Blog: What’s there to live for?

Heartland Encounter

On a recent August, 2025 visit to the mid-west, I found myself driving down an oil and chip county road. The day was cloudless, hot and humid, the road flat and black, bordered by neatly mowed narrow grass covered ditches on both sides. This ground I had been told was originally swampy, tall grass prairie. The prairie long gone, was turned under by the self-scouring moldboard plow after the land was drained. The soil is still black, giving an indication that even after 100 years of raising crops, the soil retains a high organic matter content. And this is a heavy soil containing clay which retains water and nutrients, it is considered to be extremely productive farmland. The general area is “smack in the middle” of what is called the corn belt. Generally speaking, corn in this area is the crop that provides the highest profit per acre for farmers. Soybeans are an alternative crop to corn and are often but not always rotated with corn. Studies have shown that yields of both crops are typically higher if the simple corn/soybean rotation is followed as opposed to what is called continuous corn, that is corn year after year. There are multiple understood reasons for higher yield in rotated crops, and likely many yet to be discovered. In the past, 50 plus years ago, more complex rotations were often used. Today, aside from the occasional and increasingly rare patch of winter wheat, corn and soybeans now cover what was once a vast prairie. Continuous corn in spite of the yield loss and higher input costs is still commonly grown because market prices and the number of bushels produced per acre often make corn a farmer’s best financial option. And so, the soybean crop may be omitted and corn is grown for several or many years without any rotation.

The road on which I was driving passed through fields of corn growing on both sides. And in spite of the bright sun and heat the corn showed no signs of stress, indeed the crop appeared amazingly rich and healthy. Dark green, standing straight, well over seven feet tall and every stalk had a single rather large ear. The crop was extraordinarily uniform; there were no weeds or plants other than corn once one left the narrow strips of grass between the road—blacktop, grass and corn. At first, as these rather incredible fields were taken in, there was a sense of wonder. Having farmed myself, there was an appreciation for what the farmer had achieved. Of course, the vagaries of nature had clearly worked in the farmer’s favor. Planting was likely in April; the fields must have been dry enough to plant without too much compaction of the clay rich soils. Then rains must have occurred in a timely manner, enough rain to sustain the corn but not too much, which can be detrimental to the crop, and cause ponding of water and a yellowing of the corn from nitrogen and other nutrient starvation. Irrigation was not used and is only rarely used in this area, crops simply rely on what water nature provides.

The process

Pollination is the period of growth when for corn in particular, crop yields are most at risk. The pollination period must have occurred without too much heat and with abundant soil moisture. The corn plant is self-pollinating so insects are not needed, but it has a vulnerability. If conditions are hot and dry and soil moisture low, the pollen (representing the male reproductive part), after being released from tassels at the top of the plant drifts earthward by gravity and wind, toward the silk tipped ears. Corn pollen can sometimes be released before the silks (the female part) on the ears of the corn have fully formed and thus the ear is formed but the kernels can be missing in whole or in part depending on how serious the timing mismatch may be. Viable pollen that physically makes contact with viable silks must occur before corn kernels, the seed of the plant, can be formed. In this area of the country almost all corn is harvested for its seed which we call “grain” or a kernel. This grain, with minor exceptions, is not used for direct human consumption. It is used primarily for animal feed and industrial production, such as ethanol or processed into food products such as high fructose corn syrup, corn starch and so forth. The balance of the plant including the cob is typically discarded, what is run through the combine is spread back on the field to be ultimately, depending on the tillage system used, incorporated mechanically or allowed to slowly breakdown on the surface, into the soil. While nature surely “cooperated” this year the farmer also had tools at his disposal that made growing corn (and also soybeans) on this scale possible. Machinery to till, plant and harvest has grown in size and complexity. Technology available in many industries is manifest in agriculture as computerized planting, use of GPS to direct the machinery, self-driving tractors and in many other ways.

Additionally, and to the farmers benefit, most corn (and soybeans) grown in 2025 are grown from genetically modified seeds. This can allow the farmer to use non selective herbicides such as a glyphosate (Roundup is a brand name) which when sprayed over an entire field kill all or most all other plants but allow the corn plant to survive with little damage. This is due to a gene, taken from a bacterium, inserted into the plant by seed scientists which imparts resistance to the bio-chemical mechanisms these non-selective herbicides use to destroy plants. Even before such genetically modified seeds were available, farmers had (and still have) selective herbicides. Some type of herbicide is used on virtually every acre of conventionally grown corn. And herbicides have been in widespread use since the late 1940s. Other gene inserted traits can provide insect resistance thus reducing the need and use of insecticides. Aside from what is called genetic modification 99+% of all corn grown in the United States are from seeds derived from an f1 hybridization process. Genetically modified corn is a hybrid corn. But not all hybrid corn has been genetically modified by the gene insertion process. One of the downsides to Hybrid corn is that the seed cannot be saved and planted the following year and be expected to be “true” to the plant it was harvested from. Before hybrids were widely available (1940s) nonhybrid corn, called open pollinated, were grown from selected plants that provided desirable traits; this process of selection dates back thousands of years. In addition to the special seed, large amounts of chemically derived fertilizer are applied to the corn fields in order to allow the full yield potential of these varieties to be realized.

Corn Consciousness

Corn is thought to be derived (by human selection) from a grass-like plant called teosinte found growing wild in Meso America. Teosinte has a vague resemblance to the fields of corn that were observed on that hot August day. We are thousands of generations from the teosinte plant’s seed being first gathered by humans. More “primitive” varieties of corn are still grown in the less industrialized areas of the world. But the plant has been manipulated by humans for thousands of years, though the pace and degree of manipulation has greatly accelerated in the last 80 or so years.

The level of consciousness in an individual plant such as a stalk of corn is rudimentary. Gurdjieff would say, broadly, that plants are one brained beings and therefore have only an instinctive consciousness. An ordinary plant is believed to live by its instinctive “brain” in an automatic, completely programmed mechanical life and death. It is affected by outside forces and has evolved adaptations to survive and reproduce but these happen mechanically. It is believed that will, volition and self-consciousness, even on a rudimentary level, do not exist in plant life. A stalk of corn is a part of organic life on earth which forms a relatively thin film on and within the surface of the planet Earth. It eats and is eaten as is the case with all beings. Both science and Gurdjieff tell us that plants are transformational life forms taking elements of the World, of both lower and higher vibration, and creating new both visible and non-visible elements. Indeed, in its own way much as Gurdjieff describes the human body as a chemical factory every plant is in a similar way also a living chemical factory of varying complexity. Interestingly, Gurdjieff states that the highest most refined product the human factory produces without any volitional activity is what he calls Si 12; a fine substance that accumulates in the testes of men and ovaries of women. In a plant such as corn this would align with the substances created and stored within the germ of the seed, the kernel. These are the parts of the corn plant with the highest density and as stated above, what is generally harvested from the plant.

More importantly, Gurdjieff says, “Plants like man, have relations between themselves, and relations exist also between plants and men, but they change from time to time. All living things are tied to each other. This includes everything that lives. All things depend on each other.”¹ This view, to a degree, has been and continues to be verified by science. Our relationship to teosinte and the corn plant has changed dramatically over the years from the hunter gatherer phase, to what we are planting on millions of acres all around the world, over 95 million acres in the United States alone. We have a dramatic dependence on this plant and we take it for granted that this plant will continue to provide massive amounts of grain for various uses. The projected total crop for the United States in 2025 is over 16 billion bushels. This translates into approx. 900 billion lbs. And 900 billion lbs. into over 2600 lbs. for each of the approx. 340 million people of the United States. Corn is planted at varying populations per acre but in high production areas well over 30,000 plants per acre. By using 30,000 plants per acre we are speaking of 2 trillion eight hundred and fifty billion individual corn plants growing each year in the United States.

The experience

And so it happened— a flash while driving the car on that hot August day of pure perception— a communication from or through the corn plants at the edge of the field: “We are enslaved”. That was it. Conceptually, of course, it is obviously true that the corn plants in the field were essentially slaves, though this is a concept which is not typically spoken of in relation to plants. The experience itself was direct and not initially conceptualized, there was a sense that it was a non-emotional plea, it was simply given and received as a statement as to the situation. Men “enslave” many one and two brained (animals) beings as well as other human beings (three brained). It is interesting that many do consider our enslavement of animals on vast factory confinement “farms” as an “inhumane” way to raise animals. Animals have developed emotional centers, neuro muscular systems and we can directly relate and feel, to some degree, what they feel. We can and do project how we might feel if we were in conditions similar to how they are often forced to exist. For the most part we cannot do this with plants. Yes, we can feel the stillness and majesty of a redwood grove, the enveloping beauty and sense of primeval wholeness in an old growth forest. The beauty of a rose. And these can touch us emotionally yet there seems to be little to no understanding of he effects that our practices of agriculture have on the trillions of plant beings we use as food and industrial products. Many people have a feeling that the final product consumed by humans and animals is unhealthy for humans and that the environment as a whole is being damaged by these farming practices. The biggest concern among people, is that these products directly or indirectly may damage our health; but do we consider the effect on the plants themselves? In today’s corn production we have massive numbers of genetically identical plants. It is quite possible that the plants in the fields on both sides of the road were genetically identical. Forty-acre fields (they were at least that large) on each side x 30,000 plants per acre equals two million four hundred thousand plants of potentially identical genetic makeup. Did this mass of plants provide the instinctual energy to make this contact? Perhaps a collective consciousness of identical corn beings? Or was it that I was available, at that moment, to a plea that is continually being “communicated” but cannot be perceived?

Notes

G.I. Gurdjieff, Views from the Real World, pp 245, ARKANA 1984.