The King Corn Movie - Essay Example

The documentary depicts a significant endeavor to portray the differences between the farms utilized in America in the past compared to the present. Fundamentally, the documentary explores the commercialization of the industry, which is portrayed through an example.

Essentially, the story regards two college graduates Ian Cheney, and Curtis Ellis, who argues that they have identified the significance of consuming corn. This leads to the curiosity of traveling in search of a way they could grow corn. However, they both trace their ancestry to a small town in Iowa, and they decided to lease an acre of land, which could enable them to undertake their experiment. In this case, the movie explains that some families had the same piece of land, and there was an aspect of change from the crop size due to the establishment of merchandise farming and the degradation of product quality. Therefore, their experiment and documentary portrayed an aspect of change and the perception towards corn.

When they arrived in Iowa, the first thing they did was search for a farm, which was large compared to when they lived there with their families. It is evident from the film that most of the farms had been purchased and replaced with large tracks of land, which would be more efficient for production in industry farming corporations. In addition, they also utilize farming equipment, with the capability of undertaking the required task better and more efficiently. On the other hand, the equipment that was utilized in the process of farming was significantly larger; in fact, they had the capability of undertaking the task efficiently. The film presents the revolution that has occurred in the process of farming, whereby the tractor has replaced the use of horses to pull the plow. In this case, the tractor is one of the equipment that has been introduced in the process of farming.

Some of the other aspects of farming, which are discussed in this documentary, regard the decision by the government to subsidies corn to keep its price low. Essentially, the small farmers were offered a low chance of expanding, thereby leading to significant changes u the quality of corn over the years. Besides, most of the production of corn had been used for feeding animals and production of corn syrup, which has nutritional quality in the manufacture of foods high in a variety of starch. Therefore, the new variety of corn that was introduced could not be consumed before being possessed; thus farmers were no longer able to consume the products that they were growing.

Some of the major problems presented in the film involved the growing and production of crops that are not consumable by farmers until they are processed. In this case, there was a large area in Iowa, where corn was grown on a large tract of land, and this was longer there by the time Ian Cheney and Curtis Ellis were undertaking their experiment. As the farmers continued to understand the problem of growing corn for being inedible until processing; hence, they decided to stop growing the crop. On the other hand, there was another problem, which involved the crop being stripped of vital nutrients as a result of genetic engineering to facilitate increased populations of the crop. In this case, there are moral issues arising from the decision of introducing genetically modified corn, and the consequences were the withdrawal of most of the farmers in growing corn.

Nevertheless, the film indicates a chance of altering the ways through which food is produced. For instance, they argued years ago farmers were able to produce over 40 bushels per acre compared to the present, when they can produce 180 bushels using the same piece of land. Besides, the film presents ideas that corn is processed into various products such as a sweetener and ethanol, animal feeds, and corn syrup, which is consumed by most Americans in the present day. Finally, Cheney and Ellis realized that their acre was untraceable due to the magnitude of the corn industry; in fact, this proved that government subsidies play a significant role in ensuring that corn production remains profitable. Read More