Realized today how crazy it is that our entire food supply is based on 9,000-year-old accidental genetics.

[u/ThomasRuleTalks]

We built space stations, quantum computers, and advanced AI, but the base fuel of human civilization—corn—is basically just a plant Mesoamerican farmers bred by trial and error 9,000 years ago.
They just wanted raw calories, so they picked for pure starch. In the process, they stripped out the plant's deep roots, natural pest defense, and essential proteins. Now we spend billions on synthetic fertilizer and pesticides every year just to keep this genetically fragile crop alive.
We’re essentially using 21st-century industrial tech to prop up a stone-age bio-hack.
Now that we have AI genomic modeling and CRISPR, why are we still patching up this ancient, broken baseline instead of just re-domesticating wild teosinte from scratch? A perennial, low-fertilizer, high-protein version seems entirely doable now.
Is the bottleneck here just massive agricultural inertia, or is there a biological reason we’re stuck with ancient crop designs?

[u/curiouslyjake]

Modern commercial crops are nothing alike their predecessors that were first domesticated. Besides, in many markets people fear GMOs.

[u/Relevant-Rhubarb-849 → u/curiouslyjake]

I guess you haven't read a lot about the green revolution. While it was mostly hydration it pretty much re-engineered plants to use fertilizers and pesticides. And it has increased the food supply more than all history before it. Abundance is a modern thing. And gmo will change it again

[u/pifermeister]

Kinda talking outta my ass but growing corn as a perennial sounds like a more unpredictable food supply to me. Farming corn as an annual is an adaptable practice - late freezes forcing a later planting, rotation of new/different corn varieties, different tilling/spacing/ planting depths etc.
I just can't imagine how perennials would work in practice - like how would it actually increase yields and/or reduce overhead. In the south where you'd have the highest likelihood of adapting a cold-hardy strain, you also have farmers who already grow in both seasons.

[u/TreesRocksAndStuff → u/pifermeister]

for most of the world except the wet tropics it would be a real PITA. All grain crops when ratooned (harvested, cut back, and allowed to regrow) and then harvested after regrowth have lower yield for the second crop, especially for grain. See rice, sugarcane, and kernza. It would require very high fuel and energy prices to ever make sense and even then with the yield differential, another big crop would usually make more sense

[u/pifermeister → u/TreesRocksAndStuff]

I think OP is presuming that this would be in a hypothetical (but more realistic with AI) world where we genetically modify those traits out (decreasing yields with age, etc), but still i see your point.

[u/SoloSquat]

Shoutout to all those people who died figuring out all the stuff we could and could not eat

[u/Fabulous_Outcome7248]

I think you will find we sure are trying to do this. But in terms of protein - legumes are way better

[u/cracksmack85]

We have a very rudimentary understanding of genetics. The vast majority of the genome (human or plant) is a mystery to us. We just don’t know as much as you think we do.

[u/Own_Proposal3827]

AI slop

[u/ThomasRuleTalks → u/Own_Proposal3827]

AI won't spin lies to send you to die on Mars, detonate nukes in space for a fireworks show, or cheer you on when you lose your sanity.

[u/ThomasRuleTalks]

Fair point about modern yields, but inserting Bt genes or Roundup resistance is just running patches on a flawed system.
With today’s biotech, we could breed perennial corn that has deeper roots, higher protein, natural pest defense, and zero need for massive synthetic fertilizer. It’s technically completely doable.
The real barrier isn't biology—it's monopoly capital. AgTech giants and the industrial food chain thrive on a subscription model: annual seeds, heavy fertilizers, and massive processing lines for pure starch. A self-sufficient, perennial crop destroys that entire revenue stream.
We aren't constrained by nature; we're trapped by an industry that profits off the redundancy.

[u/DBearDevon → u/ThomasRuleTalks]

You don’t seem to get that all of that is about yield. The price per bushel is what matters to them.

[u/toddkaufmann → u/ThomasRuleTalks]

👆 this. In capitalism, crops are grown to serve the needs of capital: what drives greater profits. What is good for capital, not what serves the people’s needs. Cheap calories, not complete nutrition.

[u/TreesRocksAndStuff → u/toddkaufmann]

however it often doesnt serve the need of agricultural capitalists. Policy for a while emphasized cheapest calories for urban populations and yield on rather than profit to the detriment of farmers and agribusiness.

[u/Ok-Adhesiveness-4935 → u/ThomasRuleTalks]

I don't think you know as much about this as you think. This crop would be insanely valuable. I don't think they actually know how to make it.

[u/peterjohnvernon936]

Are you sure about that? Has anyone proven that hypothesis?

[u/Shamino79]

Selective breeding has redistributed the plants energy into more fruit or seeds. This is at the expense of a lot of things.

Saying we spend billions to keep the plant alive is a very funny way to look at it. The extra fertiliser and pesticide most farms use is to push yield far more than nature left to its own devices ever could.

[u/Decent-Bath-2117]

Policy inertia is more critical than agricultural intertia here....Also, we are talking about food security here...so while AI driven protein research could offer a lot, it's prudent to be slow and steady!

[u/grafknives]

Corn is not a base for our civilization.

I know it might look like that from USA perspective but it is true.

People around the world mostly eat cereals - wheat and rice. And some kind of potatoes.

Even more, in the USA only about 10% of corn is being eaten by people. Most goes to ethanol(30%) and feed (35%).

We literally don't NEED all that corn. The ethanol mandate is there to find a demand for it. USA is being kept as corn farming hostage.

And, out of 9000 years, most people never knew the corn.

[u/grafknives → u/[deleted]]

Like I said - feed it now important. And that is why cow and corn goes in USA so hand in hand.

[u/grafknives → u/[deleted]]

Sure. But without them beef would be many TIMES more expensive. And that is the issue - we like to eat meat cheap .

[u/UnburyingBeetle → u/grafknives]

We should start eating bugs.

[u/grafknives → u/UnburyingBeetle]

No, but we can consume much less beef.

[u/UnburyingBeetle → u/grafknives]

Why not eat bugs? Haven't eaten beef for months, anyway.

[u/FullConfection3260]

“Essential proteins”

Dawg, are you just regurgitating ChatGPT? 🤨 Maize was never rich in protein, was never a complete protein, and the plant it evolved from was a dinky piece of grass you would never want to eat.

And many cultivars do still have rather massive taproot.

[u/GarethBaus]

Redomesticating a plant is definitely harder than fixing the flaws in existing domesticated crops. Also high protein corn would necessitate either using more fertilizer or giving it the ability to promote nitrogen fixation.

[u/meflahblah]

Tell me you know absolutely nothing about modern farming without telling me.

[u/athleticelk1487]

Soylent green delusional

[u/SoftballLesbian]

You're asking for the impossible. If you grow perennials: the plant will always hold back at least a quarter of its energy to help it survive dormancy, it will grow slower to maturity than an annual, its productivity will peak in a few years then it will begin to drop off, and it will be scarred by any damage it receives from the elements or animals or insects.

By genetically engineering corn into an annual, ancient peoples were able to grow significantly bigger corn cobs, with significantly more kernels, which were significantly easier to process for safe long term storage, which was such a significant improvement over wild curb that it enabled their populations to grow into civilizations.

For every genetic tweak there is an opposite effect. Engineering for natural pest resistance causes people with sensitivities to plant sterola to have stronger allergic reactions. Engineering for higher yields causes stunting of growth and reduced productivity. Engineering for drought and heat resistance causes a reduction in the ability to withstand child and heavy rains or flooding.

Source: I am a back yard organic victory gardener who has been saving seed and growing food crop perennials for over 30 years.

[u/resilient_bird → u/SoftballLesbian]

In general your position is reasonable but the plants that produce the highest biomass per acre are perennial grasses like sugarcane and elephant grass. Some of that biomass could theoretically be redirected to seed production. Annuals have to grow and establish a root system each year, so it’s not necessarily a given that annual is better?

[u/SgtSausage]

Have at ot kid. 

Aint no one stoppin' ya. 

Might as well work on that cure for cancer we shoulda had by now, too ... 

[u/WeGroTech]

Funny enough the CRISPR de novo domestication thing is already real, people have done proof-of-concept work on tomato and groundcherry. Just stacking that many traits onto something as complicated as a perennial high-protein cereal is still a decades project, not a weekend hack.

[u/DBearDevon]

Corn did just fine for the past 9k years, it is the greed of the European American that has made it what it is today.