Just watched the documentary “King Corn”. The directors decide to grow an acre of corn and in the end only turn a profit thanks to a subsidy from the government.
In the movie the directors acted as though this were surprising – but it really shouldn’t be. In a commoditized, efficient market, profit margins will be low. Since the government subsidy is factored into the price of corn, the price is set exactly where the subsidized supply demand curves intersect and therefore farmers barely scrape by with a small profit – and only after the subsidy. Without the subsidy, some farmers would stop producing corn and we would move back down the supply/demand curve so that corn once again becomes just marginally profitable at the new lower (subsidy-free) price.
For me, the really surprising part of the movie was how little physical work a farmer actually does. The directors make it seem like producing corn is the easiest job in the world. I figured the movie was blowing things out of proportion for effect, but I found this interview with one of the directors:
Curt: The most amazing thing to us was how little physical work is involved in the modern farm. All told, I think we spent about two hours over the course of the year…growing five tons of food!
So now I’m left wondering, what is that modern corn farmers actually do on a daily basis? Google isn’t any help, does anyone know?
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I had a botany professor who grew up on his family’s farm in Nebraska and moved out here to the west coast for grad school.
He’s very much against the current farm bill in place and told us that because of the heavy use of machinery, pesticides, and the fact that all we grow in this country is corn (for production of ethanol?), farmers will spend a few months during the growing season on their farm and during winter they travel down south to warm places like Arizona and New Mexico for a long vacation.
The down side of this: Ethanol is NOT the solution to the global warming epidemic. True, most of the corn grown currently is used to produce high-fructose corn syrup in most junk foods, but there will be an increasing trend to use that corn for ethanol production soon. That is why its subsidized by the government, I’m suspecting??
Right now, in Haiti there are food riots because of shortages of food. People are starving, and here we are sitting here a few hundred miles away growing enormous amounts of corn crops so that we can find a more efficient way to run our cars.
Growing up in a family that owned farms, I can tell you that growing corn is not as easy as the movie makes it out to be.
First, there’s long long hours of time spent in the fields, plowing, planting, harvesting, and all the stuff that comes in between.
Then there’s all the other work that needs to be done on a farm, keeping machinery running, maintaining buildings, hauling crops from last year, feeding animals, etc.
And sadly, most of the farmers I know, are not only farmers, but they also hold down a second job just to make ends meet. They don’t just travel to New Mexico or Arizona for vacations all winter. They work at factories, hospitals, janitors, etc so that they can keep doing what they love… farming.
Niels, you grew up five miles from corn country!!!