Basic to our food chain is plain old field corn.

A legend about corn is that it makes a faint, crackling noise as it grows. To test this belief, firmly held by some old-time corn farmers, a group of plant scientists several years ago went deep into a midwestern cornfield on a hot, quiet night to catch the sounds. Equipped with recording instruments and wind gauges, the scientists listened. They came out of the cornfield convinced that they did indeed hear the sound of corn reaching up toward the sky.

If they were right, the sound must have swelled ino a roar in 1982, when the United States produced a record 8.4…