King Corn 2007

A documentary about two friends, one acre of corn and the crop that feeds the fast food nation. Corn is America’s number one crop, the most-planted, most-processed and most-subsidised. The stuff finds its way onto people’s dinner tables in countless, often unrecognisable forms.

“How often do you really think about where what you eat comes from? For most of us, the answer is probably somewhere in the neighborhood of ‘rarely’. When childhood friends Ian Cheney and Curt Ellis plant an acre of corn in Iowa in the interest of learning how the grain enters the food chain, they come to the startling realization that they are, in effect, fueling the fast-food industry. The corn they grow has been genetically engineered not for direct consumption, but to be processed into high fructose corn syrup or fed to cows sent to confinement farms for ‘finishing’ before heading to the slaughterhouse… King Corn is as relevant as Super Size Me and as important as An Inconvenient Truth…” — Melanie Haupt, Austin Chronicle