The Hill reports that the House Agriculture Committee has passed a bill that would allow for a voluntary, federal labeling standard for genetically engineered (GE) foods. It would preempt states from mandating such labeling. Of course, Washington voters rejected an initiative in 2013 that would have created a mandatory labeling scheme here.

Meanwhile, the Washington Post has an interesting story today about the history of corn, and how it is in almost everything we eat in the U.S. This is one factor in the costliness of GE labeling mandates because corn is almost all GE. As we noted in our report on the initiative, 88 percent of corn grown in the U.S. is GE, and about 85 percent of the corn grown in Washington is GE. (In 2013, Washington grew 25.1 percent of U.S. sweet corn for processing and 6.4 percent of U.S. fresh sweet corn.)

Transportation and technology have been an important part of corn’s rise: Calling corn the “choo-choo grain,” the Washington Post notes that the industrial revolution brought

. . . three essential technologies that helped propel the grain from the diets of the impoverished to dining tables all over the country.

The first was an iron plow, which allowed farmers to sow deep into the soil, and on much larger scales. The Midwest was planted with corn on a commercial basis precisely because of this new, simple but revolutionary tool. Two other advancements had an equally large effect, even though they touched corn production more tangentially.

“One of the most important boons for corn might have been that the commercial farms in the Midwest grew up at the same time as the canneries and railroads,” said [author Betty] Fussell.

Later,

In the 1920s and 1930s, scientists discovered a way to boost corn production to a level that was previously unthinkable. They bred hybrid strains that had larger ears and could be grown closer together, which allowed farmers to produce a lot more corn without more land. The discovery, coupled with the introduction of new industrial fertilizers and more-efficient farm tools, such as tractors, led to a thunderous rise in output.

Corn is also involved in a recent bit of agricultural intrigue: As the Washington Post reported last month, “the Corn Refiners Association is about to invest heavily in an effort to unwind the lucrative breaks afforded to sugar, which are among the most generous in U.S. agriculture.” Corn may be ubiquitous, but is that enough to beat Big Sugar?