Des Moines Register: The state is giving food processing giant Archer Daniels Midland a $1 million tax credit for an improbable-sounding project: to turn corn into synthetic spider silk. The company plans to use its wet mills in Clinton to extract a sugar that can form a basic building block of the product, long seen among materials scientists as a moonshot. Researchers from several companies have tried to emulate spider silk, which is strong, light and stretchy. ADM’s foray into the speculative field began in October, when it announced a partnership with Spiber Inc., a Japanese company that has tried to make a spider silk product since 2007.