omnivora: October 2007 Archives

Speaking of documentaries, the new film King Corn is about the huge proportion of our national diet that we derive from corn.

The exposure of corn as the fuel in our food system was one of the most compelling parts of the hugely acclaimed The Omnivore’s Dilemma. Author Michael Pollan introduces us to George Naylor, an Iowan struggling to run the farm his grandfather brought into the family in 1919, early in that section on “industrial” food:

The day I showed up was supposed to be the only dry one all week, so George and I spent most of it in the cab of his tractor, trying to get acquainted and get his last 160 acres of corn planted at the same time; a week or two later he’d start in on the soybeans. The two crops take turns in these fields year after year, in what has been the classic Corn Belt rotation since the 1970s. (Since that time soybeans have become the second leg supporting the industrial food system: It too is fed to livestock and now finds its way into two-thirds of all processed foods.) For most of the afternoon I sat on a rough cushion George had fashioned for me from crumpled seed bags, but after a while he let me take the wheel.

Back and forth and back again, a half a mile in each direction, planting corn feels less like planting, or even driving, than stitching an interminable cloak, or covering a page with the same sentence over and over again. The monotony, compounded by the roar of a diesel engine well past its prime, is hypnotic after a while. Every pass across this field, which is almost but not quite dead flat, represents another acre of corn planted, another thirty thousand seeds tucked into one of the eight furrows being simultaneously etched into the soil by pairs of stainless steel disks; a trailing roller then closes the furrows over the seed.

The seed we were planting was Pioneer Hi-Bred’s 34H31, a strain that the catalog described as “an adaptable hybrid with solid agronomics and yield potential.” The lack of hype, notable for a seed catalog, probably reflects the fact that 34H31 does not contain the “YieldGard gene,” the Monsanto-developed line of genetically engineered corn that Pioneer is currently pushing: The genetically modified 34B98, on the same page, promises “outstanding yield potential.” Despite its promises, Naylor, unlike many of his neighbors, doesn’t plant GMOs (genetically modified organisms). He has a gut distrust of the technology (“They’re messing with three billion years of evolution”) and doesn’t think it’s worth the extra twenty-five dollars a bag (in technology fees) they cost. “Sure, you might get a yield bump, but whatever you make on the extra corn goes right back to cover the premium for the seed. I fail to see why I should be laundering money for Monsanto.” As Naylor sees it, GMO seed is just the latest chapter in an old story: Farmers eager to increase their yields adopt the latest innovation, only to find that it’s the companies selling the innovations who reap the most from the gain in the farmer’s productivity.

This new film is by Ian Cheney and Curt Ellis, who undertook their own corn adventure: they grew their own acre of corn in Iowa, to discover that same life cycle from field to plate. The film was the first topic in a recent episode of Boing Boing TV:

The film seems to cover much the same area as and Eric Schlosser’s Fast Food Nation. It’s already caused some controversy, but hopefully King Corn is a good film that will get more people thinking about what we put in ourselves.