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The Food Chain

Factual: Food & Drink

Examining what it takes to put food on your plate

The Food Chain examines the business, science and cultural significance of food, and what it takes to put food on your plate.

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The Food Chain: Of Maize and Men: The Rise

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Of Maize and Men: The Rise

07/01/2017 GMT

BBC World Service - The Food Chain, Of Maize and Men: The Rise

The story of how one crop came to be the world's most important ingredient.

The story of how one crop came to be the world's most important ingredient. Maize is everywhere, in much of our food, drink and packaging. We find out why.

Corn is everywhere, in much of our food, drink and even packaging.

It has found its way, in a myriad of guises, into thousands of products and has come to dominate the industrialised food supply. Hundreds of millions of people in the developing world rely on it too, for their very survival. 

This week we bring you the story behind the king of the crops, in the first of two programmes dedicated to its spectacular rise, and its implications.

The BBC's Emily Thomas learns how maize rose to pre-eminence with author Betty Fussell, and takes a crash course in plant biology with Ricardo Salvador, from the Union of Concerned Scientists, to hear why corn is so productive.
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We hear one woman's unenviable, life or death battle to avoid this ubiquitous ingredient and talk to a man who can estimate your corn consumption from a single strand of your hair.

Finally, we ask what lengths a government will go to to protect their corn secrets, and find out why the Chinese government is scaling back its production of the crop.

(Image: A man standing next to a field of tall maize crops. Credit: alexsalcedo/ Thinkstock)

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