Corn currently accounts for more than  one tenth of our global crop production. The United States alone has enough  cornfields to cover Germany. But while other crops we grow  come in a range of varieties, over 99% of cultivated corn is the  exact same type: Yellow Dent #2. This means that humans grow  more Yellow Dent #2 than any other plant on the planet. So how did this single variety  of this single plant become the biggest success story  in agricultural history? Nearly 9,000 years ago, corn,  also called maize, was first domesticated from teosinte,  a grass native to Mesoamerica. Teosinte’s rock-hard seeds  were barely edible, but its fibrous husk could be turned  into a versatile material. Over the next 4,700 years, farmers bred  the plant into a staple crop, with larger cobs and edible kernels. As maize spread throughout the Americas,  it took on an important role, with multiple indigenous societies  revering a “Corn Mother” as the goddess who created agriculture. When Europeans first arrived in America,  they shunned the strange plant. Many even believed it was the source of  physical and cultural differences between them and the Mesoamericans. However, their attempts to cultivate European crops in American soil quickly failed, and the settlers were forced  to expand their diet. Finding the crop to their taste,  maize soon crossed the Atlantic, where its ability to grow in diverse  climates made it a popular grain in many European countries. But the newly established United States  was still the corn capital of the world. In the early 1800’s, different regions  across the country produced strains of varying  size and taste. In the 1850’s, however, these unique varieties proved difficult  for train operators to package, and for traders to sell. Trade boards in rail hubs like Chicago  encouraged corn farmers to breed one standardized crop. This dream would finally be  realized at 1893’s World’s Fair, where James Reid’s yellow dent corn  won the Blue Ribbon. Over the next 50 years, yellow dent  corn swept the nation. Following the technological  developments of World War II, mechanized harvesters became  widely available. This meant a batch of corn that previously took a full day to harvest by hand could now be collected in just 5 minutes. Another wartime technology, the chemical  explosive ammonium nitrate, also found new life on the farm. With this new synthetic fertilizer, farmers could plant dense fields  of corn year after year, without the need to rotate their crops  and restore nitrogen to the soil. While these advances made corn an  attractive crop to American farmers, US agricultural policy limited the  amount farmers could grow to ensure high sale prices. But in 1972, President Richard Nixon  removed these limitations while negotiating massive grain  sales to the Soviet Union. With this new trade deal  and WWII technology, corn production exploded into  a global phenomenon. These mountains of maize inspired  numerous corn concoctions. Cornstarch could be used as a thickening  agent for everything from gasoline to glue or processed into a low-cost sweetener  known as High-Fructose Corn Syrup. Maize quickly became one of the  cheapest animal feeds worldwide. This allowed for inexpensive  meat production, which in turn increased the demand  for meat and corn feed. Today, humans eat only 40% of  all cultivated corn, while the remaining 60% supports consumer  good industries worldwide. Yet the spread of this wonder-crop  has come at a price. Global water sources are polluted by  excess ammonium nitrate from cornfields. Corn accounts for a large portion of  agriculture-related carbon emissions, partly due to the increased meat  production it enables. The use of high fructose corn syrup may  be a contributor to diabetes and obesity. And the rise of monoculture farming has left our food supply dangerously  vulnerable to pests and pathogens— a single virus could infect the world’s  supply of this ubiquitous crop. Corn has gone from a bushy grass to an essential element of the  world’s industries. But only time will tell if it has led us  into a maze of unsustainability.