What if the Midwest stopped trying to feed the world and started focusing on itself?
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In Coleridge's "Rime of the Ancient Mariner," a sailor contemplates the paradox of thirst amid a literal sea of water. "Water, water everywhere," he famously laments, "nor any drop to drink."
Rural Midwesterners can likely identify with that iconic seaman. Cornfields stretch to the horizon, but the harvest won't end up on anyone's plate -- at least not directly. To provide useful calories for people, that corn is used to fatten animals on feedlots, or milled and processed into sweeteners, starches, and flours.
Like other U.S. citizens, Farm Belt residents increasingly turn to the supermarket, and thus the vast and far-flung industrial networks that supply it, for their sustenance. The region's corn returns to its residents in the form of corn-syrup-sweetened Coca-Cola and corn-fed McDonald's burgers.
If this odd arrangement actually generated wealth in the region, it might make some sense. But farming is such an economically disastrous endeavor in the Midwest that it's a wonder anyone still does it.
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