Why Record Corn Crop will Cost Taxpayers up to $8.4 billion in Subsidies

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

3. There are good reasons for not planting things like kale or carrots or other vegetables

instead of corn: First, you have to be able to get a perishable vegetable crop to market quickly - you can't store most vegetables for a long period of time. Corn can be dried and stored for months in bins until it can be shipped and sold; as long as it doesn't get wet it won't rot. Kale would rot in a matter of days. Since most farms that grow corn (as well as wheat or soybeans) have no access to facilities for refrigerated storage, there's no place to put that sort of crop until it can be shipped and sold. Most such farms aren't near large cities where a perishable crop could be sold, and the cost of refrigerated transportation would be high. California, for example, has an infrastructure and labor resources for this kind of farming; Nebraska, Kansas and Iowa don't.

And California has a good climate for vegetable growing (unlike the Great Plains states). Most vegetable crops need a long growing season and a lot of water, which might not be available (some corn is irrigated but not all of it is). Planting and harvesting vegetables is very labor-intensive, while corn can be harvested by one guy with a combine. You grow what works in your climate and location. I'm not a fan of HFCS - it doesn't belong in every damn thing. But most corn is used for livestock feed (36%) and ethanol production (40%).

There are a lot of concerns with the U.S. agricultural system, not the least of which is that corn growing has become monolithic. It would be much better to diversity crops and produce something that doesn't make people fat, but you have to have crops that will grow in a particular climate. Mostly that would be soy beans and wheat, but not kale or carrots.