New film King Corn responds to National Corn Growers Assn

The filmmakers behind King Corn responded today to the National Corn Growers Association by admitting that “yes, we do want to shake up the Farm Bill debate.”

“While we recognize that U.S. corn growers have grown 93 million acres and we’ve only grown one acre, we did learn a few interesting things in the process,” said Curt Ellis, one of the pair of amateur farmers featured in the new documentary film.

As critics have pointed out, the film is notable for its respect of the farmers that Ellis and Ian Cheney met during their time in Greene, Iowa. “Most of what we learned, we learned from the farmers that taught us,” said director Aaron Woolf.

“What King Corn does do is take a fresh look at how government-subsidized, all-out corn production enables a food system awash in nutritionally empty calories, said Cheney.

“King Corn focuses on the food aspects of corn, which are largely missing from the Farm Bill debate right now,” Woolf added, “and which do have a tremendous influence on our nation’s health.

The epidemics of diabetes and obesity, fueled by an abundance of commodity-based processed foods, are important problems which should be addressed in the 2007 Farm Bill, but which so far have largely been ignored.

The film opened to sellout crowds in New York last weekend, screened last night on Capitol Hill, and opens in Washington, D.C. this Friday at the E Street Cinema. More national dates may be found at www.kingcorn.net.