Something we might be missing about the eating of grain/corn is that such was allowed by Jewish law (Deuteronomy 23:25). And basically the law did respect private property. "When you come into your neighbor's standing grain, you may pluck the heads with your hand, but you shall not use a sickle on your neighbor's standing grain." In other words, you can take a little to eat, but you don't get to steal from your neighbor's harvest.
Actually that was one of two possible explanations I was waiting for our self proclaimed Bible expert to come up with, though it is related to the other. That was from Leviticus 19:
9 And when ye reap the harvest of your land, thou shalt not wholly reap the corners of thy field, neither shalt thou gather the gleanings of thy harvest.
10 And thou shalt not glean thy vineyard, neither shalt thou gather every grape of thy vineyard; thou shalt leave them for the poor and stranger: I am the LORD your God.
This is an old Testiment way of seeing to it that there was something for the poor to eat.
They were the gleaners that made the harvest very effecient even though they were forbidden to carry a sack or use a syckle.
In the Book of Ruth the Poverty of Ruth is clear from her relyance on gleaning to make her living.
In more recent history I recall this issue comeing up in the harvest of pecans , where I grew up we had pecan trees which might produce a cupple hundred dollars worth of pecans some years and a cupple of thousand dollars worth other years just a dozen or so old trees . I never heard complaint when passerby would stop to snack on the ones that fell on the roadside , but every now and them someone who came with gunnysacks to fill had to be run off.
It becomes a matter of compareing the values of stingyness and generosity with common sense and a sense of purportion , no farmer would plant these trees in expectation of haveing no harvest himself , but what he can loose to bluejays and neighbors with little harm should not bother him.
