Maize is arguably the one most necessary crop on this planet and is rivalled solely by soybeans by way of versatility. That stated, it’s, together with sugar cane and palm oil, among the many most controversial crops, proving significantly so to critics of business agriculture. Though maize is normally related to the Western world, it has performed a distinguished function in Asia for a very long time, and, in latest a long time, its significance in Asia has soared. For higher or worse, or extra possible for higher and worse, its function in Asia appears to be following the Western script.
When one thinks of meals and foodways in Asia, it’s onerous to keep away from the topic of rice. For good cause, too: rice for millennia has been primus inter pares among the many continent’s sources of meals. Not for nothing is rice identified in India as dhanya, which means sustainer of the human race. One other illustration – in some methods much more vivid – is that, in conventional China, a typical (and well mannered) method of claiming good day was through the idiomatic expression ‘Have you ever eaten your rice as we speak?’ And, talking of China, one can’t spend a lot time there with out listening to somebody speak about their pursuit of a profession with the promise of an ‘iron rice bowl’ – ie, assured job safety. In different phrases, rice rules.
Not so quick, although. Though rice could also be numero uno in Asia, we’ve lengthy identified that different cultigens – certainly different meals, extra broadly – have performed distinguished roles there as properly. Fish and seafood represent vastly necessary sources of protein in a lot of Asia, and cereal grains resembling wheat, millet and, to a lesser extent, oats present sustenance to giant numbers in numerous components of Asia, and have accomplished so for lengthy durations of time. Legumes (together with soybeans) are necessary just about in every single place in Asia, as are different greens and fruits, and taro and breadfruit have their locations, too.
Furthermore, ever because the onset of the so-called Columbian Trade within the late fifteenth century, ‘New World’ crops from the Western hemisphere have been a part of the combo, in sure areas profoundly influencing and enriching Asian diets, agricultural manufacturing patterns and foodways. Quite a few legumes from the Americas, for instance, have been adopted in numerous components of Asia, as have been greens and fruits resembling squashes of assorted varieties, pumpkin, papaya, guava, avocado, tomatoes, pineapples, cocoa and, in fact, chili peppers (fruit of vegetation from the genus Capsicum), with out the final of which meals in lots of components of Asia merely can’t do. Extra necessary nonetheless – in a caloric sense no less than – have been the roles of American cultigens resembling peanuts, manioc, Irish potatoes and candy potatoes, the final two of which grew to become indispensable dietary mainstays in quite a few Asian international locations, together with one different cultigen, the cereal maize (Zea mays), my principal focus of consideration right here.
Maize was launched to Asia early within the Columbian Trade by numerous means and varied teams – retailers, army forces, adventurers, freebooters and the like. Use and manufacturing of the cereal grain unfold rapidly. By the center of the sixteenth century, maize was grown extensively in components of China and, earlier than 1700, in India, with the cereal grain eaten (and in any other case employed) in quite a lot of methods in each areas. The Portuguese possible launched maize to each China and India, however the Spanish and the Dutch have been additionally concerned within the transmission course of in Asia, the Philippines and what’s now Indonesia specifically.
Over the centuries, maize has become more and more necessary in each absolute and relative phrases in lots of components of Asia, though the dimensions of its significance has seldom been absolutely appreciated. In 2019, about one-third of the world’s maize was grown in Asia, up from lower than 17 per cent 40 years earlier. Who knew? Maybe much more shocking is the truth that, for the previous decade, maize has been China’s leading cereal grain, with manufacturing outpacing each rice and wheat, the nice staples typically related to China. And that’s hardly the one nation-state in Asia the place maize manufacturing is of main significance. Whereas China was the world’s second largest producer of maize – behind solely the United States – in 2019, different Asian international locations additionally ranked among the many world’s largest producers, with Indonesia sixth, India seventh, the Philippines seventeenth, Pakistan twentieth, and Vietnam twenty fifth, simply forward of Thailand in twenty sixth place. The significance of rice manufacturing however, maize, clearly, isn’t any curio or oddment in Asia, and calls for a more in-depth, correctly historicised and contextualised look.
You identify the meals or product, and it possible consists of maize in some kind
Maize is as we speak the world’s second main crop of any type by way of whole manufacturing, behind solely sugar cane, and the leading cereal grain produced by a large margin. Furthermore, manufacturing has grown quickly in latest a long time, with world maize output tripling between 1982 and 2019. In 2019, international maize manufacturing reached 1,148,487 billion metric tons, whereas the totals for wheat and rice manufacturing every got here to about two-thirds of the extent for maize in 2019, with wheat at 765,770 million metric tons, and paddy rice at 755,474 million metric tons.
The prominence of maize amongst cereal grains is quickly comprehensible, for it has quite a few benefits on each the provision and demand sides. Concerning provide issues: maize possesses nice genetic variability and is quickly adaptable to quite a lot of weather conditions, whether or not temperate or tropical; it may be grown on a variety of soil sorts and on soil of poor high quality; its rising season, typically talking, is pretty brief; it’s much less labour- and water-intensive than rice; and, as a so-called C4 plant, it fixes nitrogen extra effectively than do C3 cereals resembling rice and wheat. In Asia, it’s usually grown in hilly upland areas unsuitable for a lot of different crops. In Southeast Asia and East Asia, 80 per cent of the maize grown is rain-fed, with out the good thing about irrigation, though in some areas it’s grown on irrigated paddy fields after the rice harvest.
Turning to the demand aspect: no cereal grain is extra versatile than maize, which might be employed effectively, successfully and, extra to the purpose, profitably in an enormous number of methods. Certainly, its multifarious makes use of and elusive, usually cloaked id render maize the quintessential postmodern crop. Not solely does it ‘gas’ people and their shares of animals, but additionally, when transformed into the chemical compound ethanol, the automobiles they drive. When transformed into both sugar and syrup (or dextrose, which is chemically indistinguishable from glucose) or corn starch (dextrin), it finds its method – usually at an intermediate stage – into an enormous array of processed meals and completed merchandise encountered in day by day life. You identify the meals or product, and it possible consists of maize in some kind – product classes resembling paint, textiles, wallpaper, cleaning soap, candles, newspapers, cigarettes, pesticides, dry batteries, cosmetics, prescription drugs, plastic, nitroglycerin and fireworks, shoe polish and ceiling tiles, to call only a few. In consequence, maize, together with soybeans and palm oil, is rightfully considered a ‘flex’ crop par excellence. Little surprise, then, that the demand for maize in no matter kind has develop into ubiquitous, and maize manufacturing is more and more pervasive all all over the world, together with in Asia.
Until comparatively just lately, the overwhelming majority of the maize produced in Asia was used for human consumption. On this regard, Thailand was a notable exception. Vital manufacturing of maize started later in Thailand than in most different components of Asia and, in contrast to these different areas, a lot of the maize produced in Thailand was used as animal feed even early on. When employed for human consumption in Asia, maize discovered many makes use of, typically as a staple – significantly among the many poor in hilly areas – but additionally as a flexible dietary complement or complement, which might be eaten after roasting or grilling (usually as a snack), floor into flour and thence utilized in gruels, noodles, muffins, buns, and so forth, or employed as an ingredient in soups, desserts, or in Korea as ‘tea’. Maize can be utilized in numerous alcoholic drinks in Asia, such because the corn-based baijiu in China, Vietnamese corn wine, and a lot of alcoholic drinks distilled from maize in Darjeeling, Sikkim and different components of India.
How issues have modified. Because the Eighties – even earlier in some areas – the makes use of to which corn is put in Asia have shifted dramatically. Whereas till then a lot of the corn produced in Asia was supposed for household consumption, for feeding animals on web site, or on the market at native or regional markets, as we speak the best proportion of corn manufacturing by far is used as animal feed, usually for agribusiness livestock aggregators, significantly these elevating and processing chickens and hogs, and people elevating inventory for the manufacturing of eggs and dairy merchandise. One other giant part of the corn crop in Asia is used to produce bioethanol. Furthermore, these two makes use of assist to elucidate why Asia imports a substantial amount of maize from different components of the world, and why it exports comparatively little. In 2019, for instance, Asian international locations imported 78,240.2 million tons of maize – greater than 43 per cent of the world’s whole – whereas exporting solely 2,629.8 million tons, or a bit of over 1.4 per cent. On this regard, the truth that a lot of the maize produced in Asia remains to be grown on small, comparatively inefficient items, and the truth that yields and general productiveness are a lot decrease than in essentially the most superior producing areas – the US, most notably – needs to be famous, for they assist to elucidate the distinguished function of maize imports into Asia.
China has been shopping for into or shopping for up overseas meat processors
To grasp how and why these adjustments took place, we should embed maize within the bigger narrative of Asia’s relative rise, its will to energy, because it have been, in latest a long time, for Asia’s fast financial development and improvement over the previous half century have had profound results on, and implications for, maize manufacturing and consumption. Asia’s inhabitants development alone throughout this era meant that – ceteris paribus – demand for foodstuffs of every kind, together with maize, would possible rise. However two different elements – rising per-capita revenue and fast urbanisation – have reshaped demand for corn extra particularly. With revenue per capita rising throughout Asia, demand increased for meals of upper income-elasticities – meat and dairy merchandise specifically – which tremendously elevated demand for animal feeds, most notably, soybeans and maize.
Nowhere have these adjustments been extra highly effective than in China, which has not solely been sustaining a ‘strategic pork reserve’ for a while now, but additionally selling farm consolidation at residence in hopes of making scale economies – thereby enhancing productive effectivity – and constructing large-scale ‘industrial’ meat-processing services. Neither is that every one: China has been contracting with international locations resembling Brazil and the US for large quantities of corn and soybeans, and shopping for into or shopping for up overseas meat processors, a notable living proof being the acquisition in 2013 of the Virginia-based Smithfield Meals, the world’s largest hog processor, by the WH Group (then often called Shuanghui Worldwide).
The identical development-inspired revenue good points that modified meals demand in Asia have additionally raised demand for corn-based bioethanol to energy motor automobiles within the area, in addition to demand for a variety of manufactured merchandise that make use of corn or corn byproducts within the manufacturing course of. With fast urbanisation and, furthermore, rising dwelling requirements, Asia witnessed a makeover of its food-processing and distribution methods, which makeover included the rise of supermarkets and hypermarkets stocked with meat merchandise – poultry, pork, beef, and so forth – and eggs and milk merchandise dependent, largely, on maize as feed. This makeover has prolonged even to forlorn Myanmar, the place supermarkets and hypermarkets have sprung up, the Metropolis Mart Supermarkets in Yangon and Mandalay, most notably. The makeover, furthermore, has been underpinned and sometimes overseen by giant agribusiness considerations, each Western agribusiness multinationals resembling Cargill, ADM and the Louis Dreyfus Firm, and Asian-based rivals such because the CP Group, Olam, Wilmar and COFCO, all of which have performed main roles within the acquisition, processing and advertising of maize and maize merchandise.
Although it’s troublesome to make predictions, particularly in regards to the future (as famous by the Danish physicist Niels Bohr, amongst others), most educated observers imagine that the function of maize in Asia will proceed to develop within the coming a long time, as a result of the underlying traits accountable for its ascent – rising revenue per capita and urbanisation particularly, however more and more farm consolidation too – proceed apace. To make certain, issues resembling local weather change, improvements in meals know-how, and attainable shifts in foodways and even agriculture/meals regimes may disrupt and even reverse secular traits and thus demand for maize in Asia. However, for the foreseeable future, probabilities of such disruptions, a lot much less reversals, appear slim, and the long run for maize in Asia – seen in standard phrases no less than – appears vivid.
Such prospects however, there are nonetheless causes for concern relating to maize’s future in Asia, significantly when one considers the cereal grain’s trajectory – and more and more controversial standing – within the West, the place it has many vociferous detractors as we speak. Bluntly put, these critics level out that maize, regardless of its manifold virtues, is hardly benign in its general results. In so doing, they make a lot of good factors relating to the rising prominence of the cereal grain, and the manufacturing and consumption methods by which maize is commonly embedded, factors properly value pondering.
For instance, critics bemoan the truth that maize manufacturing is usually closely subsidised in creating international locations, which limits alternatives for the cultivation of different, more healthy alternate options. They’re appalled by the merciless and unhealthy situations of livestock housed in concentrated animal-feeding operations (CAFOs) in corn-based feed heaps (operations more and more widespread in China and different components of Asia, by the way in which). They’re very involved in regards to the deleterious long-term well being penalties arising from the widespread human use of excessive fructose corn syrup (HFCS), which they declare promotes weight problems, diabetes and what some call the ‘diabesity advanced’, which incessantly presents within the West and, alas, has develop into extra widespread within the East as properly. They contend that utilizing maize to provide ethanol is morally ‘obscene’ in a world whereby many individuals are nonetheless meals insecure, if not outright poor, which criticism resonates significantly broadly in 2022, partly due to Russia’s ‘particular army operation’ in Ukraine. Critics usually condemn the heavy place of GMOs in maize manufacturing, significantly within the US, they usually usually finish by decrying the truth that the supposed destructive externalities of maize manufacturing, significantly in large-scale agribusiness settings, are seldom factored into the worth of maize, making it too low cost, which competition, in fact, would bemuse, if not startle, many low-income maize customers each within the developed world and within the least developed international locations.
The maize story in Asia might finish as tragedy, farce, or (hopefully) one thing else
weigh these purported vices towards maize’s manifold virtues is a troublesome query, topic partly to 1’s ‘priors’ – as economists say – in addition to to 1’s perspective and beliefs. Regardless of the case, Asians and Asian nation-states going ahead would do properly to have interaction such criticism critically in order that they’ll presumably keep away from or minimise among the issues the West has skilled with maize. How? One other troublesome query, significantly as a result of in Asia maize manufacturing is concentrated not in wealthy international locations with well-developed methods of financial and environmental regulation and huge constituencies pushed by ESG standards, however in middle-income and low-income international locations the place other considerations – development and improvement, most notably – stay the highest priorities, not surprisingly.
Nonetheless, sure modest however useful steps appear attainable even as we speak. For instance, the event of extra humane specs for CAFOs may assist Asia keep away from the worst environmental, to not say moral, practices related to industrial agriculture within the West. Equally, Asian peoples might be educated in regards to the risks of extreme dietary reliance on HFCS (and maybe on palm oil, too) and Asian governments may promote the usage of natural materials aside from maize in ethanol – biodiesel, for instance – for the manufacturing of engine gas, whereas encouraging the expansion of the EV trade. Not earth-shattering maybe, however not nothing both. And such steps would represent a begin.
Are steps resembling these ample to make an actual distinction? Onerous to say. Right here, although, one may do worse than to evoke Karl Marx, specifically his opening in The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon (1852): ‘Hegel remarks someplace that every one nice world-historic details and personages seem, so to talk, twice. He forgot so as to add: the primary time as tragedy, the second time as farce.’ Having adopted the Western script fairly intently to date, the maize story in Asia might finish as tragedy, farce, or (hopefully) one thing else. Let’s hold our fingers crossed.
Nevertheless the maize narrative in Asia unfolds, a bit of story in Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney’s chapter on McDonald’s in Japan – from the basic study Golden Arches East: McDonald’s in Asia (1997) edited by the Harvard anthropologist James L Watson – is value noting. The story entails a bunch of Japanese Boy Scouts within the US, who have been thrilled to seek out, upon visiting Chicago, that the town had a McDonald’s too. McDonald’s was, in fact, born within the US and headquartered in Chicago, however its transplantation to Asia has been so profitable that, in lots of components of Asia, the fast-food restaurant has develop into not merely acquainted in cultural phrases however, to many individuals, integral and even natural to society there. Will the identical maintain true some day for maize in Asia? Golden Maize Fields East, in different phrases. Certainly, if the traits of the previous 40 years maintain true, we might sooner or later discover Asians shocked to be taught that maize is grown within the Americas, too.
