"King Corn" is a comprehensive examination of how corn has become a pivotal element in America's agricultural landscape. Two friends decide to grow an acre of corn in Iowa, only to uncover the complex and often startling role corn plays in the American diet and economy. Through their journey, they uncover how corn’s overproduction is driven by government subsidies and how it infiltrates every part of the food system, often in the form of corn-fed meat and high fructose corn syrup, contributing to health crises like obesity and diabetes.
Highlights
Two friends, Ian and Curtis, embark on a journey to understand the role of corn in the American diet by growing an acre of it in Iowa 🌾.
Their journey reveals that most of the corn produced is inedible until processed, mainly becoming sweeteners or feed for livestock 🐮.
Corn's significant role in the diet is explored through its derivatives like high fructose corn syrup, which is linked to many processed foods and sugary drinks 🥤.
The documentary uncovers the impact of agricultural policies that have led to the overproduction of corn, heavily subsidizing farmers who grow it 🚜.
Thought-provoking discussions on the consequences of modern agriculture include insights into how these practices contribute to public health issues 💡.
Key Takeaways
Corn is ubiquitous in the American food system, often appearing in the form of corn-fed meat and high fructose corn syrup 🍔.
Government subsidies have encouraged the overproduction of corn, leading to its widespread use in inexpensive processed foods 🌽.
Despite its abundance, corn grown in Iowa is primarily inedible until processed, highlighting issues in modern agriculture 🍽️.
High fructose corn syrup, derived from corn, has significantly increased the sugar consumption in America, posing health risks like obesity and diabetes 🍭.
The documentary reveals the industrialization of farming and how few farmers manage large expanses of land 💼.
Overview
"King Corn" follows Ian Cheney and Curtis Ellis, two college friends who decide to investigate the profound impact of corn in the United States. They move to Iowa to grow an acre of corn, thinking it a straightforward endeavor, only to find themselves in the complex web of agricultural economics and policy that dictates modern farming. Their experiences shed light on how corn's omnipresence in our diet often goes unnoticed but has profound implications on health and food security.
As they delve deeper, Ian and Curtis discover that the corn industry has evolved significantly and is greatly influenced by government subsidies, encouraging mass production rather than quality. This focus on yield has led to an agricultural landscape where corn is primarily grown not as a direct food source but as a raw material for high fructose corn syrup and animal feed.
The documentary poses critical questions about the sustainability and health implications of this system, revealing how industrial farming practices have consequences that extend well beyond the fields of Iowa. "King Corn" is both an educational and a cautionary tale about the role of agriculture in shaping the diet and health of a nation.
Chapters
00:00 - 00:30: Introduction to King Corn The chapter 'Introduction to King Corn' likely outlines the central theme and setting of the book, emphasizing the role and influence of corn in agriculture and food systems. It might describe how corn has become a staple crop and its economic and social impacts. The chapter could introduce key players in the corn industry, discuss historical context, or set the stage for challenges and developments that will be explored further in the book.
00:30 - 01:00: Graduation and Grabbing Lunch The chapter revolves around a conversation discussing lunch plans. One person mentions bringing a sandwich and contemplates either eating it or going out for lunch, indicating a casual setting. The conversation includes an invitation to join and sit down, suggesting a social interaction around eating.
01:00 - 01:30: Realization about Life Expectancy Curtis and the narrator, having recently graduated from college, are confronted with the unsettling realization of mortality and the possibility of a shorter life expectancy than anticipated. This revelation challenges their initial sense of having endless time and freedom.
01:30 - 02:00: Corn in Our Diet The chapter discusses the unprecedented situation where the current generation in America is at risk of having a shorter lifespan than their parents due to dietary habits. This alarming trend is attributed to the consumption patterns prevalent in the culture, especially focusing on corn and its derivatives. As Americans began to scrutinize their diets, they realized the complexity of analyzing their eating patterns and recognized the necessity of assistance in interpreting the data collected on their food consumption.
02:00 - 02:30: How Diet is Tracked The chapter discusses the concept of hair as a continuous recorder of diet. It suggests that what we consume, such as a hamburger, is eventually reflected in our hair.
02:30 - 03:00: The Ubiquity of Corn in Food The chapter discusses the prevalence of corn in our food system. It starts with an analysis, possibly humorous or metaphorical, involving hair analysis to illustrate how the carbon in our bodies is derived from corn.
03:00 - 03:30: Getting Help from Mr. Charles Pyatt The chapter titled 'Getting Help from Mr. Charles Pyatt' discusses the use of corn, not as sweet corn on the cob, but as a material prevalent in many common foods. It specifically refers to corn being used in the form of high fructose corn syrup, which is often found in products like canned apple and grape juices labeled as 'sweetened'. This corn is a widespread ingredient in everyday food products.
03:30 - 04:00: The Proposal to Grow Corn The chapter titled 'The Proposal to Grow Corn' discusses the extensive use and presence of corn in various products. It highlights how corn is fed to livestock such as pork and chicken, which then become part of our diet, effectively turning corn into our biomass. The narrative underscores corn's ubiquity, extending to packaged food items found in grocery stores, such as the cookie aisle, where corn derivatives like corn syrup and cornstarch are common ingredients.
04:00 - 04:30: Journey from Boston to Iowa This chapter discusses the journey from Boston to Iowa with an emphasis on the prevalent use of fructose corn syrup in American products. Through isotope analysis, the influence of corn on the American diet is highlighted, suggesting a significant presence in consumed goods.
04:30 - 05:00: Connection to Iowa and Farming History The chapter introduces Mr. Charles Pyatt, residing at 2637 Floyd Line Street, Greene, Iowa. The Corn Growers Association has recommended Mr. Pyatt as someone likely to be interested in participating in an unconventional project. The correspondence begins with a letter addressed to Mr. Pyatt, expressing the hope that he is well during the month of December.
05:00 - 05:30: Arrival in Greene, Iowa The chapter titled 'Arrival in Greene, Iowa,' introduces a peculiar initiative by Ian Cheney and Curtis Ellis, who have discovered that many people, including themselves, are virtually 'made out of corn' due to their diet. Intrigued, they propose relocating to Iowa to plant an acre of corn, despite having no prior knowledge on the subject, marking a personal exploration into their dietary origins.
05:30 - 06:00: Exploring Greene and Family Roots The chapter titled 'Exploring Greene and Family Roots' begins with a thematic intro, indicated by the mention of 'Music', possibly setting a reflective or nostalgic tone. The narrative transition from Boston to Iowa suggests a geographic and perhaps lifestyle change, as the speaker remarks humorously about growing an acre of corn to see what happens, juxtaposing a high-paying job with a simpler agrarian experiment. This could imply a personal venture or life change, possibly reflecting on simpler living or reconnecting with roots. Meanwhile, Ian and the speaker are revealed to have coastal origins, hinting at a broader exploration of identity and family history.
06:00 - 06:30: Understanding Corn Farming and Elevators The chapter begins with a poetic reflection on the speaker's connection to the Midwest, humorously attributing it to the ubiquitous presence of corn—from being in their hair to being metaphorically in their jeans.
06:30 - 07:00: Introduction to Agronomy at Iowa State University The chapter begins with a historical reflection on the movement back to Iowa after the great-grandparents left. It transitions into a modern exploration of the agricultural processes at Iowa State University. The focus of the chapter is on understanding how corn, grown on an acre of land in Iowa, makes its way from the fields into our everyday lives, symbolically mentioned as 'into our hair.' This illustrates the pervasiveness and significance of agronomy and the agricultural sciences in daily life. The atmosphere is set with elements like applause and music, indicating a presentation or a welcoming note to the topic discussed.
07:00 - 07:30: The Corn Palace and Family Farms The narrator shares the history of their family's farm, which was purchased by their father during the Great Depression in 1936. The narrator's grandparents had settled on a nearby farm in 1900. The area has a long-standing tradition of having a school nearby. The chapter evokes a sense of nostalgia and historical continuity.
07:30 - 08:00: Subsidies and the Farm Program The chapter discusses the concept of an acre, how to visualize it in a farming context, and the estimation of size based on rows of crops. It touches on the practical understanding of land measurement in farming, possibly in relation to how it applies to subsidies and the farm program.
08:00 - 08:30: Corn Production on Cheney Land In a small town in Iowa with a population of 1015, the narrator experiences a quick spread of information about their plans. Despite arriving just ten minutes prior, the locals are already aware that the narrator and their companions intend to plant corn and observe its growth. The chapter captures the community's close-knit nature and possibly some humor or warmth in the situation as it concludes with 'Merry Christmas.'
08:30 - 09:00: Evolution of Farms and Farmers The chapter discusses the evolution of farms and farmers over time, using the backdrop of a Midwestern farm town to illustrate these changes.
09:00 - 09:30: Changes in Farming Techniques The chapter titled 'Changes in Farming Techniques' opens with a description of a typical evening, indicating a sense of routine and normalcy. Despite being far from their roots in Iowa, the narrator reflects on the changes and developments experienced in their lives. The mention of 'some alices' and 'Cheney's' suggests a reference to people or families who might be involved in or affected by the changes in farming practices, though specifics are not detailed in the excerpt. The narrator contrasts the present situation with their past, underlining the progress or transformation over time, albeit with a nostalgic tone for their original home.
09:30 - 10:00: Preparation for Planting Corn The chapter titled 'Preparation for Planting Corn' discusses the surprising friendship between Ian and the narrator, who both come from a small, forgotten town in the middle of the country. This town, once bustling, has seen its people move away, leading to a loss of connection with their roots and basic tenets of life. The chapter suggests a theme of returning to simpler times and reconnecting with one's origins, emphasized by the setting on a farmer's property.
10:00 - 10:30: Planting Our Acre of Corn The chapter discusses an integral part of the economy related to agriculture, specifically focusing on corn storage. The term 'elevator' is used in the context of storage, which implies the use of an elevator shaft system to store the excess produce. Although the speaker identifies as a 'funeral Vector,' they acknowledge their indirect involvement in planting activities occasionally. The conversation touches upon excess corn, indicating a surplus beyond what the storage elevator can accommodate. Instead of being discarded, this surplus corn will be shipped out.
10:30 - 11:00: Spraying and Managing Weeds This chapter discusses the process of spraying and managing weeds, a crucial aspect of corn crop cultivation. The chapter begins with a brief mention of an occurrence that happens annually in the spring, suggesting it is a recurring issue or task related to farming. The emphasis is on having an ideal environment for corn growth, which Iowa exemplifies due to its favorable conditions. Ricardo Salvador, an agronomist, is mentioned, potentially as an authority on agricultural practices or crop management.
11:00 - 11:30: Exploring Generational Changes in Farming In this chapter, we explore the advancements and transformations in farming techniques across generations, focusing on a particular grass plant. Experts from Iowa State University provide insights into how this grass plant, although related to common lawn grasses, has been developed into a significantly larger variant. The discussion highlights how the ancestors of this plant were much different in appearance, illustrating the evolutionary changes brought about by agricultural practices.
11:30 - 12:00: Growing Corn and Pests The chapter "Growing Corn and Pests" describes the journey of native corn from its origins in southern Mexico to becoming a dominant crop in Iowa, thanks to the state's fertile soils and humid summers. Over time, a specific variety called yellow dent corn took over, becoming the primary type grown across the Midwest. The chapter also briefly mentions the Corn Palace, a unique attraction welcoming visitors.
12:00 - 12:30: Celebrating Green River Days in Greene The chapter discusses the historical significance of the firstborn Palace constructed in 1892 as a means to attract settlers by showcasing agricultural life. It illustrates early farming practices and the allure of rural living with activities like tractor driving and crop cultivation, emphasizing the importance of corn in daily life.
12:30 - 13:00: Effects of Farm Technology Advances This chapter discusses the cultural significance of the Corn Palace and its symbolism of America's favorite crop, corn, and the sentimental value of family farms, even small ones like One Acre Farms. The narrative suggests that these farms start as dreams, emphasizing their humble and aspirational beginnings.
13:00 - 13:30: Tasting Our Corn In this chapter titled 'Tasting Our Corn,' the narrative begins with the anticipation and challenges of starting a farm. Despite the initial long wait expected before engaging in traditional farming activities, the modern farming methods allow for productivity even before the snow melts, highlighting advancements in agricultural practices.
13:30 - 14:00: Corn’s Journey Beyond Iowa The chapter begins by explaining the complexity of the farm program related to corn production. It introduces a scenario of having an acre of corn and discusses the concept of a base payment. According to the chart referred to in the conversation, the direct payment on corn amounts to 28 cents from the U.S government, highlighting an essential aspect of corn cultivation—whether or not one plants or produces, this payment remains a fixture in the corn farming process.
14:00 - 14:30: Corn as Animal Feed and Meat Production The chapter focuses on the economic realities and challenges involved in using corn as animal feed within the context of meat production. It highlights issues related to government subsidies and programs intended to support farmers, particularly those growing corn on lands that have not been determined as highly erodible. The chapter also emphasizes the financial risks of attempting to grow corn without government assistance, suggesting that it may result in financial losses for farmers.
14:30 - 15:00: Visiting Feedlots and the Impact of Corn The chapter discusses an experience involving visiting feedlots and the economic incentives related to corn planting. It highlights the financial benefits offered by the government for corn production, where a payment of $28 is given just for planning to plant an acre of corn. The chapter further implies the scale of corn planting might be more profitable, as suggested by the idea of growing a thousand acres.
15:00 - 15:30: Grass vs. Corn-Fed Cattle The chapter titled 'Grass vs. Corn-Fed Cattle' provides an account of the author's journey to connect with her heritage by meeting relatives living on her ancestral farm. It details her meeting with Don Cheney, widow of her third cousin Paul Cheney, who resides on the farm where the author's great-grandfather grew up. The chapter describes the farm's features, such as a silo and palm trees, painting a picture of the author's connection to her family's history and traditional farming practices.
15:30 - 16:00: Health Implications of Corn-Fed Cattle The chapter discusses the health implications of feeding corn to cattle on farms similar to Old Cheney Farm, where most of the food consumed was grown on-site. It touches upon the traditional image of farm life and the use of farm subsidies that support such farming practices.
16:00 - 16:30: Changes in Cattle Diets and Antibiotics Use The chapter discusses historical changes in policies affecting cattle diets and the use of antibiotics. It begins by highlighting how government policies once supported family farms by stabilizing corn production, sometimes requiring land to be taken out of production to maintain a balance between supply and demand, hence keeping crop prices high. This support helped farms, like the Cheneys', remain viable by controlling the grain market. However, a shift occurred in 1973 with a new secretary...
16:30 - 17:00: The Economics of Corn-Fed Beef The chapter discusses a significant shift in agricultural policy led by Earl L. Butts. Historically, there was a philosophy of curtailment and cutback in farm programs, but now there's a new focus on expansion. The aim is to produce plenty of food, illustrating a 180-degree turn from previous practices.
17:00 - 17:30: Consumer Preferences for Cheap Meat In this chapter, the landscape of the Cheney land is described, highlighting how the traditional tomato gardens and pastures have been transformed. These lands are now almost exclusively planted with corn, integrated into a larger agricultural operation run by a neighboring farmer, Rich Johnson. It reflects the broader shift in farming practices, possibly due to market demands for cheap meat, where large-scale grain production supports livestock farming. This suggests an economic and cultural shift towards industrial farming focusing on cost-efficiency in meat production.
17:30 - 18:00: Impact of Subsidies on Corn Production The chapter discusses the impact of subsidies on corn production, focusing on various farm owned by George Ewing and his family. It provides an overview of their farming operations, including multiple farms with grain bins. The chapter also touches on the trend of increasing consolidation in farming, where farms are getting larger, and farmers need to scale up to remain competitive in the market.
18:00 - 18:30: Visiting a Corn Syrup Factory The chapter titled 'Visiting a Corn Syrup Factory' likely contains a detailed account of the various processes involved in producing corn syrup at a factory. The transcript suggests a scene where a person is attempting to gauge the output of the factory, estimating around a thousand bushels per acre. The discussion might involve technical details about production capacity, efficiency, and machinery used within the factory setting, possibly including both dialogue and descriptive passages to convey the overall atmosphere and operational scale.
18:30 - 19:00: Making Corn Syrup at Home The chapter discusses the changes in farming practices, particularly how small farmers are leaving the industry while big farmers are expanding their operations. It also touches on the government's role in this process by subsidizing large grain operations. Additionally, there is a brief mention of soybean prices, with January soybeans at 5.45, down one and three quarters, and May soybeans at 5.48, down one and a quarter cents.
19:00 - 19:30: History and Impact of High Fructose Corn Syrup The chapter explores the history and impact of high fructose corn syrup on agriculture and the economy.
19:30 - 20:00: Corn Syrup in Beverages and Sweeteners The chapter discusses the agricultural aspect of growing crops, specifically corn. It touches on the type of soil needed, nutrient requirements, and the goal of achieving maximum yield. The transcript mentions the success of attaining approximately 200 bushels of corn in recent years, highlighting the accomplishments and perspectives of a farmer.
20:00 - 20:30: Obesity and Sweetener Consumption This chapter, titled 'Obesity and Sweetener Consumption', seems to contain a section about odor (specifically ammonia) and driving advice, but the connection to the topic of obesity and sweetener consumption is not clear from the provided transcript. The content hints at potentially discussing aspects of smell and its influence on consumption behavior or metabolic processes related to obesity. However, more context would be needed to clarify this connection.
20:30 - 21:00: Health Consequences of High Sugar Diets The chapter discusses the health consequences of consuming diets high in sugar.
21:00 - 21:30: Personal Stories of Diabetes The chapter titled 'Personal Stories of Diabetes' starts with a conversation between individuals who are about to engage in an activity that involves driving a tractor. One person is hesitant about the speed, expressing a desire to go slower. The passage highlights the impact of using anhydrous ammonia as a fertilizer, which has significantly increased corn production, tying in the narrator’s personal experiences or metaphorical comparisons to the management and growth seen in diabetes care and intervention.
21:30 - 22:00: Harvest Time and Crop Utilization The chapter discusses agricultural practices with a focus on maximizing land efficiency and productivity. It touches on how modern technology and methods have improved crop yields compared to previous generations. Additionally, it highlights the widespread use of ammonia fertilizer and the observable impact it has had on increasing the storage capacities of elevators in farming communities.
22:00 - 22:30: Market Realities and Selling Corn This chapter explores the market realities and strategies involved in selling corn. It delves into the complexities of the marketplace, examining the various challenges and opportunities faced by those in the agricultural sector. Additionally, the chapter considers economic factors and market dynamics that influence the selling and distribution of corn, providing insights into effective selling techniques in this field.
22:30 - 23:00: Government Subsidies and the Corn Economy This chapter, titled 'Government Subsidies and the Corn Economy,' explores the intricate relationship between government financial assistance and the farming sector, particularly focusing on how subsidies influence the corn market. The transcript provided does not directly relate to the chapter's title as it references individuals Mina Wallace and Melvin Wilbur Ellis, who are connected through family ties, suggesting their roles might be a part of a broader narrative, possibly metaphorical or illustrative of the chapter's themes. The chapter is likely to delve into the historical and current impacts of subsidies, how they shape agricultural practices, market dynamics, and possibly the socio-economic consequences for farmers and broader agricultural communities.
23:00 - 23:30: Earl Butz and the Farm Policy The chapter delves into the family history of the narrator, tracing connections back to a great-grandfather involved in the farm machinery business. A significant part of the narrative centers around an Oliver 70 tractor, a type of machinery manufactured by the great-grandfather's factory in Charles City. The chapter highlights the historical significance of Melvin W. Ellis, who operated the Hart-Parr Tractor Works, a notable company in the history of agricultural machinery. The factory was renowned for producing "Old Reliable," the first machine to be designated as a tractor, illustrating the legacy of innovation and manufacturing in the narrator's family's past.
23:30 - 24:00: Discussion with Earl Butz This chapter titled 'Discussion with Earl Butz' describes a historical moment set just before World War II in 1939. The transcript includes a conversation about acquiring a piece of farming equipment called an M Farm Hall and a 10-foot power binder. The setting seems to capture the intersection of agriculture and history, marked by the introduction of music, possibly reflecting the feel and mood of the era.
24:00 - 24:30: Impact of Agricultural Policies The chapter discusses the transition from traditional farming methods to mechanized agriculture, focusing on the impact of tractors. It highlights how the introduction of tractors reduced the physical labor involved in farming, allowing a single farmer to manage much larger areas of land than was previously possible with horses. This technological shift signifies a noteworthy progression in agricultural efficiency and productivity.
24:30 - 25:00: Reflecting on the Journey to Greene The chapter titled 'Reflecting on the Journey to Greene' discusses the shift in occupations for farm families, such as Ian's great grandfather who transitioned from field work to other pursuits. Claire Cheney, one of the early aviators in the county, exemplifies this change by taking up a job in aerial mapping of farmland. She observes, from the sky, the expansion of corn farms over time, illustrating the changing agricultural landscape.
25:00 - 25:30: Harvest and Future of Farming This chapter explores the transformation of farming practices and the consolidation of smaller farms into larger operations. It highlights the technological advancements allowing individual farmers to manage vast expanses of land, up to a thousand acres, which is significantly altering the rural landscape. As a result, many traditional farmsteads are vanishing, indicating a shift towards large-scale agricultural enterprises with more efficient but fewer workers.
25:30 - 26:00: End Credits and Acknowledgments The chapter reflects on changes in Lake County, noting the disappearance of many homesteads. This transformation has streamlined farming practices, allowing for more efficient use of land as fewer structures obstruct the farmland, leading to increased agricultural productivity.
King Corn Full Documentary Transcription
00:00 - 00:30 foreign
00:30 - 01:00 so have you guys had lunch yet I brought a sandwich and so I was gonna maybe either grab that or I didn't know if you wanted to go out and get something but oral and what's your and so we should come in I sit down
01:00 - 01:30 foreign Curtis and I graduated from college we thought we were done with professors and we're supposed to feel like we had our whole lives ahead of us but we just heard some rather disconcerting news someday we were going to die and maybe sooner than we thought
01:30 - 02:00 for the first time in American history Our Generation was at risk of having a shorter lifespan than our parents [Music] foreign and it was because of what we ate [Music] we started to keep track of what we were eating [Music] but we found we needed help making sense of our data [Music]
02:00 - 02:30 so hair is a continuous recorder it's a tape recorder of diet and so this hamburger that becomes part of my diet we'll eventually find its way into my hair ah
02:30 - 03:00 [Music] oh there it is there it is all right well I've analyzed your hair a real conclusion is is that that the carbon in your bodies is really originates from corn
03:00 - 03:30 and corn when I'm talking about core I'm not talking about corn on the cob you know sweet corns I'm talking about the corn that's being used as a material that's going into the foods that we use ubiquitously the apple juices and the grape juices that are canned and they say sweetened that's going to be a high fructose corn
03:30 - 04:00 syrup and then you look down the meats thieves porks chickens you feed them corn and that gets turned into their biomass that we consume [Music] and you walk down the cookie aisle of cornstarch corn gluten meal hydrolyzed corn protein corn syrup corn starch corn syrup sauce hydrolyzed corn protein
04:00 - 04:30 I have fructose corn syrup I fructose corn syrup [Music] for Americans that I've run the isotope analysis on those numbers are showing this huge weight of the influence of corn [Music]
04:30 - 05:00 Mr Charles Pyatt 2637 Floyd Line Street Greene Iowa 50636 Dear Mr Pyatt I hope December finds you well we got your name from a Corn Growers Association they suggested you were the kind of guy who might be willing to help us out with a rather unusual idea
05:00 - 05:30 we recently learned that people who grew up eating the way we did are basically made out of corn we're writing with a strange proposal we want to move to Iowa and plant a single acre of corn on your land we don't know a thing about corn seems like a good time to find out sincerely Ian Cheney and Curtis Ellis
05:30 - 06:00 [Music] see Boston to Iowa yeah I'm gonna grow an acre of corn and see what happens with this your high-paying job [Music] Ian and I had grown up on the coast but
06:00 - 06:30 for some reason we felt drawn to the Midwest the biscuits and with gravy maybe it was because a long time before there was corn in our hair there was corn in our jeans [Music] by incredible coincidence Ian and I each had a great grandfather from the same tiny County in rural Iowa [Music]
06:30 - 07:00 foreign [Applause] s after our great-grandparents left we were moving back [Music] to find out how an acre of corn could get from a field in Iowa into our hair
07:00 - 07:30 well my dad bought this Farm back in the depression back in 36 I think my grandparents lived on the next one down east over here and they moved in there in 1900. there's always a school well sometimes it gets chillier this is cool
07:30 - 08:00 that's what it looks like where do you think our acre ought to be right out in here and uh how big is an acre yeah if I just saw probably about eight rows here okay something like that would make all the way through as far as you can see it rolls would make an acre so from here
08:00 - 08:30 or [Music] foreign [Music] Iowa population 1015. it seemed like we've been in town 10 minutes and people already knew what we were up to I mean I've heard people talking about it you guys were gonna plant some corn and watch it grow I guess Merry Christmas
08:30 - 09:00 Merry Christmas you know I remember when he was that big you do I I'm a very old man think he was living in Boston then uh-huh yeah green looked like a lot of Midwestern farm towns but for us this place was different a hundred years ago it was the home of Melvin W Ellis and Claire Eugene Cheney people we knew almost nothing about dear friend was very glad to hear from
09:00 - 09:30 you everything is the same as usual at the store about six o'clock dinner was something great all right a thousand miles away from where we'd grown up it was hard to imagine that Iowa had once been home there's some alices over over here in the in the C-section and then there's Cheney's over in that section over there on the other side of the road
09:30 - 10:00 the strangest of coincidences that Ian and I became friends and our families come from this tiny tiny town in the middle of the country together people moved away and have forgotten about the basic tenets of their existence you know as they really come back and smell the roses it's all right here Farmers property of elevator is a very
10:00 - 10:30 significant part of our economy why is it called an elevator because you had to have some form of An Elevator Shaft or whatever to get the corn back up in so they could store it remember I'm not a farmer I'm a funeral Vector we do plant things sometimes but what and what is this here that's excess corn that's that's our overage of corn this year the elevator's full so does this just get thrown out or no that's that'll all be shipped out this
10:30 - 11:00 spring but that's what couldn't fit in that huge thing that's right that happened every year well it has the last few years if you were given the power to design an ideal place to grow the corn crop with all of its requirements and all of its characteristics you would design something that looked very much like Iowa Ricardo Salvador is an agronomist at
11:00 - 11:30 Iowa State University he agreed to show us the plan we would be growing this is a grass plant so it's a very close relative in exactly the same family as the stuff that you have growing in your lawn this is obviously a gigantic version of those grasses our one acre lawn would be growing a giant grass whose ancestors looked very different
11:30 - 12:00 native corn originated in southern Mexico but found a happy home in Iowa a land of fertile soils and humid Summers gradually one type of corn replaced all the others a versatile crop named yellow dent which over time came to dominate the entire middle of the country we are at the world's only Corn Palace we welcome you here hope you enjoy the time while you're here
12:00 - 12:30 there we go [Applause] what you see right here the firstborn Palace it was open in 1892 as a way to show people how we grow things and to get people to come and live here we had a pretty good idea of what living on a farm would look like driving tractors digging in the dirt growing food can't live without corn I mean it's an
12:30 - 13:00 everyday part of your life you know Corn Palace was a kind of Monument to America's favorite crop and to its love of Family Farms maybe even One Acre Farms like ours starts out as a dream
13:00 - 13:30 hey [Applause] [Music] foreign [Music] it was going to be a long time before we could do anything we'd thought of as farming but on the modern farm you don't have to wait for the snow to melt before you can get to work [Music]
13:30 - 14:00 the first thing you should really understand is what the farm program is and it's a very complicated program we have now okay so you got corn you got one acre here's your base well here we've got a chart that shows that the direct payment on corn is going to be 28 cents payment from the U.S government whether you like it or not it's part of growing corn did or will you plant or produce an
14:00 - 14:30 agricultural commodity on land for which a highly erodible determination has not been made so you're gonna get 14 now and you'll get 14 in October I don't know of a single Farm out here it isn't in the government program so I'll guarantee you if you go out and just raise an acre of corn without any government payments you're going to lose money really definitely
14:30 - 15:00 just for moving to green and telling the government we were going to plant an acre of corn we were going to get 28 dollars and the more corn you grow the more money you get we should have grown a thousand acres I just found this the other day and
15:00 - 15:30 you know I got somebody to show it to it didn't take long to find relatives in green Don Cheney the Widow of my third cousin Paul Cheney lived on the same Farm where my great-grandfather grew up there's his plane Uncle Claire is playing Claire Cheney my great-grandfather had what looked like a typical childhood on the farm there's a silo and there's the Palm
15:30 - 16:00 health on the Old Cheney Farm they grew almost all the food they ate and it looked a lot like the kind of farm we'd grown up imagining Ray Chaney do you think I look like these folks I sure do you're a genie you're a Chini now there's the barn The Cheney Farm was supported Through The Years by Farm subsidies an earlier version of the program we'd signed up for
16:00 - 16:30 in those days the government supported Family Farms by stabilizing the amount of corn produced each year it's sometimes meant taking land out of production with supply and demand and balance crop prices stayed High for years the program kept Farms like the cheneys afloat by limiting the amount of grain they got to Market but in 1973 a new secretary of
16:30 - 17:00 agriculture Earl L butts reoriented the farm program [Music] what we want out of Agriculture is plenty of food and that's our drive now we have experienced 180 degree turn in the philosophy of our farm programs we've abandoned a long time philosophy of curtailment and cut back to the new philosophy of expansion and it makes sense
17:00 - 17:30 on the Cheney land the old tomato Gardens and pastures are now planted almost entirely in corn as part of a neighbor's grain operation our acre is actually part of a much larger Farm run by another neighbor named Rich Johnson well I grew up a half a mile just south of this corner here farm that up there
17:30 - 18:00 and then this is George Ewing hop we Farm his land really right here and then this is my mom's Farm we farm that and that's our other grain farm right up there with a big bins on it so that's another Farm of ours farmers are the ones that are in it are getting bigger they have to be in
18:00 - 18:30 pretty good size or the gang gets squeezed down how many bushels you expect to get off an acre a thousand I think your dream house
18:30 - 19:00 one thing I'm notice over the years is the little Farmers getting out of it and the big farmers getting bigger and bigger and bigger and the government pays the farmers and it's just a big grain operation and I think they're getting bigger and bigger and bigger January soybeans at 5 45 down one and three quarters and may soybeans at 548 down one and a quarter cents three
19:00 - 19:30 fungicides and an insecticide what do Corn Growers really want more corn weighs way more corn know where no one's gone before more foreign fertilizer fertilizer okay uh uh what kind of ground are you guys working on
19:30 - 20:00 is it a sandier type soil or done any analysis um essentially the crop needs nutrients to uh in order to produce the maximum yield and you want to have the biggest potential out there to get the biggest yield you can past couple years we've had probably 200 Bush of corn around here and we like that a lot so there you go thanks it looks like a farmer now
20:00 - 20:30 staying right in this area you'll probably get a good smell of the ammonia oh yeah any advice for driving with this thing yeah don't hit anything that's that's a bad thing foreign [Applause]
20:30 - 21:00 43 560 square feet in an acre and we're going to try to Mark out one acre for corn do I push this forward terrified [Music] are you kidding
21:00 - 21:30 well you want to go another round yeah but slower maybe oh we gotta go this speed all right I'm very bad at driving a tractor around here well let's go all right thanks largely to our 150 pound injection of anhydrous ammonia we could grow four times as much corn as our
21:30 - 22:00 great grandparents could have gotten from the same piece of land we've got to follow this little line [Music] stop on almost every Farm there was a tank of ammonia fertilizer and it seemed to be working elevators were full in almost every town
22:00 - 22:30 we saw in fact they were a lot more than full y [Music]
22:30 - 23:00 that was fun [Music] so Mina Wallace there would have been your aunt and Melvin Wilbur Ellis was my great grandfather
23:00 - 23:30 the closest relative I could find was a third cousin twice removed who explained that my great-grandfather was in the farm machinery business that's an Oliver 70 tractor great grandfather Melbourne would have made that his Factory in Charles City manufactured those [Music] just north of green Melvin W Ellis ran the heart par tractor works where they built Old Reliable the first machine ever to be called a
23:30 - 24:00 tractor [Music] so cool it's beautiful [Music] about 1939 just before World War II started you got an M Farm Hall and a 10-foot power binder
24:00 - 24:30 well I changed a lot has attract your progress you didn't have to uh fight with horses all the time catching them up harness and feeding carrying them down a lot of work it's a lot of work [Music] as tractors took over work on the farm a single farmer could work more and more
24:30 - 25:00 land Farm kids like Ian's great grandfather didn't have to work in the fields anymore and began leaving the farm to do other things [Music] Claire Cheney bought one of the first planes in the county got a job making aerial maps of farmland and saw from above as corn Farms got bigger and bigger [Music]
25:00 - 25:30 today it's not uncommon for a single farmer in green to work a thousand acres and what smaller Farms remain are getting Consolidated into still larger operations [Music] there's you know an awful lot of farmsteads that are just plain disappearing you go down the road here and while there used to be the curl place there used to be the marzins
25:30 - 26:00 there's just so many of the homesteads that are gone get all the housing out of Lake County it makes them easier for them to farm it because then you don't have all these little houses and stuff in the way you can just Farm through everything and you can get a lot of acreage done if you're not turning around all the time [Music]
26:00 - 26:30 [Music] it's uh the 4th of May today and the ground is fairly good and warm we come in here with a planter we planted Liberty link corn
26:30 - 27:00 had a population of about 31 000. 31 000 kernels to the acre close enough [Music]
27:00 - 27:30 all right [Music] watch out Birds that'll take care about your acre right there [Applause] planting 31 000 seeds was not exactly a hands-on experience but then again it only took us 18
27:30 - 28:00 minutes all right we think we did we didn't really see anything go in the ground oh yeah it's magic do you have anything with corn in it here there's life in the bakery change during planting season well we don't see
28:00 - 28:30 the boxers as well and for just that brief time it doesn't take very long anymore with the equipment they have to get it planted then they're back and twiddling their thumbs until it's time to spray something foreign
28:30 - 29:00 [Music] is an industrialized corn it has been changed over the last 20 30 40 50 years um with one goal in mind which is yield
29:00 - 29:30 the way it was done was not to make every plant produce more so much as to make the plants tolerate living close together this plant is kind of an urban creature it lives in these cities of corn we are now up to close to 200 bushels of corn per acre what ten thousand pounds
29:30 - 30:00 five tons of food from one acre of land it's an amazing amount of food [Music] fence I hit a rock [Music]
30:00 - 30:30 to take one before we go yeah why don't we have you [Music] yeah pretty awesome [Music]
30:30 - 31:00 how are you doing
31:00 - 31:30 June is spraying season in Greens there's a chemical down underneath the leaves a little bit so I 50 pounds of pressure I travel 12 miles this 90-foot sprayer was going to be the key to fighting the age-old Nemesis of farmers everywhere weeds and the first weed we found on our acre was weed it's camp that they used in World War II
31:30 - 32:00 to make rope out of but it's the same plant yes it just doesn't have the they claim it don't have the kick to it I don't feel wild down there yeah I'm gonna tell you where I found it all right marijuana foreign
32:00 - 32:30 variety of weeds out there we got uh some lamb's quarter we've got some cocklebur our corn seeds have been genetically modified to resist an herbicide called Liberty Liberty would kill the weeds and our Liberty link corn would continue to grow we got to be careful not to put Liberty chemical on a cornfield that isn't Liberty link corn or it'll just kill it [Music]
32:30 - 33:00 generally we don't spray at night but there's a big range care coming for tomorrow and I'd like to get this over with I think I can run along and press the button that releases the uh Liberty when we get to your acre well let's just pray your acre that sounds good [Music] [Applause]
33:00 - 33:30 foreign [Music]
33:30 - 34:00 foreign I used to have these dreams that uh I was flying you know flying in dreams so but in the fall this this car and all turns a golden color sort of like wheat when it's ripe so um I would always be flying over golden corn
34:00 - 34:30 the corn that was you know it was beautiful the sun would be setting and uh oh and the corn was gold so I'm moving back [Music] in July my third cousin Bruce who had grown up a farm kid in green moved back to town to retire
34:30 - 35:00 there's a little pink Flag stuck in the ground okay why are we going against the grain here when you come out here there'll be a lot of like a yellow dust which is the pollen that travels from those guys down to the ears which haven't developed yet they'll be like silks hauling it on the end the sticky ends of these
35:00 - 35:30 strands and that goes down to the individual kernel each silk is attached to an individual kernel to be the corner of our Edgar in the car I can't believe that what is it [Applause] [Music]
35:30 - 36:00 [Applause] we are in the lovely town of green Iowa celebrating Green River days I'm the queen of greed yeah drain has always been an agricultural community and Iowa alone would produce enough corn to feed the entire United States
36:00 - 36:30 the agriculture of our great grandparents had come a long way Kurt's great-grandfather's tractors had evolved into 32 row planters and sprayers with a 90-foot span and if my great-grandfather Claire fly his plane over the Corn Belt today [Music] more than 2 trillion corn plants the largest corn crop in American history [Music]
36:30 - 37:00 [Applause]
37:00 - 37:30 let me give you Curtis and I are going to do a taste test on our corn to see how it's coming along to see how it's tasting
37:30 - 38:00 foreign I think that looks like the nice corn porridge yeah it's disgusting it tastes like chocolate
38:00 - 38:30 I really thought it would taste better [Applause] if you're standing in a field in Iowa there's an immense amount of food being grown none of it edible the commodity corn nobody can eat it must be processed before we can eat it it's a raw material it's a feedstock for all these other processes and the irony is that an Iowa farmer can
38:30 - 39:00 no longer feed himself when we Harvest our corn in the fall its first step toward being processed into food will be a seven and a half mile ride down the road to the town elevator so in the fall when you do Harvest your acre of corn they'll come into the elevator here we'll where we'll pull across the scale weigh your truck or wagon and then it will be pulled across to the dump pit
39:00 - 39:30 where it'll be dumped in with a bunch of other corn your acre of corn is impossible to track just because of the sheer volume that we deal with [Music] we were still months away from Harvest but our work on the farm was basically done
39:30 - 40:00 it was already clear that when the time came to say goodbye to the corn from our acre we would never know exactly where it would end up [Music] thank you after the crop is delivered to the elevator following corn into the food system becomes a game of probabilities of the ten thousand pounds of corn our acre is likely to produce 32 percent will be either exported or turned into
40:00 - 40:30 ethanol in neither case ending up in our food or in our hair ethanol but 490 pounds will become sweeteners like high fructose corn syrup and more than half our crop a full 5 500 pounds will be fed to animals to become meat so while our corn matured in the field we decided to look into its eventual fate and try to go where corn goes
40:30 - 41:00 we produce quite a little corn on our farm and a lot of it goes into feeds this is called wet corn gluten-free uh this is a byproduct of the ethanol industry it's real flaky and the cattle just love it this is this is uh this is high moisture corn this is shelled corn directly out of the field this is the third product that we feed
41:00 - 41:30 uh to our cattle which uses corn this is called corn silage this is the whole plant run through the corn chopper and it's just another way to utilize all the corn that grown in the state of Iowa and there's the corn the silage and the hay and the gluten all right there so it's almost all corn yeah it's uh 60 of the ration is corn probably
41:30 - 42:00 like a mop on his head they're really changing there look here people order now hi yes uh could I could I have a big and tasty sandwich and a small fries please consider yourself corn fish
42:00 - 42:30 in a matter yeah probably what are you eating for lunch here today corn fed beef do you actually know anything about corn fed B you know what it does to them um it's a good thing they slaughter when they do because like it actually kills them to feed them to make the meat like that so they'd be dead in six months anyway eat that stuff so it's just as well that they saw really yeah it's
42:30 - 43:00 terrible where is this every major confinement feedlot everywhere [Music] we'd moved to Iowa to grow corn but to see where corn goes we would have to leave the Corn Belt foreign
43:00 - 43:30 [Music] nice to meet you yes it's cool to look out there at all those cattle and and feel warm and fuzzy
43:30 - 44:00 that I'm feeding a lot of American people our operation is that we buy calves and we bring them into the feed lot and feed them for 140 150 days here and then sell them to the packing plant uh as fed cattle basically 14 to 16 000 head are finished here um we don't like being big but
44:00 - 44:30 right now you're looking at a family farm in Yuma County Colorado we were still getting used to the new look of the family farm but the farms in Colorado did have one major thing in common with the Farms we'd seen in Iowa we're a cattle company but we do grow a lot of corn about seven thousand acres every year [Music] and it is all used for animal feed
44:30 - 45:00 [Music] the grasslands of Eastern Colorado where cattle traditionally grazed have become some of the biggest corn farms in the country and corn has replaced grass as the principal feed for cattle [Music]
45:00 - 45:30 corn drives the mass production of animal protein in confined operations and you've got to have cheap feed to do the confinements that's my brand I just sold these to feed a lot in March I really don't have many other alternatives at Sue Jarrett's cow calf operation we
45:30 - 46:00 saw how cattle are raised before they go to the feedlot eating grass on the Open Range when Sue's father ran the ranch cattle spent almost all their lives eating grass and it took several years to reach Market weight but in recent years cattle have begun spending more and more of their lives in feedlots
46:00 - 46:30 don't let them move so total confinement less space for movement they eat continually and you get them into the market into the food chain but cattle were not meant to be on a corn fed diet for that long you know we used to feed them 60 90 days was one thing up to 120 you could make it you start really pushing cattle on a Corn based diet after that the ulcers in the stomachs don't don't take it well
46:30 - 47:00 and they start getting sick so this is just a hole and this is the stomach here scientists researching the effects of feeding corn to cattle have developed a method of looking into their actual stomachs during digestion
47:00 - 47:30 it's very warm and it's pretty packed in there 100 years ago most cattle probably were fed grass hay and they were out grazing we've gone from really feeding no grain to rations now that contain up to 90 percent grain but these animals evolved not in feeding these high starch or things like corn
47:30 - 48:00 and you feed a lot of corn more acids produced and the animal can get into trouble corn in this environment produces these acids the pH drops and then they succumb to a condition we call acidosis and if it's not treated the animal dies the corn fed to cattle is supplemented with low doses of antibiotics that help
48:00 - 48:30 them combat acidosis livestock now consumes 70 percent of the antibiotics in the United States but antibiotics also help cattle survive the conditions of confinement this facility with more than a hundred thousand head of cattle produces as much waste as a city of 1.7 million people a lot of people look at these large feedlots now and and question whether
48:30 - 49:00 that's what we should be doing but but the reason that it's done it's all it's economic and because of the of the yields on corn and the amount produced and the efficiency of producing corn it's lower cost per unit of usable energy to the animal during the last 30 years corn harvests have increased dramatically
49:00 - 49:30 and the price of corn in real dollars has dropped [Music] largely thanks to a ready supply of cheap corn Eastern Colorado is now home to some of the biggest feedlots in the world foreign the meat that we eat in this day and age is produced in a feedlot it's grain-fed meat and we produce a characteristically obese animal
49:30 - 50:00 an animal whose muscle tissue looks more like fat tissue than it does lean meat in wild animals and if you look at a T-bone steak from a grain-fed cow it may have as much as nine grams of saturated fat whereas a comparable steak from a grass-fed animal would have 1.3 grams of saturated fat foreign [Music] and so this is the meat that we eat in America
50:00 - 50:30 's favorite meat is ground beef hamburger meat [Music] hamburger meat is really not meat but it's rather fat disguised as meat it contains 65 percent of its calories by energy as fat [Music] all right
50:30 - 51:00 it was starting to make a lot of sense why Kurt and I had found corn in our hair America's favorite meat happened to be our favorite too burgers made from corn-fed beef are cheap and easy to find in fact if you were born in the last 30 years in America chances are you've only ever tasted corn fed beef [Music] thank you
51:00 - 51:30 if the American people wanted strictly grass-fed beef we would produce grass-fed beef form but it's definitely more expensive and one of the tenants in America is America wants and demands cheap food [Music]
51:30 - 52:00 okay [Music] [Music] all right
52:00 - 52:30 foreign reasons I moved back to Iowa is because I like
52:30 - 53:00 and I remembered what it was like when I was a kid and um this is so homey to have this little wooden building and that was that tiny wooden building was enough to store all the crops of the people around here [Music] Green's old grain elevator which was
53:00 - 53:30 built in our great grandfather's time had become Obsolete and was being burned down [Music] foreign it used to all fit in that small wooden building and now you know it doesn't even fit into the huge concrete structure that we have
53:30 - 54:00 over there the amount of acreage has gone up and then productivity per acre has gone up so the amount of production it's just incredible [Music] the corn from our acre would all go to Green's concrete elevator which was built in the 1970s a time of dramatic
54:00 - 54:30 increases in Corn Harvest after Decades of subsidy programs and all these incredible regulations on what Farmers could grow and how much and where the government was was saying it's all over grow your operation you've got to plant more land plant fence row to fence row boys and buy out your neighbor if he's not willing to grow [Music]
54:30 - 55:00 and when we had so much Surplus corn and there was such an interest in trying to derive the maximum benefit out of it investment was made to develop this corn sweetener industry [Music]
55:00 - 55:30 I was wondering if it might be possible to visit a corn syrup Factory sometime visiting we don't allow cameras into the plants oh yeah look at that the real reason for this the security of these plants and food processing facilities is
55:30 - 56:00 as much about the security of the food that's being created as it is your personal safety I was wondering whether it's possible to make make fructose corn syrup in my home drop rated in the wet Milling process air for a while
56:00 - 56:30 okay thanks so much take care bye all right so step one apparently is soaking this corn in water that has been heated to 140 degrees and we're also supposed to put in sulfuric acid at 200 parts per million which is a tiny parts per gallon point zero zero zero seven seven ten Seven Ten Thousand Seven it's
56:30 - 57:00 not it's not even close to a teaspoon it's like it's like a it's like you're gonna stick your finger in whatever drop sticks so much easier [Music] what we're looking for is yellow Dent number two so it's already a certain type of corn that will yield a lot of starch soaked for 16 hours to get it soft and begin to separate the starch from the fiber
57:00 - 57:30 all right day two it smells uh smells sweet what are some of your sweets smell like sugar yes there's a lot of Technology quote unquote that goes into making corn sweetener all right step two physically damage the corn it doesn't look like a kernel anymore at the end of the process but that is part
57:30 - 58:00 of that Innovative system [Music] Prime ends on randomly hydrolases alpha 1 4 glucosidic bonds to reduce the viscosity of a gelatinized starch everything really is a science when you boil it down wow
58:00 - 58:30 it's sweet it tastes good look at that prior to about 1970 nobody ate high fructose corn syrup because it was too expensive to make
58:30 - 59:00 today the dominant sugar in the western diet now comes from corn it's very cheap so it's beneficial for people that are making processed foods to sweeten their product with high fructose corn syrup because it costs them less and they save money all right food and beverage manufacturers we're looking for at lower cost sugar substitute by the late 80s we had fully
59:00 - 59:30 taken over half of the sweetened Market in the United States high fructose corn syrup is known to enhance flavors of spices and fruits it lessens the acidic quality of spaghetti sauces it provides a good Browning properties to breads it's all a part of a complex Innovative system that makes these Foods available to us in such a variety of choices for
59:30 - 60:00 such low prices [Music] foreign [Music] contains corn syrup [Music] in the last 30 years America's consumption of table sugar Has Fallen
60:00 - 60:30 but our overall consumption of sweeteners has gone up more than 30 percent largely because of a dramatic increase in our consumption of high fructose corn syrup so what's your assessment of the corn crop this year well it looks terrific in this area I think you've got a big corn crop yeah what do you think we're going to yield on our corn here
60:30 - 61:00 oh I would yes you'd be some place between 160 and 180. but that's just a guess I ain't even walked in it everything we've done on our acre comes coming to Iowa had been designed to do one thing grow as many bushels of corn as possible what we hadn't realized was that what we were growing was essentially an acre of
61:00 - 61:30 sugar we know some things just just from the factual analytical standpoint about the corn which is grown in Iowa it has been selected for high productivity this means a high volume starch production well you never get something for nothing in the world of biophysics and what you give up in the bargain is nutritional value most of what we've done in agricultural
61:30 - 62:00 so-called improvements and in food processing have actually degraded our food supply from a nutritional standpoint the corn that originally came north from Mexico was a grain with a higher protein content but as corn was bred for higher productivity the nature of the Corn kernel was transformed [Music] what's happened is that that increased yield has been mainly an expansion in
62:00 - 62:30 the endosperm or the starch fraction of the kernel of corn and of course now we're taking that starch and converting it to high for across corn sweetener which basically has no nutritional value only adverse metabolic effects and empty calories [Music]
62:30 - 63:00 for each kernel of our corn turned into high fructose corn syrup there's a nearly 70 chance it will end up sweetening a beverage likely headed for a big city far from the Corn Belt in Brooklyn New York about 139 million gallons of soda are consumed each year sweetened by 20 000 acres of corn
63:00 - 63:30 okay here right now we are at uh Fifth Avenue Park Slope Brooklyn New York and you grew up here grew up right in this neighborhood uh I was born and
63:30 - 64:00 Methodist Hospital we've been growing this acre of corn in Iowa and trying to figure out where the corn will go when it leaves our farm and uh so we've been following the story of corn syrup to a bodega and buying a bottle of soda it doesn't matter if it's a Pepsi a Coke or it doesn't matter any soda product contains quad syrup um there's a solder I don't know if they
64:00 - 64:30 still have it out it was called Colonial grape that had to be the sweetest grape soda I ever drank I I I don't know if it had more sugar or more corn syrup than any other one but I drank up to two liters a day maybe more one of the great changes in the American food supply during the last 20 years is that we are now drinking many more calories than we were before and there
64:30 - 65:00 does seem to be something about drinking calories in the form of soda for example that just doesn't generate the stop signals I actually never thought that soda would be a a large problem to drink but um I could show you a picture over here the way I I used to be I used to wear over 300 pounds that's me right there I
65:00 - 65:30 was a size 60 in pants and I stopped drinking soda and just by not drinking soda I I lost the bottle third of what I weighed you know we have an explosion of obesity that's probably the most conspicuous is the symptom of the nutritional crisis occurring in America but the Obesity is only just part of it high consumption of
65:30 - 66:00 sweeteners like high fructose corn syrup has quite adverse metabolic effects and what we see in our long-term studies is higher risk of type 2 diabetes as well nice to meet you diabetes essentially means that your blood sugar level in the blood is higher than what your pancreas can
66:00 - 66:30 control and keep in the normal range one in eight New Yorkers have diabetes which either is diagnosed or they don't know if they have diabetes and they remain undiagnosed like it's not like any other disease that we have where we just give prescriptions and that's the end of it because it's not something that goes away diabetes is a disease and obesity is a disease which is strongly linked
66:30 - 67:00 to the environmental factor of food and exercise [Music] what is the cheaper food for people okay I think cost has a lot to do what people buy the cheaper food is really not a healthy food and the main thing is sodas soda is liquid candy and people think they're quenching their thirst drinking a glass of soda but there you have a big you know amount of sugar that you're drinking
67:00 - 67:30 in a recent analysis we found that drinking one soda per day on average almost doubled the risk of type 2 diabetes compared to only occasionally having a sort of Beverage or not at all my dad he had a pain in his toe for over six months and he found out he was a diabetic that way and they cut his big toe off and before my father died
67:30 - 68:00 it went from his toe to his foot to below the knee to above the knee and then he wanted to start cutting on the other leg um my dad said no that was enough and he just gave up my mom died of a direct result of diabetes my grandmother died a direct results of diabetes my sister Madeline she's been a diabetic for years I was recently diagnosed with
68:00 - 68:30 diabetes we don't think of what we're putting into our system we don't really think about it [Music] by the end of September
68:30 - 69:00 we've been corn Farmers for almost nine months it was becoming clear that our acre wasn't just a game for seeing where food came from we were growing an actual crop it was destined to be eaten by actual people you take that meal you take that McDonald's meal you don't realize it when you eat it but you're eating corn
69:00 - 69:30 beef has been corn fed soda is corn it's all high fructose corn syrup it's the main ingredient even the french fries which are you know half the calories in the french fries come from the fat that they're fried in and that fat is liable to be corn oil or soy oil and so when you're at that McDonald's you're eating Iowa food everything on your plate is corn [Music] three weeks from Harvest time we could
69:30 - 70:00 see that the agriculture our great grandparents had helped build it was now growing fast food [Music] foreign [Music]
70:00 - 70:30 come out then we don't we haven't harvested it yet so we don't know how much uh the field is what the yield is and stuff but it it from as far as I can tell looks like everybody else's corn so yeah and standing up it's been standing up and it's kind of yellow and hard and I think
70:30 - 71:00 our problem is figuring out what we want to do with it once we Harvest it because we've been out figuring out where it could go and none of our options seem particularly attractive and I'm not terribly impressed and you shouldn't be yeah should be impressed at the stupidity we aren't drawing quality we're growing crap poorest quality crop the world's ever seen we're growing it today you don't eat the corn that you grab not saying that I might not grind up a
71:00 - 71:30 little bit for some uh cornmeal but I basically don't I don't grow necessarily growing my corn for food I don't care what's done with it I'm selling it it's the bottom line you don't think we have enough corn we've got lots of corn okay two weeks before harvest the price for a
71:30 - 72:00 bushel of corn at the elevator was 1.65. we had spent 142 dollars to rent the acre and with 133 dollars and 24 cents for seed and chemicals and 7468 to rent and run the equipment our total costs added up to 349.92 but even if we got a huge yield like 200 bushels
72:00 - 72:30 we would only get paid 330 dollars from the elevator a loss of 19.92 [Music] it looks like we may lose money growing and selling this corn oh yeah but we might make a little bit but you'll make money off the government and that's what it's all about well see you probably only had half of your initial payment
72:30 - 73:00 you get that then you'll get a counter-silical payment and now you're going to get a loan deficiency payment it's the government payments that are keeping guys going and they ain't the value of the crops how much money do you think comes into green every year from the federal government well it's by far the largest industry in green by far but if it wasn't for that you wouldn't see the crops planted out here neither
73:00 - 73:30 you wouldn't be raising 11 billion bushels of corn our 19.92 loss was going to be offset by a 28 direct payment from the government and several other subsidy payments that we hadn't even known about [Music] have a kind of subsidy system and we haven't always had it only for the last 30 years or so that rewards the overproduction of cheap corn
73:30 - 74:00 corn is the crop we've spent the most money on over the past 10 years and so we've we've got mountains of grain all over the Midwest because the subsidy programs keep the production going full blast [Music] all that cheap Surplus corn goes somewhere and in fact a lot of it's going on to our bodies there is a role that the subsidies have
74:00 - 74:30 played in making the raw material available for an overweight Society we have subsidized to Happy Meals but we don't subsidize the healthy ones it's a very specific history to this I mean I mean how we got to your acre in Iowa you really do have to go back to Earl butts and the Revolution and foreign policy that happens in the 1970s
74:30 - 75:00 what we want out of Agriculture is plenty of food and that's our drive now [Music] this year 1973 we're going to see the most massive increase in production of farm products ever in the history of this country and next year we're going for a still further increase on top of that as we pull stops
75:00 - 75:30 [Music] thank you oh all right just a moment is expecting you
75:30 - 76:00 got some corn on the door Dr Beth we've been making a film and about a year we've spent growing an acre of corn doing an acre of corn huh yes sir it was changed in the days when I was your age what what part did you play in in creating the food system that we have
76:00 - 76:30 today when I was a Youngster on the farm we've had this program cutting back on production we've paid Farmers not to produce one of the stupidest things we ever did I think but they got paid for not producing instead of paid before producing and when I became a secretary we stopped that system we've heard from some people that they think there is too much food what do you think of that
76:30 - 77:00 well that's the basis of our influence now the fact that we've spent less on food it's America's best kept secret we feed ourselves with approximately 16 or 17 percent of our take-home pay that's marvelous that's a very small chunk to feed ourselves that includes all the meals we eat at restaurants all the fancy doodads we get in our food system that I don't see much room for improvement
77:00 - 77:30 there which means we'll spend our Surplus cash on something else in our great Grandparents Day family spent twice as much of their income on food which didn't leave a lot of money or time for other things I grew up it was hard work you get up in the morning we went out and did some chores because we always
77:30 - 78:00 kept our own livestock we had our own horses for power the labor it took to make an acre of corn or a bush look hard was tremendous it was easy to see why people and our great grandparents generation would dedicate their lives to making field work easier and food more affordable by expanding the reach of Agriculture and transforming the way we Farm
78:00 - 78:30 America has completely changed I gotta reform you that I grew up on doesn't exist today this is a commercial operation it's be a family operation but it's not anymore but as a consequence we feed ourselves very cheaply now you'll see those tremendous fields of corn out there corn as far as you can see but that's that's the age of plenty [Music]
78:30 - 79:00 this is Earl butts's Farm program they made our great grandparents dream of Plenty a reality we spend less of our income on food than any generation in history fewer of us are needed to produce that food than ever before [Music] but we also might be the first generation to live in a time when abundance brings too much
79:00 - 79:30 [Music] [Applause]
79:30 - 80:00 [Music]
80:00 - 80:30 foreign [Music]
80:30 - 81:00 thank you
81:00 - 81:30 [Music] when our great-grandfathers were children growing up in green people bragged on 40 bushel harvests [Music] a hundred years later we harvested almost 180 bushels what for our time was
81:30 - 82:00 quite average our small part of the biggest Corn Harvest in American history all right
82:00 - 82:30 [Music] and I farmed all my life pregnant personally I don't like the looks of where we're headed but maybe some people say there's no stop in it I think we're going to look at industrialized agriculture that's really what we're looking at now larger and larger operations all the time it's a cheap food policy that's facing
82:30 - 83:00 as we push the cart down the grocery aisle we don't really stop and think about everything that has some of our homegrown products in it our big thing is producing as many bushels as we can from the Acres that we plant okay [Music]
83:00 - 83:30 foreign [Music]
83:30 - 84:00 all right [Music]
84:00 - 84:30 thank you [Music]
84:30 - 85:00 good drivers a dollar bill a dollar bill I'm gonna use that for a dollar two and a half more at all two of them as well as kind of an end of another Farm family in the community um payet family's been here in the community for five six generations and
85:00 - 85:30 it's just another end of another generation you grew up here right yeah born right here in this room it's all the farther I've ever got in life
85:30 - 86:00 how are you going to feel about leaving green oh oh so so I don't know we'll see we are wondering if there's any way you'd let us try and raise the money to actually buy that acre and you guys if you're going to start this country [Music]
86:00 - 86:30 [Music] no fun clothes [Music]
86:30 - 87:00 [Music] built right in [Music] wanna be a farmer all year round and on a country road where you can't see a thing
87:00 - 87:30 he's got five acres filled with little green things he said he's working so hard all night and day [Music] Mr farmer let me water your cross
87:30 - 88:00 Mr farmer let me Harvest your crops I wanna have a dream come true [Music] be the farmer Town always draws a crowd he's around
88:00 - 88:30 he's always wearing seedy clothes he shows them all [Music] [Applause] [Music] he looks like from a very bad dream [Music] s
88:30 - 89:00 Mr farmer let me water your crops Mr farmer let me Harvest your cross farmer [Music] [Applause] [Music]