"With the help of friendly neighbors, genetically modified seeds, nitrogen fertilizers, and powerful herbicides, they plant and grow a bumper crop of America's most productive, most subsidized grain on one acre of Iowa soil. But when they try to follow their pile of corn into the food system, what they find raises troubling questions about how we eat -- and how we farm."From foods made with corn syrup to corn-fed beef, King Corn will make you think twice about most of the foods you eat.
Now best friends Ian Cheney and Curt Ellis are back with a follow up to King Corn called Big River. In Big River, Cheney and Ellis return to Iowa to investigate the environmental impact their acre of corn has had on those downstream.
"On their trip, flashbacks to the pesticides they sprayed, the fertilizers they injected and the soil they plowed now lead to new questions, explored by new experts in new places. Half of Iowa's topsoil, they learn, has been washed out to sea. Fertilizer runoff has spawned a hypoxic "dead zone" in the Gulf. And back at their acre, the herbicides they used are blamed for a cancer cluster that reaches all too close to home."
Big River is a short, yet fantastic, documentary on exactly who is effected by these farming practices. For those of us in the mid- to northern US we know in theory that pesticides "run downstream" or "seep into the groundwater" but this film puts faces to "downstream" that you may not have thought of.
This week I'm giving away a copy of the packaged King Corn DVD as well as an advance copy of Big River (from the PR company, so it is a legal copy!). Just leave me a comment, along with a way to reach you and you'll be entered. For additional chances, share this on Facebook or Twitter, or follow my blog and let me know you have. A winner will be chosen at random on Saturday, December 4th.
2 comments:
Just watched King Corn and got a lot out of it, but if I had my OWN copy, I could loan it to family and friends and not worry about getting the DVD back to the library. The other movie sounds intriguing too. If I win, you could let me know in a comment over on my blog. Thanks!
Post a Comment