Norm Dicks center to screen food documentary

Americans demand cheap and abundant food to nourish our bodies and feed our need for decadence. Nary between forkfuls do we pause to ponder where our food came from, who took the time to create it or the economic, health or political impact of what we pile on our plates.

That’s where “King Corn” comes in.

This documentary, which will show at 7 p.m. July 1 at the Norm Dicks Government Center Auditorium in Bremerton, chronicles the experiences of two college buddies who turn into Iowa farm boys to answer those questions. The Kitsap Community and Agricultural Alliance is sponsoring the showing.

Ian Cheney and Curt Ellis move to the heartland, lease an acre of land, apply for government subsidies and produce a year’s worth of corn. Once the corn is produced, the boys consider where their crop may go: corn feed for cows, as a main ingredient in high fructose corn syrup, etc. Their travels take them to Colorado, where a rancher keeps her cows in confinement and fattens them with corn. Cheney and Ellis also consider their crop’s fate as high fructose corn syrup, a main ingredient in soda. The men travel to Brooklyn, N.Y., where soda flows like water and Type II diabetes is just as ubiquitous.

“The breadth of the problem is now clear: the American food system is built on the abundance of corn, an abundance perpetuated by a subsidy system that pays farmers to maximize production,” states the “King Corn” press kit. The documentary was primarily shot in Greene, Iowa, in 2004-05.

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