King Corn

Corn is a plant that can grow in various types of climates, making it the top crop grown in the world. However, a certain type of climate is optimal for most efficient production of corn. Corn needs a temperate weather and good soil. These conditions, as well as the use of hybrid seeds, provide a basis for the huge corn industry in the United States. According to Conceicao and Mendoza, “About 90% of corn and soybean exports are accounted for by only three countries: Argentina, Brazil and the USA. Five countries (India, Pakistan, Thailand, USA and Vietnam) account for over 80% of global rice exports.” King Corn follows two best friends from college, Ian Cheney and Curt Ellis, who go to the heartland to figure out what their food is composed of after finding out in a laboratory study that their DNA was mostly made up of corn. They were curious how corn ended up on their hair. After they plant and grow an acre of America's most produced and most subsidized on Iowa soil, they try to find out where the corn goes in the food system and how it is distributed all over America. What they discover shocks them. There are many reasons why there is an overproduction of corn in the United States, including advancements in technology, government subsidies, the cheap price of corn and corn syrup as opposed to grass and sugar. Overproduction of corn leads to overconsumption of the crop, because since corn is so cheap to grow, many try to figure out new ways on how to turn these surpluses into inexpensive, new products. Corn’s commodity is corn sweetener such as high-fructose corn syrup, as well as corn feed for beef, pork, and chicken. Nowadays, people are even trying to feed corn to salmon. It is also beneficial for the farmers growing cattle to grow corn as feed for the cattle right on their farm land. It is cheap, there can be a lot of it and it is easier and quicker to produce than hay. Switching from grass to corn allows the farmers to have a greater income. is ultimately derived from corn, either in the form of high fructose corn syrup or from corn-based animal feed. But is it worth doing? The filmmakers go to many cattle corn-feedlots, and find out that too much corn in the died of the cattle causes the cattle to eventually develop an acidic condition in one of their stomachs, acidosis, that eventually kills them. The pH in the stomachs of the cows is neutral, feeding them corn, however, makes their stomach much more acidic. This contributes to many health concerns: diarrhea, ulcers, and liver disease. To fight these health concerns, cattle are fed antibiotics, which leads to the development of antibiotic-resistant bacteria in the consumer of this meat and makes us immune to modern medicine. There are many other health concerns that arise such as the fact that meat from corn-fed cattle is higher in both overall fat and artery-clogging saturated fat, and lower in healthy omega-3 fats, vitamin E and conjugated linoleic acid. Ian and Curt also decide to make corn syrup themselves (the process of creating which requires sulfuric acid and other industrial chemicals). Both corn-fed beef and high-fructose corn syrup contribute to the obesity epidemic in the United States. Nutritionists and others interviewed in the movie also discuss the link between the diabetes epidemic and high-fructose corn syrup, especially corn syrup consumed in the form of soda. Subsidies are both good and bad because while decreasing the cost of agriculture to society, many subsidies create health concerns such as those shown in King Corn. I think that supply and demand for products shift to change the prices of those products, the even shifts in the supply and demand for both domestic and international result in changing quantities. Back in the day, subsidizing was used to maintain higher and stable prices. But economy has changed and altered subsidization since then. Now, subsidies are used to keep the prices of corn low. Agricultural overproduction is a problem that had existed for a very long period of time, even before subsidies were created. Usually, at the point when the price of the commodity one sells decreases at rapid rates, the solution that is most used is to curtail production until demand increases and raises the prices. But this is something that is not easily done in farming due to the fact that there is an abundance of farmers who operate as individuals instead of operating as a system. So when the prices of the crop decrease, farmers usually expand production, in order to stabilize their personal income. This occurance has resulted in an increase in the American corn harvest from four billion to ten billion bushels since the 1970s. Subsidization of corn has many negative effects on the internal economy of the United States as well as the global economy. Today, the U.S. government spends between 10 to 30 billion dollars to subsidize farmers each year. Corn being the most subsidized compared to soybeans, wheat and rice combined. When the congress required for ethanol to be added to gas, the U.S. corn prices have tripled, not to mention that the U.S. would make ethanol out of enough corn to feed 400 million people for a year. The price of corn broke a record of $8.49 a bushel on in 2012 and is up fifty seven percent since June of 2012. That helped drive up global food inflation tracked by the UN’s Food & Agriculture Organization 6.2 percent in July from June, the most rapid jump in prices since November of 2009. According to Conceicao and Mendoza, rising and changing patterns of food consumption contribute to the global food crisis. “Even as the present global economic slowdown has helped to temper this trend somewhat, the economic rise of developing countries [...] has begun to create a burgeoning demand for raw materials and commodities, as well as rising and evolving demand for food, which ultimately contributed to the recent commodity boom.” Corn is considered the “worst Midwest drought in half a century” because it’s production in the United states is responsible for 36 percent of corn in the 2011-2012 world harvest and 39 percent of global trade in the grain. Second, corn is one of the contenders to be used for biofuel, and most would rather sell it to make fuel rather than for nutritional reasons due to the greater income that biofuel would bring. And “the extent that land area devoted to biofuels as opposed to food production might become an increasingly binding trade-off, this might also exert pressure on resources critical to food production.” (Conceicao&Mendoza) And although there is an overabundance of corn in the world, putting it into fuel would raise the prices of corn due to it’s value and potential. While corn is very profitable for the farmer, it’s production and output should be monitored and not encouraged by the government. It must be regulated to make sure that there isn’t an overproduction that contributes to the global food crisis.