feedstock

my how the corn in the field by the supermarket has grown in three weeks...the juxtaposition of a field of feedstock for industrially extruded "food" products and its ultimate destination always intrigues me...how far does this corn go before it comes back to the store and what happens to it ( see the film king corn )...not only has the corn grown, the "weeds" in the rows have as well...the corn is doing its best to shade them out of existence but pioneer plants are a hardy bunch...they will persist and will be back next year as well...there are some genetically diverse support roots out there too...always taken by a well turned support root...and looking at the roots got me looking a bit more closely at plants spacing...those two plants in the center of the bottom photo can't be more than three inches apart...maize needs about three feet between plants to produce ears...industrial corn used to need a foot...in fact just last year most of the corn i looked at was twelve inches apart in the rows unless the mechanical planter skipped and there were two feet ( and the plants on either side of that two foot distance produced two ears while the one footers produced one )...and the others are no more than six inches apart...looks like bayer and monsanto have been tinkering with genes again...boosting yield by engineering the plants to grow closer and closer...it will have to end eventually...wont it?