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Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment Advance Access originally published online on October 21, 2009
Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment 2009 16(4):807-816; doi:10.1093/isle/isp098
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© The Author(s) 2009. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Association for the Study of Literature and Environment. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

The Making of King Corn

Steven Hall

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

In King Corn, documentary filmmakers Curt Ellis and Ian Cheney (with director Aaron Woolf) journey to the heartland as they seek answers to one of the most obvious, yet elusive questions of contemporary agriculture: Where does food come from? With some direction from author Michael Pollan, Curt and Ian move to Greene, Iowa (pop. 1015) where, with the assistance of a few local farmers, they plant, spray, and harvest one acre of genetically modified corn. It doesn't take long—approximately eighteen minutes to plant 31,000 seeds—before Curt and Ian realize their nostalgic vision of the country farmer has long been supplanted by the modern, industrial farmer. Curt and Ian then follow their harvest to the market, demonstrating the overwhelming effect corn has on America's food system, health, and economy.

They begin by visiting a feedlot in Colorado where their government-subsidized, Iowa-grown corn transforms 100,000 steers into cheap beef, satisfying America's . . . [Full Text of this Article]


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