Published on May 8, 2012 by Docurama Films
King Corn is a feature documentary about two friends, one acre of corn, and the subsidized crop that drives our fast-food nation.
In the film, 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.
In 2004, I was homeschooling my grandson. Part of his education was a train trip I booked from Sanford FL to Santa Ana California and return. I chose the southern route over the north but the multiple hurricanes that summer caused damage to AmTrak only the northern route was possible.
It was a beautiful and educational experience for both of us. We traveled through cities, industrial areas, Indian reservations, deserts and farms, huge farms. I remember one thing my grandson remarked, “I really wouldn’t care if I ever saw another corn stalk again in my whole life”. Seriously, we saw corn, corn and more corn grown here mostly in the ‘breadbasket’ of the country. I had to wonder where the other crops were…..maybe in the southern route?
We spent a week in California with more educational stuff like the La Brea Tar Pits and eating real Chinese food in China Town. We also visited the Holocaust Museum in Los Angeles, just a few of the many things we did.
That’s great, Susan, and traveling around is a VERY educational experience for a kid. They learn a lot more by seeing things than just reading about them, and it opens their minds to new, and otherwise unimaginable worlds. I remember driving across the country in Dad’s station wagon when I was a kid, and I felt the same way about the corn after seeing nothing else for days.
And there IS a big difference between what Chinese people actually eat and the “Chinese food” they sell to Americans. I used to eat in a Chinese restaurant where the menu was in Cantonese, and all I could recognize were the numbers (prices). It was an adventure in dining, to say the least.