"The US farm subsidy program is completely upside down, subsidizing junk food in one federal office, while across the hall another department is funding an anti-obesity campaign. This hypocrisy shows just how broken and wasteful our regulatory system really is."-- Dr. Mercola, MD

King Corn—The Subsidized Crop That Drives Our Fast-Food Nation

September 07, 2013

http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2013/09/07/king-corn-documentary.aspx?e_cid=20130907Z1_PRNL_art_1&utm_source=prmrnl&utm_medium=email&utm_content=art1&utm_campaign=20130907Z1

 

Story at-a-glance

 

• King Corn follows two college buddies as they set out to learn more about corn—how it’s grown, and how it ends up in so many of our foods. What they find raises troubling questions about how we eat—and how we farm
• Far from providing us with critical nutrition, US agricultural policies contribute to the declining health of Americans and worsens the out-of-control obesity epidemic
• The US farm subsidy program is completely upside down, subsidizing junk food in one federal office, while across the hall another department is funding an anti-obesity campaign
• Over the past 15 years, taxpayers have paid corn farmers more than $77 billion in subsidies, and more than 75 percent of farm subsidies are paid to a mere 10 percent of America’s farmers

 FoodCorps—Turning Corn Fields Into School Gardens

King Corn co-creator Curt Ellis is also Co-Founder and Executive Director of the national nonprofit organization FoodCorps, which came up with the ingenious idea of turning acres of corn into school gardens:

“FoodCorps recruits leaders for a year of full-time public service in high-obesity, limited-resource public schools. Service members deliver food and nutrition education that teaches kids what healthy food is, build and tend school gardens that engage children and parents in growing fresh food in the schoolyard, and team up with farmers and chefs to get healthy, high-quality ingredients into school lunch.”

Since mid-August 2012, FoodCorps has started 411 garden projects in 10 states with the help of close to 3,300 community volunteers, and have harvested nearly 29,600 pounds of fresh produce for local schools. To learn more about the program, please see the FoodCorps website.⁷