Ian Cheney: Just for moving to Greene and telling the government we were going to plant an acre of corn, we were going to get $28. And the more corn you grow, the more money you'll get.

Curt Ellis: In 1973, a new Secretary of Agriculture, Earl L. Butz reoriented the farm program.

Earl M. Butz: "What we want out of agriculture is plenty of food."

Ian Cheney: Elevators were full in almost every town we saw. In fact, they were a lot more than full.

Michael Pollan: University of California: "What you're growing is an industrial corn. It has been changed over the last 30, 40, 50 years with one goal in mind, that is yield. If you're standing in a field in Iowa there's an immense amount of food being grown, none of it edible. The commodity corn, nobody can eat. It must be processed before we can eat it. Its a raw material, a feed stock for all these other processes. The irony is, an Iowa farmer can no longer feed himself."

Loren Cordain: Colorado State University: "The meat we eat these days is produced in a feed lot. Its grain fed."

Ian Cheney: America's favorite meat happened to be our favorite, too. Burgers made from corn fed beef are cheap and easy to find. In fact, if you were born in the last 30 years in America, chances are you've only ever tasted corn-fed beef.

Colorado Cattle Producer: If the American people wanted strictly grass-fed beef, we'd produce grass-fed beef for them. But its definitely more expensive, and one of the tenants in America is, Americans wants and demands cheap food.

Ken Cook: Environmental Working Group: "After decades of subsidy programs, all these incredible regulations on what farmers could grow how much and where, the government was saying its all over. Grow your operation. You've got to plant more land, plant fencerow to fencerow boys, and buy out your neighbor if he's not willing to grow. And when we had such a surplus of corn and there was such an interest in trying to derive the maximum benefit from it, investment was made in trying to develop this corn sweetener industry.

Ian Cheney: Every single item I found in this aisle contains corn syrup.

Michael Pollan: If you take that meal, that McDonalds Meal, you don't realize it when you're eating it, but you're eating corn. Beef has been corn fed. Soda is all corn, high fructose corn syrup, its the main ingredient. Even the french fries, which half the french fries are corn, the fat they are fried in is likely to be corn oil or soy oil. So, if you're at that McDonalds, you're eating Iowa food. Everything on your plant is made of corn.

Farmer: We aren't growing quality, we're growing crap. Poorest crop the worlds ever seen, we're growing it today. I don't grow my crop necessarily for food. I don't care what's done with it, I'm selling it. It’s bottom line.

Curt Ellis: It looks like we're going to lose money by growing this corn.

Chuck Pyatt: Yeah, but you'll make money off the government and that's what it’s all about. It’s the government payments that are keeping the farmers going, it’s not the value of the crops.

Michael Pollan: We happen to have the kind of subsidy system; we haven't always had it, only the last 30 years or so, that rewards the overproduction of cheap corn.

Ken Cook: Corn is the crop we've spent the most money on over the past ten years, we've got mountain of grain all over the Midwest, because the subsidy programs keep the production going full blast.

Ian Cheney: When our great-grandfathers were children, growing up in Greene, people bragged on 40 bushel harvests.

Curt Ellis: 100 years later, we harvested almost 180 bushels, what for our time was quite average. Our small part of the largest corn crop in American history.