For decades now, we have been learning what foods can help fight cancer and disease, give us energy, and are low fat. Now it is imperative for our health that we turn that same scrutiny to the policies that affect how and why food is grown.

The documentary King Corn by Aaron Woolf, Curt Ellis, and Ian Cheney explores the drastic imbalance caused by three decades of "no limits" farm policy and its effects on our bodies, our communities, and our pocketbooks. The film, airing in April 20 at 10 p.m. on KETC Channel 9, begins with an analysis of the filmmakers' hair. To their surprise, these 22-year-old college grads learn that the majority of molecules in their hair came from corn. The film seeks to discover how that happened by tracing one acre of Iowa corn from seed to human cell. Along the journey, the filmmakers identify the bizarre farm policies that have pushed farmers off their land and made them a cog in a production machine, such that most cannot feed themselves from their labors. Instead they grow inedible crops for fuel or livestock or that must be chemically altered before humans can eat them.

Agricultural science, with its focus on yield, can now grow 5,000-10,000 pounds of inedible corn from a single acre of land with herbicides and chemical fertilizers. But why is this necessary? King Corn discovers that most corn is used to feed livestock or is made into ethanol. A fraction of the harvest is converted to corn syrup – a diabetes-making invention that is common in grocery store items. On the environmental side, the conversion from diversified farms to massive monocultures and meat factories, tips the scales towards polluted water and eroded soils. Is it merely coincidence that at the same time the corn revolution altered the landscapes in Mississippi River states, a plume of fertilizer-rich pollution formed at the river's mouth in the Gulf of Mexico starving ocean creatures of oxygen and creating the now annual Dead Zone?

The system is grossly out of balance because farm policy is grossly out of balance. The remedy is to restore the balance. Do not think that the entrenched beneficiaries at the top of the heap of corn will accept reining in their excesses without a fight. Beware of misleading "reforms" that enrich another interest group but sacrifice farmers and quality food. Take a stand in the revolution for agricultural independence: learn about the problems, buy locally grown foods, support farmers markets, and elect people who will stand up for sane farm programs. Start by watching King Corn and fortify that with the following resources: