 is square metres.

I haven't figured out how to make it look the way it should.

If I do, I'll come back and edit the post...

edit - hold down the alt key then press 0,1,7, 8 and a superscript 2 appears by magic! but only if you use the numeric keypad, not the numbers at the top of the keyboard...

²

m²

Anne Miller wrote:Today I have seen several posts with M2, what is that?

I like his way of thinking in the video.  Makes good point for his own desires.

If a person lives in the desert growing grain is good.

So according to the video growing grain where you live would be good, (zone 10a).

m2 is square meters but my international keyboard does not do that !

From the video summary:

Grains easily fit in places like the deserts and cold climates where there is dormancy and time to process everything. Outside of these climates, grain is inefficient. There are a lot of easier foods to grow in terms of nutrition for the labor required. (zip) However, usually, the amount of work necessary for the food gained just isn’t worth it.

Geoff doesn't go into the alternatives at all, just says other foods are better value. Potatoes are one here that grow good calories and can be fed to livestock as well as people.

I'm experimenting with growing grains (rye, oats, bere barley), and suspect they would be easier fed to livestock than processed for people food....

I think grain has the advantage when it comes to storage duration.
How many roots can be stored for years and still be edible?
This allows surplus to be built up, year over year.
This kind of surplus can equate to food security, but also translate into wealth, with all that comes with that.

The soil building properties of small grains must be part of the equation. Winter rye is likely the best because it spans 2 growing seasons, the root system is phenomenal, especially on fine soils.  We have early seeded oats on all of our tillable acres this spring, some will be left for harvest on our new transitional acres. The balance will get a very shallow incorporation and then a row crop planted. I have oats growing in my garden and will just knife in the garden seeds and let the oats do their thing. Our goal is to feed the soil life first and then let the long days of summer have their way. In 2024 we seeded oats in the spring on our 1st year transitional tillable acres. We harvested a decent and quality oat crop in August. The straw and residue were shallowly incorporated soon after harvest and we got a beautiful volunteer oat cover crop to take us through the winter. 2 crops in one season with a living root in the ground for 6 months. Used some of the 2024 oat crop as seed for this year's cover which we no tilled into last year's soybean stubble. Minimize soil disturbance and good things should follow.

It depends on climate and how adapted the variety is to your soil.

I'm always shocked this time of year.  I plant a packet of seeds from the shop at the same time and density of the peas seeds I've been saving for over 10 years.  This year I got the same variety from the same source.  The new seed are almost an inch tall, maybe 50% survival.  My seed has grown to about 6 inches tall and is climbing the wire nicely.  I sware there are twice as many plants as seeds I planted.

Before saying if something is worth it or not, it's good to grow and save seed in your conditions for a couple of years.  Once it's established, see if it fits in with the farming and lifestyle of the humans.

Nicola,

Ruminants do not need any grain to produce milk. Poultry does not need it either - only if someone wants to produce unnatural roasting chicken (extremely overweight very young bird, very tasty) - in the older times people were eating pullets.

I would say that the same rule applies to grains as to other food products - if it grows for you without extreme effort, pursue it.

I have tried twice: rye and wheat which were taken over by wet season weeds (which is 95% of natives/weeds/invasives that grow here). Then I learned that I have to prepare the soil better, by several shallow cultivations to destroy germinating natives within some timeframe and that I have to use much higher seeding ratios. Also in case of hand sowing, the distribution pattern is not uniform and it allows weed development in more open spots.
Mechanical seeder would be helpful, but it's rather too expensive for my 2000 m2 plot.
I was using recommended  200 kg/ha, so 20 kg per experimental 1000 m2. It was definitely not enough. It's probably right if helped with herbicides and fertilizers. I would opt for two times more to surpress weeds naturally. I may try again in the future.

Growing & processing most grains does seem very labor intensive.  Many crops that can fill a similar nutritional niche are easier to grow and harvest and process.  However, as William Bronson mentioned, the long-term storage potential of grain is attractive.

Disasters like Floods, Fires, Volcano, etc. have the potential to wipe out perennial tree crops or make crop-growing difficult for an extended time.  Having a surplus of grains in storage that last for several years may have kept human settlements alive during multi-year bad weather episodes in the past.  On the other hand, during extreme times, stored grains are more vulnerable to desperate thieves than in-ground potatoes/roots or tree crops.

I have not attempted growing grains on a large scale.  Maize/Corn seems to be the easiest grain crop for harvesting and processing.  
My aim is to fill the grain niche via Chestnuts, Corn, and Potatoes, with some Amaranth and Oats maybe too, and other tree crops.

Also of interest is the work of Wes Jackson and others in developing a system for growing perennial grains in diverse-species Prairie conditions.

Cristobal Cristo wrote:Nicola,

Ruminants do not need any grain to produce milk. Poultry does not need it either - only if someone wants to produce unnatural roasting chicken (extremely overweight very young bird, very tasty) - in the older times people were eating pullets.

I would say that the same rule applies to grains as to other food products - if it grows for you without extreme effort, pursue it.

I have tried twice: rye and wheat which were taken over by wet season weeds (which is 95% of natives/weeds/invasives that grow here). Then I learned that I have to prepare the soil better, by several shallow cultivations to destroy germinating natives within some timeframe and that I have to use much higher seeding ratios. Also in case of hand sowing, the distribution pattern is not uniform and it allows weed development in more open spots.
Mechanical seeder would be helpful, but it's rather too expensive for my 2000 m2 plot.
I was using recommended  200 kg/ha, so 20 kg per experimental 1000 m2. It was definitely not enough. It's probably right if helped with herbicides and fertilizers. I would opt for two times more to surpress weeds naturally. I may try again in the future.

The majority of ruminants available in America very much do need extra carbohydrates to maintain condition while putting out a decent volume of milk. That's why so many who try to just skip it end up milking skeletal animals. While it doesn't strictly need to be grain, that is the most economical way to do it at the moment unless you have groves of nut trees/a good fodder setup/tons of root crops ect. Just because Big Ag pushing grain feeding too far doesn't mean there isn't a reason and utility behind it originally.

I've read accounts of root vegetables being used as winter food for cattle in particular.
Cutting it into smaller pieces was either necessary or very advantageous.
Grain avoids this step entirely and it's useful for many different animals.
It's like fuel that can run your chicken, cow or pig, even if it's not the best fuel for any one of them.

Of course animals can lay eggs, birth litters or give milk without it, but we have been breeding them to thrive on gran for a long time.
All is not lost, there are plenty of people breeding grass and forage reliance back into cattle, pigs and chickens

I'm hoping to create a corn/ fava bean rotation at my friends food pantry garden.
Both can be stored, both can be left to grow on their own, both produce a lot of biomass.
The corn is actually easier to process than the beans, and both keeps for years.

I note that grains supported many populations of farmers who had nothing but stone tools.

William Bronson wrote: I think grain has the advantage when it comes to storage duration.
How many roots can be stored for years and still be edible?
This allows surplus to be built up, year over year.
This kind of surplus can equate to food security, but also translate into wealth, with all that comes with that.

OK you don't need that if you live in zone 10 and up.

First, I think feeding the grain to animals is somewhat easier because it circumvents too much processing.
Then there is the other advantage that it gives your bedding for the animals this is a plus!
I also want to know whether that threshing in the bucket with chains on an electric drill works; it's all over YouTube.

I don’t think it is worthwhile for me to grow. They usually get eaten by wildlife, or they don’t flourish. The only one I’ve had moderate success with is sorghum, surprisingly enough, with corn and millet being okay but still being gobbled by birds, going moldy in the cob, or other issues. Not only that but last year I fell ill, and would feel strange and weak and numb other nasty things after eating grains, so I don’t eat them anymore (except in very small quantities). Oddly, I ate the neighbor’s field corn raw, gleaned from the field after harvest, and it didn’t bother me.

There are plenty of other things to eat that trying to grow something that gets chomped and sometimes makes me sick, seems like I needn’t much bother. However, sorghum keeps coming up in conversation and random places, so I might try again this year.

Nicola Bludau wrote:

William Bronson wrote: I think grain has the advantage when it comes to storage duration.
How many roots can be stored for years and still be edible?
This allows surplus to be built up, year over year.
This kind of surplus can equate to food security, but also translate into wealth, with all that comes with that.

OK you don't need that if you live in zone 10 and up.

I think zone 10 includes places that are threatened by multi year droughts.
Surplus seems ideal in these situations.

Grains!? What a huge topic.

The grain called corn produces huge yields with minimal labor. A simple, hand cranked, hundred year old sheller can process hundreds of pounds per hour.

The grain rye grows wild in my community without irrigation, without weeding, without planting. It self-grows as a feral food. Harvest goes quickly.

A 13 foot long row of wheat provides 5 pounds of grain for me, which could feed me bread for a week. It takes me an hour to harvest and clean with simple tools like a stick, tarp, and a couple of buckets. So in 50 hour week, I could harvest and clean enough wheat to feed myself for a year.

I grow oats, but haven't fallen in love with productivity or processing.

Barley seems hard for me.

I can't grow rice.

I might could grow sorghum, millet, amaranth, or kinwa grains, but I didn't grow up with them as part of my social indoctrination.



.

My friend Stephane is part of a community that grows a big field of it and processes it into bread for everybody involved. It's a community of retired agricultural folk who've been working at mechanics. They've a solar powered day for processing it all. They're making flour corn into flour too. But he says most times it's more difficult to get people to do outdoor gardening chores than it is to get people to fix a broken machine.
I guess it's an interesting way to get people involved in sustainable agriculture who otherwise wouldn't be.

But i couldn't get all that going myself, so i see it more as a weed surpressing soil builder and animal food provider, but i'm only in an experimental stage

Another thing to consider is that we seldom find a farm alone.  A 2 min drive from my farm, there is one that grows lovely organic grain.  Perfect for our own consumption but pricy for animal.  Their soil is excellent for grain as it semi floods in the winter and gets a lot of soil build-up.

I often wonder if the old village model where people grew lots of what they grow best, and less of what their land grows poorly.  Sustainable at the community level vs at the individual.

But you know, if I hadn't spend several years growing my own grain, I wouldn't know how it fit in my lifestyle and farming style.  It's very much about trying things for ourselves and if we move, erasing any assumptions we grew.

The storage point is the one that keeps me coming back to grain. Roots and fruit are great but you can't stack them in a barn for three years. There's something to be said for having a buffer that doesn't rot.

Hugo Morvan wrote:It's a community of retired agricultural folk who've been working at mechanics. They've a solar powered day for processing it all. They're making flour corn into flour too. But he says most times it's more difficult to get people to do outdoor gardening chores than it is to get people to fix a broken machine.

I admit one of the reasons I got into grain is there is a dilapadated water mill near me, and it would be lovely to see it functional again. It would also be lovely to do it as a community effort, but I thought local grain was a good place to start!

I simply started, and hope that these horrible feral deer don't get in! It is autumn so I sowed one bed barley out of the chicken food, another one sunflower (not really a grain) and some fancy ancient wheat they had in the health food section of the supermarket.
I also realised that I can't grow sweet potatoes in the same spot year after year - i have a patch in the front yard that I want to sow with some grains it would certainly look lovely (and the birds probably like it too).
I like my bread and i would like to grow my own chook food.

I've dabbled in cereal grains (wheat, oats, barley) and at the scale I could produce them on the land I'm working, they're just too hard for the yield. I did get a nice accidental barley harvest this past season from a load of straw I used to mulch the pinto beans. I'm guessing there will be enough at the end to make a couple weeks' worth of breakfast gruel, plus a pot or two of split pea and barley soup. But the grain that I've gone all in on is corn, especially flint corn. My mainstays are an eight-row which I think comes from a Painted Mountain line, and kaanga māori, a grunty white corn that has been grown for generations in the east coast region and looks almost exactly like Mohawk white corn (and I've got Mohawk ancestors so that's a seed line I'd like to maintain).

Corn works for me because it likes our cool summers. I do have to fend off predators at the beginning, middle, and end of the season...blackbirds will demolish every single seedling if I don't net it, sparrows eat the pollen packets off the tassels, and ripening ears are an attractive treat for rats. But in spite of these hassles, I can usually get a decent harvest. It's also easy to store and process via nixtamalisation, versus the threshing and winnowing required for wheat and similar grains.

I don't know a lot about growing grain, except for corn which is easy to do here. I've never tried to grow wheat because I don't think I could grow enough to matter in my little gardens and I don't know how or have much motivation to learn how to make bread. I love both oats and barley, but they are hard because of birds that eat it and some kind of fungus that infects the seed heads. I don't process them except to remove the husks and am happy if I can pull off harvesting a teacup full of clean grain. Barley in beef broth with onion is a treat for me, oats with honey and cream even more so.

Millet and sorghum are easy to grow here too but I don't have chickens to feed them to, so I don't really know what to do with them.  Job's tears grow easily; they are very productive and volunteer readily. I guess you can eat them, I'm going to look into how to do that and since they are so easy, I'm considering a breeding project to improve them if I can.

I like rice a lot, especially wild rice and although I doubt I could ever grow it in serious quantity, I'd like to give it a try in my little garden pond but not sure where to find seeds.

Most grain is just grass seeds and we have lots of wild grasses, some of which I think are feral barley and maybe also wheat and rye. They seem to get along ok despite the birds and fungus. Another project to consider, find and collect those with bigger seeds and try cultivating them.

Overall, I guess I agree that grain, other than corn isn't worth a lot of effort where I live, except mostly just for fun and curiosity and the occasional treat.

I am just now seriously getting into grain. This is mostly because of the calories per acre it has the potential to produce both as people food and livestock food.  My region produces about 170 bushels of corn per acre using convention farming methods. Prime land in Illinois produces 220 bushels per acre.  Even if I only produce 1/4 of that 170 bushels on an acre, it would still be a huge win.

If my math is right, it sounds like a good corn yield works out to about 0.25 lb of dried kernels per square foot.

If my math on apples is correct, dried apple slice yield would be more like 0.15 lb.  I am impressed that corn produces more on average.

Wondering if a forest garden's stacked layers can make up the gap.

Hi Greg,

Corn has a reputation for being empty calories. I have never researched that concept for its accuracy. Assuming it is correct, it is better to eat corn than nothing.  But, long ago I planted clover for hay.  And, as I look into growing corn, I am also planting Sunflowers.   Going on to your post, I would love to have a producing apple orchard.

Grains are high in calorie density compared to root crops which make them important staples. Different regions grow certain types of grains that are more suitable to local temperature and rainfall patterns. Wheat can grow in colder climate with dryland farming. Corn, sorghum and rice are C4 plants so they are productive in hot and high light environments. Rice is indispensable in feeding people in hot humid regions because the flooded paddies are anaerobic to maintain soil fertility for repeated cropping.

I like to grow winter rye mainly as cover crop. They offer some greens for chickens and protect the soil from wind erosion. In late spring I cut some down to plant my garden and let some go to seed. So far I just let my chickens have the grains but I am considering cooking the berries too. I haven't eaten rye before except store rye bread.

I had some issues the last time I grew rye as a crop instead of cover crop. After the ryes were done, the soil looked quite depleted and sat baking in summer drought. The harvest timing and probably allelopathic effect make growing a following ground cover difficult. I sow less densely this year, allowing other weeds to grow in between. They can take over the space when the rye is gone.

I'm not sure it's "worth it" to grow grains and yet I keep trying

- Grains provide me with a valuable byproduct, mulch. Finding organic straw/hay in my area is basically impossible, and even conventional straw is challenging to get in large quantities to my home. I love growing my own mulch.
-Grains can be treated somewhat like a living mulch/cover crop in areas where I'm not actively growing, so are useful in my rotation.
- Some grains are just ornamentally beautiful..
- And I'm celiac. I have noticed in previous crises that gluten free food disappears quickly. It's often hard to find, too.  Being able to supplement my own diet helps. It's also more expensive than "normal" grains, so a higher $ value per kg. And I struggle to find places to buy gluten free grains in bulk.
- Grains are easier calories to store than, say, tomatoes or apples - or potatoes! I also find them easier to plant/tend.

The challenge seems to be finding grains that are easily processable on a human scale, including grains that don't need to be hulled.  Right now corn and sorghum have been most successful for me.

John F Dean wrote:I am just now seriously getting into grain. This is mostly because of the calories per acre it has the potential to produce both as people food and livestock food.  My region produces about 170 bushels of corn per acre using convention farming methods. Prime land in Illinois produces 220 bushels per acre.  Even if I only produce 1/4 of that 170 bushels on an acre, it would still be a huge win.

I am getting 50-60 bushel/acre using open-pollinated seed with no added fertilizer. Northern Illinois. Conventional ag can produce 200 bushel/acre of corn here.

I would very much like to do a trial with my seed under max fertilizer and chemical inputs, compared with modern hybrid seed under my no-input methods. Modern hybrids are truly amazing. It wouldn't surprise me if they still out-produced my old-style seeds.

M Ljin wrote:I don’t think it is worthwhile for me to grow. They usually get eaten by wildlife, or they don’t flourish. The only one I’ve had moderate success with is sorghum, surprisingly enough, with corn and millet being okay but still being gobbled by birds, going moldy in the cob, or other issues. Not only that but last year I fell ill, and would feel strange and weak and numb other nasty things after eating grains, so I don’t eat them anymore (except in very small quantities). Oddly, I ate the neighbor’s field corn raw, gleaned from the field after harvest, and it didn’t bother me.

There are plenty of other things to eat that trying to grow something that gets chomped and sometimes makes me sick, seems like I needn’t much bother. However, sorghum keeps coming up in conversation and random places, so I might try again this year.

I do grow some grains, but I mostly stick with sorghum. The thing though with sorghum, is that the hull can be tough on your stomach and hard to digest. Like you do with whole oats, they need to soak overnight before use. This allows for the hull to soften up, so they won’t irritate and the nutrients can be absorbed. At least that’s my experience growing and using them. Even if I process them through my flaker, they still are hard. Now I treat them as overnight oats.
I tried millet, but it didn’t like it here, not a single seed germinated. Amaranth did fine, but works best as wildlife food, since it’s a mess getting the seeds out and separating out bugs and dust.
I did corn last year, but rats ate it all. I am going to try growing them again this year, with a thick spray of hot sauce all over the stalks and cobs. Hopefully this works. I want to get us to the point, where we don’t have to buy feed for our chickens.
Right now, they eat extra cabbages and lettuce that has gone bitter, but we have to supplement with a chicken feed.

Nicola Bludau wrote:I simply started, and hope that these horrible feral deer don't get in! It is autumn so I sowed one bed barley out of the chicken food, another one sunflower (not really a grain) and some fancy ancient wheat they had in the health food section of the supermarket.
I also realised that I can't grow sweet potatoes in the same spot year after year - i have a patch in the front yard that I want to sow with some grains it would certainly look lovely (and the birds probably like it too).
I like my bread and i would like to grow my own chook food.

Why can’t you grow sweet potatoes in the same spot? We are in grow zone 10b, and treat the sweet potatoes as a self seeding crop.
I have grown mine in the same two raised beds for 6 years. I do a 2 year cycle for harvests. Let’s call my beds an and b.
The first year I only harvest from bed A,  but leave the smaller sweet potatoes in the soil. Then I plant beets, parsnips and leeks to grow during the cold season. Once springs come around, the small sweet potatoes I left, starts sprouting and puts out leaves. At this point I harvest the beets, but leave the leeks, as they deters the wildlife from eating the sweet potatoes.
The first year, I don’t harvest bed B. I just leave it alone until fall of the second year. The second year I harvest, but again leave the smallest of the sweet potatoes in the soil. The sweet potatoes have grown huge at this point, with many tubers at 5 pounds each. After the harvest, I grow  beets, diakon radishes and leeks for the cold season, until spring, when the small sweet potatoes set out leaves.
Using this method produces a lot of large sweet potatoes and other crops, without me having to deal with starting sweet potato slips every year. It also gives us access to sweet potato leaves all year round, though I never harvest more than 20%, since anything more will stunt the growth of the sweet potatoes.
I do top off the beds after harvesting, with compost, rabbit pellets, phosphorus and potassium.

Thom Bri wrote:I am getting 50-60 bushel/acre using open-pollinated seed with no added fertilizer. Northern Illinois. Conventional ag can produce 200 bushel/acre of corn here.

Am I right thinking you get other crops from the same space though Thom, you have a three (plus) sisters plot going on?

Ulla, I haven’t noticed that about sorghum. I’ve grown one tight-hulled kind and also have some loose-hulled sorts that separate easily. Maybe it would help to try a different variety? Are you growing one that’s specifically noted as grain sorghum?

Saying flat out that grains aren't worth it is a little intense, compared to what Mr. Lawton actually said in the video. I thought he seemed quite careful to clarify that he wasn't making a universal statement, only one based on his specific context, and suggesting that most small-scale producers would find their context to be similar to his.

For what it's worth, I can add some anecdotes as someone who lives in one of those climates that I'm sure Lawton would consider an outlier. Depending on the season, I have to deal with dry and/or hot and/or cold, plus constant high-elevation intense sun and frequent high winds, and to top it off the occasional flash-flood-inducing deluge (99% of which is wasted as runoff, mind you) which may even include hailstorms in June. I think just about the only problems that I don't have are lack of space, or any season which is consistently too wet. Grains are shockingly resilient in all these conditions, compared to anything else I've tried so far. Granted, I've only been running small experiments for a couple years, but these are literally the only plants I've gotten a yield from which I could imagine scaling up to anything useful. Especially if the goal is significant calorie production.

Winter rye is an absolute champ. Sow in early fall, water a bit just to get established (in my ideal world I would sow right before a big fall rainstorm, but of course that relies on some luck with timing), and it survives the winter entirely by itself while I'm off being a snowbird down south. When I get back, it doesn't seem to have missed me at all. No matter how negligent I am about watering, weeding, or any other sort of work, the rye just keeps surviving almost like a wild plant.

Buckwheat is the major contender so far for summer. It seems to need a bit more water than the "true" grains (those in the grass family, Poaceae), but in good conditions the ratio of seed sown to seed harvested is quite high. That, combined with its whole life cycle being so short, means that the extra water isn't as big of a deal compared to something like corn which I have to keep watering from spring all the way through fall. Yes, I know about the Hopi corn wizards who magically summon a yield from bare desert with no irrigation, but I'm new to this and don't have the advantage of that generational knowledge.

The next best thing after grains seems to be certain legumes, and thank the gods for that because that protein could actually help me survive the apocalypse, if it comes to that. But that's for another thread, of course.

M Ljin wrote:Ulla, I haven’t noticed that about sorghum. I’ve grown one tight-hulled kind and also have some loose-hulled sorts that separate easily. Maybe it would help to try a different variety? Are you growing one that’s specifically noted as grain sorghum?

Yes, I grow the right type, that’s supposed to only have a thin hull. Also, the sorghum you buy in stores, has been steamed before drying. I grow red sorghum/mononite/texacona. I use them for hot cereal and for baking gluten free “rye” bread.
I started researching sorghum, after I saw that the sorghum I bought in the stores, easily became flakes when I used my flaker, while my homegrown didn’t. I found a few videos from India, where they explained this method.

John F Dean wrote:Corn has a reputation for being empty calories. I have never researched that concept for its accuracy.

I have done some amount of research on this and related topics, and would love to chime in here.

For one, if you find yourself in a famine and try to live off of any single plant for months or years on end, you're probably going to have some health problems.

For two, if you live in the US, you're surrounded by corn-based junk food because it's simply the cheapest carbohydrate to manufacture junk food with (due to government subsidies blah blah blah), so a lot of the things you hear about the nutrition of corn are actually just talking about the nutrition of Doritos or whatnot. And then there's the high fructose corn syrup, which I suspect gets sorta mixed up with actual whole corn in people's hazy memories of all the hundreds of contradictory things they've been told about nutrition. You can also make bourbon out of corn, but nobody gets confused on the nutrition difference between those two.

Also worth mentioning is that if you do find yourself in a situation where you're trying to live off of predominantly corn, there is a required processing step which is not common knowledge in the English-speaking world. Basically you gotta boil it in a basic (high ph) solution before you eat it, or else you might get a disease called pellagra. It's a nutrient deficiency problem, not a poisoning problem, so don't worry if you're just eating corn as part of a varied diet. But historically, many many people died because of a lack of communication between the people who originally domesticated this plant, and people who just took it and started planting it and never asked anything about how to prepare it.

Does it have less micronutrients than broccoli or carrots or something? I dunno, probably. But good luck trying to eat 2000 calories worth of broccoli every day. It seems to me that the main reason people hate on corn specifically is its predominance in the US agricultural system, which is messed up in so many different ways that blaming it on just one plant seems kinda crazy to me.