King Corn

Viewer: Clara Herrero

Stream for free:  Available to watch on Netflix through “instant play”

About:
Director: Aaron Woolf | Producer: Aaron Woolf
Produced: 2007 | Country: USA 
Run time: 88 minutes | Language: English

Synopsis: Here in the US corn is definitely King, it's practically in everything we eat. This is a documentary about two guys exploring the world of corn in the US, from production to consumption and all the subsidies in between. Ian Cheney and Curt Ellis rent a 1acre plot in Greene, Iowa where they grow corn for a year. The film provides a history of how corn has become America’s most productive and most subsidized grain.

Opinion: 

• The film starts out with a scientist informing Curt and Ian that corn was discovered in their hair molecules. As weird as that sounds it makes sense because corn is in tons of food that Americans are consuming. 
• In your grocery store it’s hard to find products that don’t have some type of corn component. When you go to fast food restaurants the meat you are eating was mostly likely raised on a corn diet and the French fries were fried with corn oil. 
• Ian and Curt in the quest to find out more about corn and its path to our food system decide to grow the commodity on a 1 acre plot in Greene, Iowa. 
• Through this process they discover that no matter what, the more corn you grow the more money you get from the US government. 
• Sadly, many small farmers are getting hurt and many homesteads are gone because of larger corporations coming in and buying up land to add to their ever increasing lots. Subsidy payments reward the production of corn, bottom line.
• Michael Pollan makes appearances in the film and says, “If you're standing in a field in Iowa, there's an immense amount of food being grown, none of it edible. The commodity corn... nobody can eat it. It must be processed before we can eat it. It's a raw material, it's a feed-stock for all these other processes. And the irony is that an Iowa farmer can no longer feed himself.” 

• What the film doesn’t cover is the effects of this over produced commodity on the rest of the world. There is no mention of food price spikes as a result of many farmers switching over to corn or that corn is often shipped to developing countries as part of US aid.

Recommendation: 

• This film isn’t ideal to create an Oxfam event around but it is a good reference tool  if you want more knowledge about  corn production here in the US.  
• If you want to come away with a greater understanding of the history of corn production here in the US then this documentary is a good place to find that information.  The film also touches on the various places where corn makes an appearance in our food system