just one field

the field next to the supermarket is full of corn plants...across from the parking lot to the tree line by deep river...both to the north and west ( first and second photos )...full of plants but no corn yet...and "knee high by july" is a benchmark this field has missed ( third )...it's a suburban field so while the rows are the standard thirty inches apart they are , at times, choked with other biomass ( fourth and fifth )...some of the plants are spaced in a uniform fashion ( sixth and seventh ) many are not and there is a significant height differential in the oddly spaced plants ( eighth through twelfth ) although the size difference in the twelfth photo may be caused by competition for that clump of nearby biomass which leads tot he question of how much of the potential harvest is going to be lost to that competition..just one filed in the "corn belt"...thousands of plants all growing genetically engineered kernels of corn that have a large amount of starch and very little nutritionally valuable germ ( also one reason the don't do well as volunteer second generation plants...not much to start with )...and what is this starchy stuff for/ feedstock for extruded hot pockets and the high fructose corn syrup that goes into almost anything in the central aisles of the ironically located supermarket next door...with supermarket profit margins as thin as they are perhaps strack's could cut out the middle man and go to farmer brown for the raw material....i neglected to mention yesterday that the last two photos are of volunteer bean plants left over from last season's harvest...they will not last long...eventually they will be shaded out by the corn...still...some evidence of no "suicide gene " in the plants...but would they produce? one of the reasons i look for volunteer corn in each season's bean fields...to see what, if anything, is produced.