Corn here (America). Corn there (South America). Corn everywhere (arriving by the boat load). Corn, corn, corn.

Is it possible that your child could one day suffocate under a massive pile of corn? It is. We can’t rule anything out. The United States is growing a lot of corn. At the same time, we’re importing a lot of corn, because the cost of shipping by rail actually make it cheaper for many American livestock producers to bring in corn from South America than to ship it from other U.S. states.

Scoffing in disbelief? It’s all right here in this Wall Street Journal story. “The U.S. Agriculture Department projected Tuesday that buyers would import 50 million bushels of the grain this season, up 56% from last season, even as U.S. bins swell with grain.” Folks, we’re sitting on a potentially explosive corn glut. The ship is being flooded with corn—and instead of bailing it out, we’re bailing it in—with more corn.

Now, even as American corn growers celebrate their fruitful harvests, they will experience not the fresh and buttery taste of a nice ear of corn—but instead the bitter and hateful taste of imported corn. We give thanks to god that our founding fathers, many of whom were farmers with a great familiarity with corn, cannot see us now. What hath we wrought?

Corn.

[There’s more where that came from!: Flickr]