King Corn Green Packaging
KING CORN is a fun and crusading journey into the digestive tract of our fast food nation where one ultra-industrial, pesticide-laden, heavily-subsidized commodity dominates the food pyramid from top to bottom corn. Fueled by curiosity and a dash of naivete, college buddies Ian Cheney and Curt Ellis return to their ancestral home of Greene, Iowa to figure out how a modest kernel conquered America.
With the help of some real farmers, oodles of fertilizer and government aide, and some genetically modified seeds, the friends manage to grow one acre of corn. Along the way, they unlock the hilarious absurdities and scary but hidden truths about America s modern food system in this engrossing and eye-opening documentary.
A graceful and frequently humorous film that captures the idiosyncrasies of its characters and never hectors (Salon), KING CORN shows how and why whenever you eat a hamburger or drink a soda, you re really consuming … corn.
User Ratings and Reviews
5 Stars Great video
This dvd was creative, entertaining and very informative. I learned things I never realized were true.
5 Stars Thought Provoking
King Corn is a very informative, and sightly disturbing documentary about the American food chain. Two friends from the city travel west to the small town of Greene, Iowa to plant one acre of corn. They do this to try and learn, and show others, what corn farming has become. While in that small town, they interview many wonderful farmers and even see some old family photos. By strange coincidence, the friends who did this documentary both had relatives in this very small town. They do all this while they grow their corn, and sell it on the corn market. They document this whole process very well, and turn it into the documentary: King Corn.
Riddled with many facts, statistics, interviews with corn farmers, and stop motion with corn kernels, King corn informs you of the many problems with American Food. First off, corn is in almost everything we eat, the average American even has corn in their hair. Then it tells of the large amounts of pesticides and chemicals used to grow corn. They can not be good for the health of the corn plant, or the health of the organisms who consume it. It also discuses how terrible a diet of corn is for cattle, and that nearly every cattle farm in America feeds their cattle corn. In addition to all this, the documentary is funny, has a very personal and small-town-America edge to it. All of this, and more, combine to make this an excellent documentary. It has really made me question th quality of the food I eat. I highly recomend this documentary to any person who has ever questioned the quality of their food, or just wants to be educated about this important subject. Informative and entertaining, King Corn is an excellent documentary that any person can enjoy.
5 Stars King Corn tells it like it is about our food supply
Excellent film that should be shown in high school and college classrooms. Few people know how US agriculture has become dangerously unbalanced in terms of the variety of food and the quality of food that is grown in this country. Of course, seeing how corn is grown will also open your eyes as to how terribly the land is managed, and how independent farmers are muscled out by big agri-business. Now, start looking at the ubiquity of high fructose corn syrup in desserts, cereals, packaged meats, etc., and you’ll also understand why Americans are so obese. There are no exaggerations in this film–the frightening facts speak for themselves. Wake up, America.
4 Stars Affable, Informative Documentary for the Whole Family
Two friends from college decided to track the process of growing America’s #1 crop – corn. We see them rent their own acre of land and start, literally from scratch.
They learn some of the evils and the economies of what has become the big business of agriculture – in some ways following in the footsteps of Roger Moore. They produce an eye-opening documentary. However these two pals do their investigating in a hands-on, non-confrontational way. As much as possible, they become a part of the Iowa community where they start their jovially hip adventure.
They usher us through the process of sowing and reaping the corn, as it is done now with giant combines yielding billions of tons of grain every year. Then the friends pursue their crop as it is traded and processed, and as it makes its way to our tables in one form or another.
They show how ubiquitous a part of our lives corn is. It is added as sweetener to almost all the processed food products we eat now, perhaps contributing to the epidemics of obesity and diabetes. It is the staple ingredient in most cattle feed. All of this commercial corn is foul-tasting, almost inedible in its primary raw state.
The two young men do a good job of showing the details of the journey the corn makes from seed to feed. They include the way the crop is fertilized using ammonia. They touch on the herbicides sprayed on the fields and how these chemicals do their work of eradicating weeds without harming the young corn shoots. However, there’s one glaring omission. The pals don’t discuss pesticides at all, and seem not to have used any on their God’s Little Acre.
But the two also take the larger view. They probe the different philosophies that have guided Government programs dealing with farmers. They even track down Earl Butz, the controversial Secretary of Agriculture in the Nixon-Ford Administration, and interview him. He explains how he revamped and reversed the system of incentives given to farmers. He saw that they were paid, not for how much land they withheld from production, but for how much land they planted. This policy has contributed to the near-glut of corn on the market and to the creation of vast monoculture farms.
There’s a wealth of information in this documentary, presented in a lively, engaging way. The pals in effect take a cheery road trip with each other and with their corn – but make some sobering discoveries along the way.
5 Stars Should Be Shown in Every School Room
Having recently made a friend of a person who is very allergic to corn I was “sensitized” into watching this. My friend and this film gave me a whole new appreciation of just how ubiquitous corn is in our diet. It’s nearly impossible to avoid corn in so many commercial products it’s insane. It also becomes obvious it’s certainly not wise to have our nations figurative eggs in so few crop-baskets, virtual mono cultures. I’m old enough to remember grass finished beef, and prefer it, and think it’s beyond egregious that animals are subjected to CAFO’s and factory slaugher houses that regularly have to recall hundreds of thousands of pounds of meat due to contamination. The waste is totally unacceptable and now Mexico won’t accept meat from many of our processors. This traces back to the ubiquitous use of corn and factory farming. Besides the unnatural corn in cattle rations there are other “proteins” including processed road kill and euthanized pets. The epidemic rise if type II diabetes in this country must be tied to so much corn and sweetener/browner/filler/starch as before the use of so much corn, diabetes was fairly UNcommon. The corn syrup seems to upset the metabolic system and contributes to obesity. I do wish that movie had addressed the issues surrounding GMO corn. But then, the lawsuits might have started rolling in. Corn that kills the earworm isn’t something I want on my menu. I realize that bacterium thuringensis is fairly harmless when used as a dust on corn silks, but who knows what the effect is when it’s built into every single kernel we eat of that particular modificication. That said the movie is easy watching with compassion for those who are being forced out of a way of life lived happily for generations and even out of small towns where generations have lived. It is an appeal for America to come to it’s senses and have a good look around. We’re very soon going to need the jobs small farms provide AND food we can actually eat might be handy!
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