The Chris Moeller Archives

King Corn

A movie recommendation for you is the 2007 documentary "King Corn," on DVD and available now for rental or online viewing with Netflix. Two young men from the east coast, with roots in Iowa, rent an acre of field from a farmer in Greene, Iowa (Butler County), and follow their corn (as best they're able) from planting through processing.

It was an eye-opening film even for a lifelong Iowa resident like me who grew up in an agricultural family, the son of a grain elevator manager ("grain storage brats," they called my brother and me). It describes the historic and mostly devastating evolution in corn-growing from an enterprise that predominantly involved small family farms to a modern day industry of behemoth factory farms, which controls prices and sets political agenda.

In one examination roughly mid-way through the movie, the filmmakers explore what will eventually be the utilization of their product. Upon harvesting, the 10,000 pounds of corn(!) produced by a single acre of farmland fans out across the country, shipped away for processing where roughly 32% will be converted into ethanol or simply exported, leaving the nation's food supply. 490 pounds of it, on average, will become sweeteners, such as the fructose corn syrup contained in so many processed products in your supermarket, from breakfast cereals to frozen pizzas to bottled soda and juices-- damn near everything. More than half of the production-- 5,500 pounds for every 10,000-- is fed to animals-- hogs and cattle-- for meat production.

Across the west, where cattle once grazed exclusively on grass, they now graze primarily on corn. Producers discovered that cattle could be fattened quicker by confining them in feed lots. They're fed continuously while their movement is severely limited, allowing them to reach market weight in a fraction of the time of a generation ago. The cows are subsequently pumped with antibiotics and steroids to help fight off the illnesses that pop up intrinsically with morbid obesity. Additionally, a processing facility with roughly 100 thousand head of cattle produces enough waste to equal the human waste of a city with 1.7 million people.

In Iowa, families that have farmed the same land for up to five and six generations are being priced out of the game, and industry profits are far more likely to wind up at corporate headquarters than back in local economies. Having already been forced to play under the new rules going back to the 1970s, there's now widescale abandonment not only of the multi-generational homesteads, but of the small town communities that have long been the lifeblood of the Heartland. The damage caused by corporate agribusiness has been economic, nutritional, environmental, and cultural.

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I've decided to back presidential candidate Cynthia McKinney and the Green Party in November, and further announcements are coming soon, but what progressive Ralph Nader is doing is also quite extraordinary. Despite a calculated and appalling effort by Democrats to suppress dissent and the rights of voters, not to mention an almost absolute campaign blackout by the traditional media, a CNN poll released two days ago found that Nader had the support of wholly 6 percent of America's registered voters. Back in the day, when the League of Women Voters sponsored the televised presidential debates (as opposed to the current "debate commission" comprised of Democratic and Republican party bosses), the threshold for inclusion in the proceedings was 5 percent, which proved beneficial at the time for both John Anderson and Ross Perot.

Recent Nader media releases also advertise that the campaign expects to land on 45 state ballots this year, up from 34 in 2004. The traditional news media continues to perpetuate a bogus narrative about John McCain, and particularly Barack Obama, energizing young and/or disenfranchised American voters, but coupled with recent approval polls for both the White House and the Congress, all empirical evidence indicates record dissatisfaction with both Democrats and Republicans.

posted by CM @ 10:07 AM