J. Russell Smith

"The Corn Belt is a gift of the gods—the rain god, the sun god, the ice god and the gods of geology. In the middle of the North American continent the gods of geology made a wide expanse of land where the rock layers are nearly horizontal. The ice gods leveled the surface with their glaciers, making it ready for the plow, and also making it rich. The rain god gives summer showers. The sun god gives summer heat. All this is nature's conspiracy to make man grow corn. Having corn, man feeds it to cattle and hogs, and thereby becomes a producer of meat."