Page 60 - Winter2009

Tim’s DVD Reviews

King Corn again, after tasting the result, there is no swallowing.
By Curt Ellis & Ian Cheney On the educational side, they study where the corn goes after harvest.
Docuramafilms About half goes to animal feed and almost a third goes to ethanol and
exports. Most of the rest becomes sweetener. Sixty percent or more of
Two college grads are told that their hair cattle feed is corn. If the animals were not slaughtered on the feedlots they
analyses indicate that the carbon in their bodies would die in six months anyway on that kind of feed. The filmmakers visit
comes from corn. This simple factoid inspires Earl Butz, the Secretary of Agriculture who changed the system in the
them to relocate to Iowa to follow an acre of 1970s. Before Mr. Butz, the government paid farmers not to produce and
corn from planting to final product. They find he thought that was the dumbest thing we’d ever done. I won’t argue with
out that corn, in some form, is in just about ev- that. He changed the system to pay farmers to overproduce so we would
erything. Beef is corn fed, fruit juices and junk have cheap food. I suppose he succeeded in a way, at least for a while.
food contain high fructose corn syrup, bread and Ellis and Cheney take a low-key approach to all of this. There are
other junk food has corn starch and more corn no hysterics, hyperbole, or big accusations. They are respectful to Earl
syrup. If you were to take everything containing Butz who looks feeble and a little sad as he rolls away in his motorized
corn (and soy) out of the average supermarket, wheelchair (he died not long after the film was released). The farmers,
you could replace the supermarket with a small especially the older ones, don’t like what is happening to agriculture but
veggie stand. don’t see that they have many choices. The final scene sums up what is
Our two intrepid documentary produc- happening to the traditional farm when they visit six months after harvest
ers borrow an acre of land from a farmer near to find the farmer auctioning off the farm and the house he was born in.
Greene, Iowa and helped (sort of) plant 31,000 THUMBS UP.
kernels on that acre. With modern equipment
that took about eighteen minutes. Since they For a Few Pennies More—Indonesia
used Liberty Link (GMO) corn, weeding was a Journeyman Pictures
simple matter of one spraying, which didn’t take http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NV4X5cXaf7Y
very long either. Throughout this summer project
we get a good look at farming in Iowa, how it Iodine deficiency in Indonesia is the subject of this Youtube video.
has changed in the last thirty to forty years and Despite living on an island (Java) with very rich soil due to a nearby vol-
how production during that time has skyrock- cano, iodine levels in that soil are very low or non-existent. The people
eted. As we’ve seen elsewhere, the meddling of display all the most well-known symptoms like goiter, cretinism and very
government has had a profound effect. Farms short stature. This problem has apparently been around for a long time.
have gotten rapidly larger and those that didn’t Ancient skeletons have been discovered which have sometimes been called
got squeezed out. The system is rigged so it is hobbits and thought to be some exotic humanoid species by those who are
impossible to make money without government a little too eager to find such things.
subsidies. As the title suggests, it would be very cheap to iodize the salt. While
There are many entertaining and educational that has certainly reduced associated problems in this country, many ex-
moments as they wait for their corn to grow. They perts are not convinced that is the optimum solution. Doctors in Indonesia
use Fisher-Price toys and stop motion photog- tested several brands of salt that claimed to be iodized and found they are
raphy to illustrate how farms and farming have not. Many Americans don’t realize that not all salt in the U.S. is iodized.
changed over the last thirty years. They taste test It might be interesting to check the brands that do claim to be iodized.
their corn when it ripens. The look on their faces Or you could just trust that industry and government regulators wouldn’t
tells it all. Neither of them is able to swallow the lie to us. If you believe that, you might want to have your iodine levels
corn. They learn how to make corn syrup in their checked. THUMBS UP.
kitchen. A lot of chemistry is involved and, once
58 Wise Traditions WINTER 2009