That's right, according to this
article:
The story begins in 1971. Richard Nixon
was facing re-election. The Vietnam war was threatening his popularity
at home, but just as big an issue with voters was the soaring cost of
food. If Nixon was to survive, he needed food prices to go down, and
that required getting a very powerful lobby on board – the farmers.
Nixon appointed Earl Butz, an academic from the farming
heartland of Indiana, to broker a compromise. Butz, an agriculture
expert, had a radical plan that would transform the food we eat, and in
doing so, the shape of the human race.
Butz pushed farmers into a
new, industrial scale of production, and into farming one crop in
particular: corn. US cattle were fattened by the immense increases in
corn production. Burgers became bigger. Fries, fried in corn oil, became
fattier. Corn became the engine for the massive surge in the quantities
of cheaper food being supplied to American supermarkets: everything
from cereals, to biscuits and flour found new uses for corn. As a result
of Butz's free-market reforms, American farmers, almost overnight, went
from parochial small-holders to multimillionaire businessmen with a
global market. One Indiana farmer believes that America could have won
the cold war by simply starving the Russians of corn. But instead they
chose to make money.
By the mid-70s, there was a surplus of corn.
Butz flew to Japan to look into a scientific innovation that would
change everything: the mass development of high fructose corn syrup
(HFCS), or glucose-fructose syrup as it's often referred to in the UK, a
highly sweet, gloppy syrup, produced from surplus corn, that was also
incredibly cheap
That seems to be the thesis from King Corn. And
Butz doesn't disclaim the credit. In my opinion, it's all hogwash. Some day my ambition will be sufficient to document it, but not today.
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