The documentary film King Corn is now playing at a theatre near you, mostly to raucous approval, but one fellah in Indiana isn’t as enthusiastic:
In 2003, the two men moved to Iowa and grew an acre of corn. They then followed that corn as it made its way through the food supply. What follows is a 90 minute diatribe against US farm policy, modern agriculture, food processing, and more. At every turn they put a negative spin on every aspect of corn. Not surprisingly, slow-food movement advocate Michael Pollan was an advisor to the project, according to a New York Times article on the movie. Much of the movie replays Pollan’s worn out mantra that corn is the cause of obesity.
“Worn out mantra?” Calling it that doesn’t make it so, and just to be clear, Mr. Pollan does not claim that corn causes obesity. He states quite clearly (and backs up his claim with reams of data) that the overconsumption of corn – especially in the form of high fructose corn syrup – causes obesity, and that federally subsidized overproduction of corn makes it artificially cheap, resulting in said overconsumption
Gary Truitt, the Indiana-based publisher of an online newsletter called Hoosier Ag Today, is an adamant supporter of the so-called “Center for Consumer Freedom,” which he links on his site. The CCF is a lobbying and advocacy group for industrial agriculture, restaurant, alcohol and tobacco interests. It runs media campaigns which oppose the efforts of scientists, doctors, health advocates, environmentalists and groups like Mothers Against Drunk Driving, calling them “the Nanny Culture — the growing fraternity of food cops, health care enforcers, anti-meat activists, and meddling bureaucrats who ‘know what’s best for you.’ ” CCF began as a group wholly owned and operated by Philip Morris, Inc., and its purpose was to advocate against, and rally restaurant owners to fight, ordinances that would ban smoking from restaurants. It continues to lose that fight on most fronts, but has widened its scope considerably.
Mr. Truitt continues his critique of King Corn…
Just like Fahrenheit 911 and Sicko, King Corn is big on one-sided criticism but absent on any solutions. We do have problems with our farm policy, corn production, and nutrition. But politically motivated slander films like King Corn do nothing to help find answers that will work for producers and consumers.
I’m sorry Mr. Truitt couldn’t see the solutions offered by films & books such as King Corn – I’d include among them films like SuperSize Me (see clip here), which single-handedly stopped the practice of “super-sizing” in fast food joints and Eat at Bill’s, which conveys the beauty and benefits of fresh, local food; as well as book’s like Pollan’s Omnivore’s Dilemma and Eric Schlosser’s Fast Food Nation. I’m pretty sure it was Upton Sinclair who said “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his job depends on not understanding it.” Such is the case with the blinders Mr. Truitt wears. He is so buried in a lifetime of industrial agriculture he cannot see beyond its limits or appreciate the negative impact of many of its practices.
He is able to say that “We do have problems with our farm policy, corn production, and nutrition,” but his view is that the solution lies somewhere in the same system that created the problems – at best an extremely unlikely hypothesis.
