WATCH: Solving the Maize

A thousand years ago, a conflict in Eastern  Europe would not have affected the family   living in the Arabian Peninsula. Today, a war  in Ukraine means tens of thousands of people   in Yemen face starvation. How did we get here? How  did our global systems of food production become   so complex and intertwined that one war in one  place threatens the entire global food system?   For starters, Ukraine and Russia together produce  12 percent of global calories. Ukraine alone produces 16 percent of global maize exports and 14 percent of our wheat.  According to Arif Husain, the chief economist   for the United Nations' World Food Program, Ukraine  is a country of 40 million people, but they produce   food for 400 million. As sanctions fall on Russia  and Russian tanks roll across Ukraine, shortages   of other crops and fertilizers from the two  countries threatens farming and livestock   in places as far away as Brazil and Texas.  Feeding ourselves has never been so complex.   Thanks to globalization, the food we eat often  comes from, or is dependent on, far away places.   The webs of finance and shipping that connect  our global food system are incredibly complex.   Unfortunately, the more complex the system gets, the  more fragile it becomes. All this complexity might   seem very recent, but it's the product of a long  history of how humans learn to feed themselves.   To understand that history, and to search for  answers to the challenges we face today and will   encounter tomorrow, let's explore the big history  of one of the world's most important grains: maize.   For over 10,000 years, maize has been a key  factor in our population growth. Everywhere   it spread, it brought new levels of complexity to  human societies. This odd looking grass is called   teosinte, also known as the Mother of Corn. About  10,000 years ago, people living in Southern Mexico   gradually began developing this crop, artificially  selecting certain properties that would eventually   lead to the cultivation of maize as we know it  today. As these Mesoamerican communities moved   and interacted with others, they formed networks  of exchange that slowly spread domesticated maize   across South and North America. Over the course of  thousands of years, Indigenous societies adapted   the plant to suit their environments, selecting  varieties that could grow in wetter or drier   conditions or at higher altitudes. In every  society it touched, maize transformed the ways   that people lived and the food they ate, sparking  agricultural revolutions from Argentina to Canada.   As people stored, distributed, and traded goods,  they transformed into more complex societies   with huge cities, complex belief systems,  monumental architecture, and new social complexity.   But that complexity meant that, in some  ways, societies grew more fragile, as well.   A climate shift or drought could cause  large agricultural societies to collapse,  sending thousands into crisis and famine. Foraging  societies, however, could more easily relocate and   continue to feed their much smaller populations.  When Europeans arrived in the Americas in the late   15th century, they encountered advanced  empires and extensive trade networks,   mostly thanks to maize. These societies and  networks were devastated by the arrival of   the conquerors and the diseases they carried.  Tens of millions of Indigenous Americans   died over the next century. Many communities lost  up to 95 percent of their people in this tragedy,   yet maize remained, and soon it left the  Americas and transformed the world yet again.   In a global process known as the Colombian  Exchange, Europeans transported maize across oceans   where new societies adopted and  adapted the crop to suit their needs.   One of the keys to its spread was  maize's incredible adaptability.   It thrived in the warmer climates of Southern  Europe, Western Africa, and Southern Asia.   In the 16th century, maize became a staple crop  in the rain forests of Africa's interior. This   new source of food sparked a population  boom just as the Transatlantic Slave Trade   decimated many African communities by enslaving 12  million Africans to work on American plantations.   The environmental historian, Alfred Crosby,  suggested that the cultivation of maize in   West and Central Africa is what allowed the  Slave Trade to continue as long as it did.   That's a big claim. If it's true, then the whole of  the American plantation system, which fueled the   Industrial Revolution and European colonial  expansion, depended on maize grown in Africa.  Maize also grows in dry and mountainous regions  such as Western and North and China, where wheat   and rice could not. The introduction of maize to  China transformed the region: China's population   quadrupled between the 17th and 19th centuries  thanks to maize. In the province of Sichuan alone,   the population rose from 9 million to 24 million  as maize increased the available farmland by 60   percent. As maize spread to new places, millions of  people began to rely on it, which generated complex,   new relationships. However, the new connections  in larger systems meant that a change in one   place, like poor harvest due to a drought,  could affect millions living in other places.   Maize is a key ingredient of complexity in the  human past, but it continues to add complexity   to our world today. We grow more maize than any  other grain and we grow it everywhere. Of the top   30 corn producing nations in the world, only  six are in the Americas and 11 are in Africa.   In 2021, humanity grew 1.2 billion tons of maize  globally. That number is expected to increase.   Why? Because there's corn in everything.  Of course we use it for food, but in the   world's largest maize grower, the United States,  we only use about 10 percent of the corn we grow for food.   About 45 percent we feed the livestock and  corn is also used in biofuels and ethanol fuel,   it's used to make batteries, bourbon, diapers, cough  syrup, matches, textiles, adhesives and all sorts of   plastics. As the inclusion of maize and varied  products has increased in complexity, so has its   fragility. Therefore, if there is a disruption  in the supply of maize, dozens of industries in   hundreds of countries would falter, for example:  while maize is an adaptable crop that grows in   different environments, fertilizers are a necessary  ingredient that help maize to grow and thrive.   Sanctions on Russia and its neighbor, Belarus,  two of the main exporters of fertilizers,   due to the invasion of Ukraine, are making farmers  around the world very nervous, especially as the   planting season looms closer. Fertilizer prices  were already at record highs before the war,   but now those prices are expected to grow  even higher and last for many more months.   Maize has inserted itself into every facet of our  lives. Any vision of the human future will involve   maize. As we seek to build more resilient systems,  maize offers many solutions and challenges: it can   grow in many environments, it is nearly unrivaled  in the amount of calories it can produce per acre.   As our populations grow and our climates change,  maize will continue to be a key ingredient in   feeding our species. Scientists have genetically  modified corn varieties to be more drought   tolerant, so as droughts become more prevalent  in some regions of the world, maize might prevent   climate change-induced famine. On the other hand,  corn is not immune from a variety of diseases   and pests that can affect the crop at various  stages of the planting and growing process.   As climate change results in more stress on the  environment, corn could be negatively impacted. In   addition, the production and processing of maize,  especially into high ethanol gasoline, emits a   lot of carbon into our atmosphere, which  increases the effects of climate change.   Our food systems today are incredibly complex  and fragile, and corn is a big part of the long   history that brought us here. The decisions  we make today about how we grow and use corn   will be crucial to our future as a species as  we strive to feed ourselves and save our world   from crises of war, disease, and climate change. Few  plants have shaped human history as maize has. In   the words of anthropologist Michael Blake, "By being  genetically flexible, maize has persuaded humans to   move its seed around the globe faster and farther  than any other plant in history... our global human   economy depends on it just as it depends on  us. Humans grow maize, and maize grows humans."