On “King Corn”
"King Corn" is:
a feature documentary about two friends, one acre of corn, and the subsidized crop that drives our fast-food nation. In King Corn, Ian Cheney and Curt Ellis, best friends from college on the east coast, move to the heartland to learn where their food comes from. With the help of friendly neighbors, genetically modified seeds, and powerful herbicides, they plant and grow a bumper crop of America’s most-productive, most-subsidized grain on one acre of Iowa soil. But when they try to follow their pile of corn into the food system, what they find raises troubling questions about how we eat-and how we farm.
Yes, the film features Michael Pollan, but you’ll get over that. And his "Americans are corn chips with legs" quote is verified when the filmmakers get their hair analyzed and find out the dominant ingredient in their make up is indeed corn.
The oddest thing about the film is that after having visited feedlots and seen the conditions cows are forced to live in, and been within inches of a cow’s diseased stomach (while she’s alive and in a contraption that holds her still while a researcher reaches into her stomach through her side), they still have no qualms about eating meat (or anything else, for that matter). There is one moment at the end where they enter a convenience store (which they do often in the film) and realize there isn’t one thing they can purchase that doesn’t have a corn-based ingredient in it (they look through the products to check). You think there’s going to be some commentary–some hint that the young men have changed as a result of their journey. And maybe they have. But if so, I missed it. That moment in the convenience store was ambiguous, and perhaps as documentary filmmakers they didn’t want to comment. But let’s face it, with every frame of them eating another hamburger, they’re commenting.
Check out PBS’ Independent Film arm, Independent Lens, which has an interactive section dedicated to King Corn. It provides behind the scenes details, clips from the film, an "eating challenge" (Can you go a week without eating corn?), corn facts, and of course a page on Cows and Corn. I found the Learn More page useful, particularly for its sources.
Though this film addresses the eating of animals, it in no way–no way–makes a statement that eating them should stop for any reason or is terribly unhealthy. In fact, in the section of the film where corn syrup is addressed, soda is painted as the real evil, causing obesity and diabetes. And when medical experts are consulted regarding diabetes and they talk about diet and exercise, they at no point mention any particular foods as being unhealthy (except soda and other sweetened drinks). If I were an average American, this film might scare me into exploring "sustainable" meat (which is more expensive, and it’s our requirement for cheap food that largely got us into this mess) and eliminating soda from my diet, but that’s about it.
King Corn is great for enviros, though most I know are already familiar with the story. For those of you who are filmmakers, there’s make a statement about food contest that closes on May 30. You make your own short using clips from the film and your own clips (and the Eyespot tool), and you can win $1,000 and lots of other prizes.
I wouldn’t recommend using this film as a tool for conversion to anything other than meat produced someplace other than a factory farm. There are several clips of cows–and calves–meandering across grassy fields on sunny days that would make the average person run to Whole Foods because, you know, the meat they sell there comes from places like that, which makes it okay to eat. Oh, and healthier. In that sense, this film is a 90 minute commercial for grass-fed beef. However, it’s not to be completely dismissed because of its treatment of the history of corn (and farming and subsidies) in America, which every American needs to know.
I heard the two filmmakers on NPR a month ago and you can hear it here http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=89641647 As much as I wish it was pro-vegan their point was more about the issues with a specific crop and how the government created a demand since they wanted to pay for a supply.
I read a great NY Times article in 03 about the the issues with farm subsidiaries and the food market it has created. http://tinyurl.com/59bwa5
It is great to see you writing some film reviews. If I wasn't so lazy I would do so myself.
Oops this is the actual clip I heard on NPR http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=15257972
Thanks, Rich! If you have recommendations, or you want to post a review, please let me know.
“In that sense, this film is a 90 minute commercial for grass-fed beef.”
It is perturbing to see you use of that kind of language even for the sake of communication shorthand. You can’t feed beef. You can feed cattle. Consciousness raising and all that. 😉
But yes, the feeding of corn versus feeding of grass to cattle debate has ample amount of spin that renders me skeptical of facts (and omission of facts) as they are continually parroted. (Note, I haven’t seen the film, because I’m not anticipating anything I haven’t heard already.)
From Corn-Fed: Cows and Corn
“Before World War II, most Americans had never eaten corn-fed beef.”
See, that’s true, but it’s not the whole truth. And much of the propaganda on that page is similar in nature.
The notion that the United States had so much corn that we didn’t know what to do with it is that fallacy of taking the effect and making it the cause. Cattle have been fattened on corn since they were brought to the New World and had the opportunity to encounter the grain (1600s). Before corn, cattle was fattened on other grains. Corn fattened cattle’s meat became taste preferred and vogue first, then became dominant as demand increased, supply could be met, and grass-finished cattle’s meat became second rate. Post WWII industrialization increased corn fed cattle’s meat production, but it was the gold standard long before then. Corn and industrialization did not immediately make meat production cheaper as grass fed cattle’s meat was less expensive well into the late 1970s.
The USDA quality-grading standard is based on the quantity of intramuscular fat in meat with Prime Grade having the most marbling. However, it’s not exclusively due to marketing of major cattle corporations, this standard goes back much further than that.
Grass fed cattle’s meat became the more expensive designer meat in the United State following wide acceptance of the public health call to reduce saturated fat consumption (1980). A market was born. Michael Pollan is so keen on this observation on other topics of political nutrition, like how margarine grew in popularity shortly after the concerns of saturated fat came to attention, but it evades him when he advocates the low saturated fat contents of grass fed cattle’s meat.
Pollan began his investigations with a bias set on discovering the idyllic farm pastured fields (he even said so) and researched the issue using references that markets grass fed cattle’s meat. Other journalists in turn reference him and we get an echo chamber. No one is objectively fact checking against historical sources. There is a more scholarly history that we are not hearing in popular media regarding the actual developments that lead to the practice of feeding corn to cattle to produce luxury food.
It would be interesting to publicize in this media climate how a long-term whole food plant based dietary vegan would fair under hair analysis. I’d wager that the “unavoidable” corn boogeyman wouldn’t be nearly so prevalent. Remove the sources of direct corn consumption, like on the cob, porridge, cooked corn kernals, popcorn and tortillas, and secondary corn sources from meat and processed food in a whole foods plant based diet is quite low.
Not that there is convincing evidence that anything is wrong with a diet heavy on corn. Pollan began Omnivores Dilemma describing how traditional Mexicans acknowledged themselves as walking corn due to their dependance on the crop, then he proceed try to convince the reader how bad corn is and that we should adopt traditional diets. If your great-grandmother was of Mexican heritage, there’s an obvious conflict.
I should have put grass-fed beef in quotes, Porphyry, as I was referring to the "product." Point taken. Regarding corn and the type of corn that we use, it's not the kind your great grandmother of Mexican heritage used, which was more rich with nutrients, including protein, and that's point is highlighted in this film. And I think the negative aspect of corn consumption, if I recall (I read the book when it first came out) was more about the ubiquity of corn-based products and ingredients, but certainly not in the diet of the average vegan. It would seem that by bypassing processed foods and drinks sweetened with corn syrup, and of course animal products, as you say secondary (and probably even direct) corn consumption is quite low among vegans. This is another reason why this film falls short for the vegan. However the story about how corn got to be so important is an interesting one for all Americans, as it's so far reaching. I'd be interested to hear whether you think it is historically accurate!