With the recent growing interest among Americans in food, nutrition, and sustainability, a few films on the subject have popped up in the last few years.  One of the more earnest entries into this category is King Corn, a feature documentary about our largest crop and what two East Coast kids learn when they move to Iowa to farm their own acre of land.

The film begins with the two appealing friends, Ian and Curt, on their home turf in Boston.  After learning that their diet, like most Americans,’ is largely made up of corn, and that corn products are in pretty much everything they eat, they decide to find out more about it.  So they move to Iowa, to a small town where they coincidentally both have family roots, to farm an acre of corn.  Once in Iowa, they enlist the neighbors to guide them in planting a bumper crop, and try to follow the path of the corn they grow over the course of a year. 

Unsurprisingly, they find that all is not hunky-dory in the world of corn farming.  From the government subsidies, to the genetically modified seeds, to the chemical fertilizers, this is not the farming their grandfathers knew.  Each year, tens of millions of acres of corn are processed into animal feed, starches, sweeteners, oils, and other products.  The corn Iowa farmers grow was not selected for taste or nutrition - it was selected to be abundant.  

Yet this is no indictment of corn farmers, the subsidy system, or even the food industry.  As the director himself has stated, “there is no bogeyman” in the film.  Ian and Curt clearly see their own family histories intertwined with this corn, and the film takes a sympathetic view to the farmers, past and present, seeking a better life for their families by growing as much corn as possible.  Even Earl Butz, Secretary of Agriculture under President Nixon and one of those responsible for the explosive growth of corn and all its unhealthy by-products, receives gentle treatment in his interview with the boys.

King Corn issues no condemnations, but neither does it offer solutions.  Instead, it is a meditation on the history of American agriculture as well as a look at one of the culprits behind the growing pandemics of obesity and diabetes.  It is beautifully shot and well edited, with healthy doses of humor.  Above all, it encourages us to take a second look at what we eat and what we grow. 

- Johanna Wilkie
To find out more about the film, please visit http://kingcorn.net/

King Corn was recently screened at the California Endowment’s Center for Healthy Communities. To learn more about the Endowment and Center’s Mission for Building Healthy Communities, visit their website at: http://www.calendow.org/