posted 17 April 2008 by Paula | link to this
tags: corn, local preference, localvore, locavore
Tuesday night’s PBS airing of the documentary film King Corn will, I think, be remembered as a watershed moment in the local foods movement. I would not be surprised if farmers markets see a noticeable increase in sales this summer as a result of this film.
King Corn is in many respects a film version of Michael Pollan’s work in Omnivore’s Dilemma. It seemed clear to me, as it probably does to anyone who’s read the book, that the filmmakers planned their project based almost entirely on Pollan’s presentation of the industrial food system — having their hair tested for corn-derived carbon, trying to follow their corn into the marketplace, talking with consumers on the far end of the food chain. But where Omnivore’s Dilemma effectively communicated the commodity nature of corn farming, King Corn demonstrated the very personal effects of the corn-based industrial food system on individuals all along corn’s route to supermarket shelves. From this presentation, I took away two main points: First, that midwestern corn is not food; second, that almost no one involved in it is happy with America’s food system.
Midwestern corn is not food. Again, those who read Omnivore’s Dilemma already understood that what is grown all throughout the midwest is not “corn” in the sense that the grocery store dependent think of it, but rather an industrial material with a wide variety of uses — some edible, some not. King Corn brings this reality from intellectual knowledge to the intuitive and even visceral. The digestive troubles and allergies many of us experience from processed foods are brought into context as the filmmakers first try to eat their corn but find it inedible; and again later when they make a small batch of high-fructose corn syrup according to the recipe from a trade association — forgive me for not writing down the name — that includes ingredients ominously labeled “corrosive,” complete with an iconic, acid-burned skeletal hand. Unsurprisingly, the HFCS also turns out to be inedible.
Nor is it particularly edible for beef cattle, the primary consumer of industrial corn, which ends up on grocery store shelves and in restaurants everywhere. Again, this isn’t new information — it is rather common knowledge anymore that corn isn’t very good as cow food, especially when it is the only food they get. But actually seeing one of the bizarre procedures required of cows in order to feed them corn makes it difficult to put too fine a point on the matter. Industrial corn isn’t food for either humans or animals.
Almost no one involved is happy with America’s food system. I did not get the impression that the filmmakers deliberately sought out people with an agenda. The interviewees seemed like pretty average folks just like lots of other average folks making their livings as links in the industrial food chain. It was therefore a bit unexpected to see most expressing dissatisfaction with some aspect of what they were doing, or with changes that had made things more difficult than they used to be. Farmers did not like being dependent upon government subsidies; the feedlot owner did not like cramming her cattle together and feeding them improper food; the taxi driver did not like the diabetes and obesity that resulted from drinking soda on the job (he had since lost 150+ pounds), the McDonald’s customer did not like eating food of dubious origin. The only people who expressed delight with the corn-based food system was a representative from a corn-syrup trade association — again, forgive me for not noting its name — who was ecstatic that high-fructose corn syrup had saturated such a vast amount of the food system and created such profits for the association’s members; indeed, she appeared on the verge of Pentecostal ecstasy over the success of high-fructose corn syrup.
The second was an aging and fragile Earl Butz, whom the filmmakers portrayed with a sensitivity that less adept documentarians might not have, given his role in creating the food system as it exists today.
On the whole, King Corn is an excellent documentary that has shed even more much-needed light on America’s industrial corn issues. While Omnivore’s Dilemma has been widely read, a film presentation of this important information will undoubtedly reach a wider audience, especially if PBS re-airs it in the future. 