A Review of King Corn
A Feature Documentary from Mosaic Films Inc.
By Rowan Dunlap
Did you know that the U.S. Farm Bill subsidy program paid $51,261,278,801 to corn growers between 1995 and 2005? It is the most subsidized crop in America. Subsidies have driven the price of corn so low that many farmers don’t make any profit at all from corn sales. Their entire profit consists of government payments. This has created a situation in which it is cheaper to feed cows corn than let them graze naturally, and cheaper to sweeten products with processed high fructose corn syrup than with natural sugars.
When I think of corn, the image that pops into my mind is of sitting down to eat with my parents. We pass around the grilled salmon, the French bread, then the salad and finally the bowl of corn-on-the-cob is passed. My personal favorite is sweet white corn eaten without any butter or salt. As someone who is committed to learning about and improving our food system, I’ve come to realize there is a darker side of corn that I can’t ignore. King Corn isn’t about the organic corn that I buy from the farmers’ market, or even about the cut corn served as a side with fried chicken and mashed potatoes at KFC. It’s about the corn that we don’t even realize we’re ingesting; the corn that sneaks into our soda, fruit juice, potato chips, french fries and hamburgers.
In King Corn, Ian Cheney and Curt Ellis travel to Iowa. Their goal: to learn where their food comes from. They contracted with a local farmer to use one acre of his land to plant, tend, and harvest corn. They navigate the complex machinery, the convoluted commodity payment system, weather the skepticism of neighbors, and end the season with a respectable harvest of corn, which they soon discover is not even edible! The corn is a genetically modified variety that is designed for processing into animal feed and has a flavor with little resemblance to my sweet white corn. The story heats up as they try to follow their corn through the food system.
This journey takes Ian and Curt to Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs) and to the doors (but not inside of) several high fructose corn syrup factories. One hilarious scene in the documentary depicts the friends attempting to cook high fructose corn syrup in their kitchen after being repeatedly denied entry into the factories. The process is incredibly complicated and involves the use of many chemicals that I can’t even begin to pronounce, a sure sign that it’s not a substance I want to put into my body. Their visit to a CAFO is less amusing. The animals are kept in crowded pens with not a blade of grass in sight. Their movements are restricted by the limited space and they have nothing to occupy them save the over-consumption of processed corn, husk and all. A cow must consume six pounds of corn for every pound of meat that makes it to the market. Since cows are not accustomed to this diet of corn, their health is adversely affected resulting in shorter lifespan and the increased use of antibiotics to prevent now commonplace illnesses.
In the final stage of their journey, Ian and Curt take us to New York City to meet some of the people who regularly consume corn through these covert means (remember the soda, fruit juice, potato chips, French fries and hamburgers we were talking about before?). Not to give away the entire film, I’ll leave you to imagine what kind of effect the over abundance of low-cost, unhealthy foods have on the general public. I will say that the ramping up of subsidies in the 1970s conveniently coincides with a dramatic increase in obesity and diabetes in the U.S.
King Corn is a great film. Curt and Ian manage to do something truly remarkable: remain objective and present a balanced and nuanced perspective of corn production, processing and consumption. The gentleman who owns the CAFO they visit is not villainized any more than the farmers who grow GMO corn in Iowa. There are no scare tactics, gross exaggerations, or vociferous speeches in this film. It is a film that leaves you feeling educated rather than lobbied. I highly recommend taking the time to watch it!