Big River (30 min)
Following up on their Peabody winning documentary, the King Corn boys are back. For Big River, best friends Ian Cheney and Curt Ellis have returned to Iowa with a new mission: to investigate the environmental impact their acre of corn has sent to people and places downstream.
Following up on their Peabody winning documentary, the King Corn boys are back. For Big River, best friends Ian Cheney and Curt Ellis have returned to Iowa with a new mission: to investigate the environmental impact their acre of corn has sent to people and places downstream.
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In a journey that spans the heartland to the Gulf of Mexico, Ian and Curt trade their combine for a canoe- and set out to see the big world their little acre of corn has touched. On their trip, flashbacks to the pesticides they sprayed, the fertilizers they injected, and the soil they plowed now lead to new questions, explored by new experts in new places. Half of Iowa’s topsoil, they learn, has been washed out to sea. Fertilizer runoff has spawned a hypoxic “Dead Zone” in the Gulf. And back at their acre, the herbicides they used are blamed for a cancer cluster that reaches all too close to home.
