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King Corn

In: Computers and Technology

Submitted By snowballbulldog
Words 2688
Pages 11
The Facts Behind King Corn
The documentary King Corn does an excellent job introducing us to the perils and problems with our industrial food system that are centered on cheap corn. However, it also tends to sidestep the main beneficiaries who drive and thrive off our current farm programs: corporate agribusiness.

Why are farmers dependent on subsidies?
New Deal Forced Agribusiness to Pay Farmers Fairly. As King Corn outlined, the government during the New Deal attempted to bring supply into line with demand, an approach known as “supply management.” This was accomplished thru the use of conservation set-asides, a price floor guaranteeing a fair price for corn (similar to a minimum wage), and a grain reserve to deal with overproduction. Farmers did not need to rely on the government for a fair income. They received it from the marketplace. Prior to the New Deal, the “free market” approach to agriculture caused economic booms and busts as farmers suffered continued depressed prices for their crops. This led to the rise of the Populist Party and other agrarian movements whose ideas were finally implemented with the New Deal. Agribusiness Had Lobbied for Decades to Allow the “Free Market” to Determine Prices. Beginning in 1973, policy changes promoted by Nixon Secretary of Agriculture Earl Butz deregulated the corn market. He dismantled supply management policies, selling off government storage bins used as food security reserves and implemented “fencerow to fencerow” planting. Butz believed any overproduction should then be dealt with thru exports and “free trade.” The Russian Wheat Deal and the World Food Crisis of the early 1970s gave Butz the chance to promote the false notion that free markets would be good for farmers. Butz and agribusiness giant, Cargill, along with the Farm Bureau argued that farm prices crashing would be a positive because they would be

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