The Grain That Built a Hemisphere

CinemaSerf

Written on 2/1/2026

Did you know that there used to be an Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs? Well they worked with Disney to construct this animated history of mankind’s use of corn, or maize, over the past 9,000 years. You see, it was some peckish hunters who realised that when game was scarce, they could rely on corn to sustain them. Now a lot of early bread tasted of fish because as each kernel was planted, so was a sardine as an offering to the fertility gods. (I know, why not just eat the fish?). Anyway, as the Aztecs and the Incas began more sophisticated offerings, including human sacrifices, that taste went away and now, in the hands of the scientists, we started to in-breed the plants so that their offspring could deliver crops of abundant proportions. It lists some of the staples we now rely upon, though bread seems rather low on the list, before extolling the virtues of feeding corn syrup to babies. Ideally before they get any teeth, I suppose? Quite what the purpose of this cheery animation is, is not immediately clear. It grows fairly widely across the globe now, and from the statistics provided here more than 40% of the crop in the USA is fed to pigs, so perhaps it’s an invitation to buy more sausages? It easily kills ten minutes as it condescends upon the builders of the temples at Machu Pichu and the ancient folks who discovered that by milling this, you could do so much more than just drizzle butter all over it.