Each row-end is staked with branded placards that display the name of the genetically modified strain of corn or soy being grown (37Y45H, 52Y23T).  Some of them just say “Experimental.”  The soybean fields, entirely devoid of weeds, are gigantic textured carpets, packed so tightly that they’re nearly boiling over with leaves.  When I finally saw an organic soybean field, it was nearly unrecognizable—the profusion of green things other than soybeans in it made it look like wild, multifarious vegetable patch.  It wasn’t as pretty, to be honest, but one shouldn’t be a magpie when it comes to food; what glitters ain’t always gold.  

I drove through corn and soy fields for six hours one day and another six the next, amazed at how long the sea could keep going.  The machinery that’s been developed to feed these fields the drugs they now require crawls crab-like over the fields, leaving a trail of mist that smells even half a mile away.  Other aromas assail the nose before their provenance even becomes visible: chicken factories, the stench of which instantaneously provokes an involuntary gag.

At a festival I attended in Cosmos, Minnesota, the whole town gathered together to celebrate the summer over pork chops and pie.  On a bandstand lined with ticker tape and crepe paper, Wally Pickel played two trumpets at once; his buddy Harvey backed him up on the accordion.  Little kids with face paint tumbled down toboggans; old-timers with crooked smiles tapped their canes to the beat.  Corn dogs were fried in corn oil and eaten; so was popcorn; so were corncobs and pork chops (from pigs reared on corn).  Coke was drunk (that comes from corn, too).  I’m not trying to get all Michael Pollan here, but truly, CORN WAS EVERYWHERE. 

Then, an obscenely obese woman sitting in an electric wheelchair passed out from sugar shock, her tongue lolling, her neck bent at a grotesque angle.  It took four firefighters, all of them fat too, to lift her into the ambulance.  It screeched away, sirens blaring.  Pickel and Harvey played on.