No Matter Where Your From; Two Films

America is blessed with a vast amount of resources. When the first settlers arrived here, they were flabbergasted by the all the lumber, fresh water, and potential for profit. Others are simply just drawn to the beauty of this country. One of the things that this beauty brings to the people in the United States is food. We are completely self sustainable and while many companies ship food and raw materials across borders, it is due to want rather than need.

One film, King Corn, one episode from America Revealed, Food Machine both, talk about how food is produced in the United States, though from two totally different perspectives. As we look at the films we can learn a lot about how America is so great, but some problems that we have created as humans looking out for self-interests.

King Corn is a film about two brothers who notice that everything in their meals is made up of corn. After doing a hair test with unfriendly results, they realize the dependence on corn production for all of the food in the grocery store, and move out to their ancestors land to grow corn. Before watching this film, I knew corn syrup was in most foods and soda. I used to buy the Mexican coke at the gas station because I liked the idea of natural cane sugar rather than corn syrup. However, like me, like the majority of Americans don’t know the degree of how much corn syrup is actually infested into our food. Hopefully they as well as whoever is reading this watches the film so they can understand.

After seeing the endless fields of cornrows, all containing crunchy corn that is unable to be consumed, I started to realize how deep we really are in our dependence on processed food.  Part of the reason for this is because the government is so involved. They subsidize this production in order for farmers to be able to pay this production, so not only is it not cheap to produce this corn fast, but it is not profitable. So what happens when we want to produce corn the right way and can’t grow it fast enough?

America Revealed: Food Machine also talks about food production, but from a different perspective than King Corn. We get to see a wide range of how food is produced in America in ginormous amounts. One of the biggest issues that this episode brings up, which is close to me personally, is the ratio of water to agriculture in California. With California’s amazing climate and weather, year round crops can be produced massively; they’re not stuck up in some greenhouse, but out in miles and miles of fields. There are also not a lot of mountains in California and the general area is pretty low in elevation. This along with the low amount of precipitation, California doesn’t receive a lot of water year round.

Where I’m from, Salt Lake City, we have the Rocky Mountains and sometimes 800 inches of snow that falls in the winter. This produces a large spring runoff and water is abundance. Sometimes, us mountaineers take this fact for granted. People like California have to borrow water from places like us, which is a huge problem in terms of sustainability. It is possibly to dam water in mountainous regions where spring water flows, but this is of great cost to the ecosystem around the dam.

Since I watched this film I have had a hard time drinking water in the cafeteria. Without ice, it feels warm and dirty to me, and I wonder if the water reaching all of the avocados in California is cleaner.

For my personal situation Food Machine had a greater impact. Although there is corn syrup in all the food at Albertsons back home in Salt Lake, the issues in Food Machine we’re much more relatable to me. It would be interesting to pick someone from the Midwest and show them both the episode and the film, and see what their reaction is from comparing and contrasting the two.

No matter who you are or where you come from, you should watch both of the films. They have a great deal to offer in terms of food production, sustainability, and our future as a country. We have so many resources in the United States and should be blessed, rather than take our land for granted. In the future, we will need how to use these resources properly.