Quote from Pollan

This comes form "The Omnivore's Dilemma" by Michael Pollan:

"Hybrid corn now offered its breeders what no other plant at that time could: the biological equivalent of a patent. Farmers now had to buy new seeds every spring; instead of depending upon their plants to reproduce themselves, they now depended on a corporation. The corporation, assured for the first time of a return to its investment in breeding, showered corn with attention-R&D, promotion, advertising-and the plant responded, multiplying its fruitfulness year after year. With the advent of the F-1 hybrid, a technology with the power to remake nature in the image of capitalism, Zea mays entered the industrail age and, in time brought the whole American food chain with it."

Hence high fructose corn syrup, livestock feed, and obesity.