Tiny corn could be the next big thing

By John Upton

If modern baseball can teach kids anything about science, it’s that steroids make things huge. We’ve all seen players with tree-trunk sized arms blast baseballs out of ballparks thanks to steroid hormones that bulk up muscle cells.

But what’s good for athletic prowess isn’t always good for farmers. Take corn — a crop we grow on 70 million acres of the nation’s farmland. Naturally occurring veggie steroids give corn long stalks, which require lots of water and fertilizer to grow.