Untitled Document
It’s virtually impossible to travel in any
direction from Springfield and not encounter acre upon acre of the
state’s beloved yellow crop.
According to the Illinois Department of Agriculture,
11.1 million acres of corn was harvested in 2006 in Illinois — more
than 238,000 acres of it in Sangamon County alone — but what many
people don’t know is that only a small portion is immediately edible. Three years ago, two Yale graduates set out to show
that most of the Midwest’s corn isn’t the sweet eat-with-supper
variety but instead what they call “processed food in the
making.” In a central-Illinois premiere, Ian Cheney and Curt
Ellis’ documentary King Corn will be screened at 7 p.m. Tuesday, Jan. 15, at City
Nights (3149 S. Dirksen Pkwy.). In the film, Cheney and Ellis relocate to Iowa to
plant and grow one acre of corn and then follow its journey through the
food-processing system, where it’s made into such products as
high-fructose corn syrup and livestock feed. Bridget Holcomb, agricultural policy coordinator for
the Illinois Stewardship Alliance, a co-sponsor of the screening, says the
film’s No. 1 lesson is that food doesn’t originate on a
grocery-store shelf. “It teaches the importance of knowing where
your food comes from and its economic effects, its environmental effects,
and its effects on the community,” she says. King Corn, which has
been hailed as controversial, has already received its share of criticism
from local and state organizations, including the Illinois Corn Growers
Association. Spokesman Mark Lambert calls the documentary a
misrepresentation of the commercial corn industry. “A couple of guys go out with no farming
experience, plant such a small piece of acreage, and then try to draw
correlations of what’s going on in one of the most modern, productive
agricultural systems in the world,” he says. A panel discussion, featuring such topics as
community-supported agriculture and the politics of food, will follow
Tuesday’s screening.
Contact Amanda Robert at arobert@illinoistimes.com
This article appears in Jan 3-9, 2008.
