The King Corn documentary gave a light-hearted image of the causes, processes and results involved with the increase in corn production in Iowa. Mechanization, hybridization, farm size and production began to rise as need and desire for meat-rich diets climbed. A surplus in corn production encouraged the search for new corn processing mechanisms and uses, such as corn syrup and ethanol. Morris Stole told me about how the farmscapes in Radcliffe have changed since he was a kid, from several farms per acre to several acres per farm. This fact was reiterated in the documentary by a Greene, Iowa native, that farms have grown in size and smaller plantations have become obsolete. As corn became cheaper due to mechanization and increased availability in the market, farmers had to have larger tracts of land and government support in order to make money from their operations.

The farmers we’ve visited so far in Iowa have expressed few opinions regarding the quality of corn they produce, but in the documentary a few of the interviewed farmers admitted that the quality of their product was sub-par. I saw the documentary several years ago, and maintained a bias against this low-quality No. 2 corn due to the overproduction portrayed in the documentary and its “misuse” as cow feed and an unhealthy food additive. The second viewing of the film allowed me to consider the corn debate with a much more comprehensive understanding of the entire system. One of the interviewees in the documentary mentioned that Happy Meals are subsidized but healthy ones are not, an argument I’ve stood by for years. On the contrary, Lusk argues that the subsidization of foods often drives prices higher due to associated import restrictions. I might have told you a few years ago that we should only feed cows grass because of the negative impacts corn has on their health. But after being in Iowa I would retort that the cows fed corn aren’t meant to live long lives and that we couldn’t support the current demand for meat on US grasslands alone.

Revisiting the suggestions made against the corn industry in King Corn allowed me to understand the corn debate as more than just pro-corn vs. anti-corn, but as research-based fact vs. hearsay, producers vs. elitist consumers, and all of the oppositions in between. I’ve learned that instead of quickly siding with the views of one sector or production mechanism, we must acquire a more holistic view of the system in which agriculture is nested. There is no neatly wrapped package with the solution inside, no clear winners or losers. But system transparency and efficient information flows can allow us to inch closer to production with economic, social and environmental benefits.