What happens when two city kids (Ian Cheney and Curt Ellis) straight out of college decide to find out where their food comes from?
Well, first they find out that most food in America is derived from corn. Then they decide to (of course) move to Iowa and grow an acre of corn. Then they try to find out where the corn that they grow will end up. They follow it from Iowa to the Colorado feed lots, high fructose corn syrup factory (they never did get inside due to “food security”) and find it in the fast food industry at every stop along their cross country journey. During their travels they discover many things about the corn industry and through their documentary, King Corn, they share those findings with us.
I watched King Corn with Nick. Now, don’t get me wrong, Nick totally supports me in everything, but he’s not particularly interested food miles or seasonality. Nick puts up with my mad cooking schemes and visits to the farmers’ markets because he knows it’s important to me. However, while I can’t get him to read the books that have helped me to understand these issues he did agree to watch the King Corn with me. The best part is that he really liked it.
I had already known that midwestern farmers are going out of business left and right due to the reformed Farm Bill, but it was new to him. I had already known that cows die from being fed diets of corn and have to be stuffed full of antibiotics just to reach 6 months, but it was astounding to him. Moreover, not only does the movie tell the story of corn, but also the story of the corn farmer. And I felt that it offered a good, if simplified, overview of the Farm Bill; both in what it is and how it’s changed over the years. If you’re looking for an accessible film that educates on these food issues that we face in our daily lives (without preaching!) you’ve found one.
King Corn parallels the first of the four meals (the story of corn, of course) Michael Pollan wrote about in his renowned The Omnivore’s Dilemma
I loved the sense of frank humor that the documentary had. For example, when the filmmakers finally get in touch with a spokesperson for a company that produces high fructose corn syrup. Listening to the handsome corn syrup woman describe the “innovative process” of creating high fructose corn syrup while watching the disgusting and somewhat dangerous process that Cheney and Ellis use to create it in their own apartment is a huge and fairly hilarious contradiction.
I also found the movie visually beautiful. So often in documentaries the art that goes into filmmaking can fall to the wayside, lost to interviews and the effort that goes into telling a story through film. But King Corn managed to tell it’s story without losing the art; some of the camera shots are amazing. There is a golden mountain of corn, a time elapsed view of a growing field of corn, picture after picture of dilapidated homesteads painting a picture of the destruction wrought by the new Farm Bill, and then there are the horizon to horizon fields brought on by the “get big or get out” mentality of that same bill.
I would recommend this documentary to a much wider range of folks than I would recommend many of the food books that I have been reading. It was educational, accessible, and arresting. Definitely worth the small amount of money and time that it will take you to watch it.
June 27, 2007 at 6:01 PM
Amy, I saw this documentary at the RiverRun Film Festival a few months ago in Winston-Salem. We were lucky enough to have Ian Cheney present for the screening, and he performed a question and answer session after the film. What really struck me from the movie and from his statements in person was that the mass produced corn made in the mid-west is not suitable for human consumption, which really brings the notion of the region being “America’s breadbasket” into question. And, to offer a little historical perspective… (what else would you expect from me?) I was researching 1940s era Ladies’ Home Journal issues for a grad school paper and was stunned to find multiple advertisements for…drum roll please…DEXTROSE!! That’s right, even sixty years ago, our FDA was promoting corn syrup as the “the important fuel sugar of the body”. Well, that’s all for me…I’m going to go drink a Coke and eat a candy bar. See you at bud night!
June 28, 2007 at 12:13 AM
This documentary really brought home to me the increasing homogeneity of the American diet. How can we expect to lead healthy lives if we must (in essence) be force fed processed versions of a basically inedible species of corn? Who thought this was a good idea?
June 28, 2007 at 2:41 PM
I do think the bit where they interviewed the architect of all the corn subsidies (forget his name) was pretty interesting. It’s true that the amount of high fructose corn syrup we cram down our gullets is disconcerting, but as the architect pointed out, one of the other aspects of the corn subsidies is that Americans spend a significantly smaller portion of their income on food than they used to. In other words, we get more money to spend on leisure, which I think is one of the most important aspects of industrial farming.
Don’t get me wrong, this diet is both unhealthy and unsustainable, and with the advent of a corn ethanol market, things have become even more fucked up. I just wish that sustaining our lifestyle could become a bigger part of the conversation about fixing industrial farming. No one is going to want to make changes in the system, no matter how healthy or environmentally friendly, if it means people have to spend the majority of their income on food.
June 29, 2007 at 11:10 AM
“Americans spend a significantly smaller portion of their income on food than they used to. In other words, we get more money to spend on leisure, which I think is one of the most important aspects of industrial farming.”
One of the points that is made in The Omnivore’s Dilemma but was not brought up so much in King Corn is the enormous hidden costs associated with industrial farming that come out later as taxes or just unsolvable problems. Sure, we may pay less at the grocery store (although the mark-up from the whole sale prices available at the farmers’ market is huge), but there are the other costs to consider.
Two possible expenses:
When corn is wet milled (made into corn syrup and ethanol) it takes something like 8 times the number of calories to make the food product than the final food product contains. Think about the huge cost in CO2 emissions there, and just the waste of energy.
When animals are raised far apart from plants (a common practice in industrial farming) animal feed must be shipped to the animals and fertilizer must be shipped to the plants. Not only is this a big waste of energy, but it also creates environmental hazards. Normally animal based fertilizer (shit) is left in “lagoons” while chemically derived fertilizers are used on plants. Both create dangers to the environment that are too numerous to name in this comment.
June 29, 2007 at 1:08 PM
Yeah, I’m just saying that it’s easier to get people to think about costs associated with their wallet instead of their lagoon.
July 31, 2007 at 12:55 AM
I think the cheap prices of manufactured foods are going to come back to haunt the majority of folks in this country. We are spending less and less on food and more and more on health care directly related to poor dietary choices. Buy the good food now and keep ourselves off the expensive bypass surgeries and pharmaceuticals.
I’ll have to look up this documentary. Can it be watched online somewhere?