The Cornstitution

By master students Anda Lupascu, Matilde Stolfa, and Jan Christian Schulz
Monocultures are covering much of the world‘s arable land and their conventional cultivation poses a threat to biodiversity and ultimately to food security. Corn is one of the most widely grown crops in the global system, dominated by a variety called Yellow Dent #2. Highly bred and modified, the crop is predominantly grown for non-food products and their extraction-driven economic system not only consumes an enormous amount of resources, but also is also inefficient at feeding people.
Based on traditional knowledge, the Cornstitution recognizes corn as personhood and gives them its own rights under the law. It reimagines the mutual relationship between corn and human beings and, with its 10 amendments, establishes a way of living with the plant that no longer relies on exploitation and vulnerable monocultures, but celebrates the variations of corn. The Cornstitution opens up a new future - a respectful and harmonious relationship with corn that embraces and nurtures its biodiverse environments and their inhabitants.
This project is a part of the collaboration between the Netherlands Food Partnership (NFP), Design Academy Eindhoven (DAE), MANN and Nethwork, which took place from March to June 2021. Provided with a substantive briefing and exchange, students have made the dilemmas and developments of the Sustainability Development Goal no. 2: Zero Hunger visible in a unique and critical way. This was done by offering different angles and perspectives: from the economic system of subsidies and complex production chains, to issues related to scale or possible social or landscape consequences, the possibilities and impossibilities of technology, making new overviews of food products or handbooks, bringing consumer awareness on food, waste or obesity, and sketching future products and scenarios.