Corn: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)

John Oliver discusses the financial and environmental impact of corn in the U.S., and whether or not he really knows what Pearl Harbor is.

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[laalaastl]

Any time the word legal is prefixed with "perfectly" you know some shady shit is involved.

[oldred]

For those wondering where our old friend Monsanto is in this episode, that company has been bought by Bayer

[jazzmasterjax]

John Oliver is the only person I can listen to talk about corn for this long

[kvr_]

As a native Iowan I'm really glad to see John cover this. The subsidies hurt small farmers and normal Iowans in the same way they benefit big ag. It's been one of the largest issues affecting our water sources and is one of the key ways big ag continues to control Iowa and hold oligopolies.

[JaydonTobler]

I remember I had a professor in my early years of college who told us: “You want to know how to lose a presidential election in 5 seconds? Just say ‘I want the US farming sector to be a free market.’”

[DJVC]

John Oliver managed in 25 minutes to do what Stephen King tried multiple times: Make Corn scary.

[lisam.willson]

I am LITERALLY screaming, crying, and nodding my head with PURE JOY. As a soil science student and future conservation agronomist, I have been saying for YEARS everything that the Last Week Tonight team has reported here. There's much, much more to this than what they had time to cover, but the point being made here is that growing a heavily subsidized crop over millions of acres of what's left of our agricultural land in the way that it's grown and for the purposes it's grown causes MASSIVE damage to the land, the environment, our health, our economy, and our farm communities. This practice MUST STOP. Huge, huge thanks to John and the LWT team for bringing attention to this!!!

[Lina-pywm]

BRO YOU'RE MAKING SO MANY ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENTISTS SCREAM WITH GLEE

[Ironraven]

I grew up a small organic vegetable farm that directly feeds 500 families year round, supplies 3 small grocery stores, and 10 restaurants with the majority of their freah veggies, all without commercial fertilizers, herbacides or pesticides, all on 10 acres of land. Spoiler, we have never been eligible for a single aubsidy. Feeding PEOPLE hasn't ever been the point of a farm subsidy, when i was in high school the largest recipient of farm subsidies was the Chicago Bulls player Scotty Pippen...

[laalaastl]

Randy Beavers. Rusty Butz. Tricky Dicks. This episode had it all!

[kortneyjones]

Having a dad that’s on a farming cooperative board, I can definitely say that the way they say “actively farming” is just as true as to how they choose board members each year. I’d wish John do a separate video on that cause all of these farming companies are cooperatives which are supposed to be led by actual farmers but this hasn’t been the case.

[aurumargentum]

Here's an untold cost of growing corn: my Iowa grandparents spent 10 miserable years dying of Parkinson's disease in a nursing home. The incidence of this disorder is 6 times higher among farmers using pesticides around their rural wells. After a life of hardship growing America's crops crops, they had their they had their Golden Years taken away from them.

[masonvega]

John Oliver screaming "What are you doing!" has become my favorite thing.

[EveryCrazyDay]

King Corn is such an underrated gem of a documentary. Both super informative and entertaining while also being very authentic to the whole vibe of the story.

[s.terris]

I suggest that every decision maker in the Corn industry read "The Worst Hard Time" by Timothy Egan. The story of the Dust Bowl is laid out in the most graphic way possible. The story of what led up to the Dust Bowl is a story about the worst lies being packaged as great opportunities for poor folks trying to make a living growing wheat, but finding no water. It is a cautionary tale, so dark I could not get all the way through it. Thanks John!

[stevelevy]

As good as this segment was, I can't get "beans want to be it, oats want to f*ck it" out of my head. Watched it back three times, howled each time.

[andrewtexley]

I’m a 32 year old 4th generation farmer from northeast Nebraska. Pasture with cattle, hay fields, corn, soybeans, and cereal grains. Currently making the switch to certified organic, it’s been cool to learn how to farm that way, and to see the soil biology respond. I farm on my own since my dad (57) died in 2021 and grandpa died in 2022. My grandma still lives in her house on the farm and I take care of her. There are large complexities to the agricultural economy that aren’t covered ideal. But, I think it is important to remember is that farms, such as mine, are so far from consumers that it wouldn’t be possible to raise fresh “local” produce. The best way to better steward my farm ecologically would be to switch to only ranching, but with diversifying my crop rotation I can produce both grain and cattle while healing my soils

[notthegoodgirl]

I’m from Missouri, and what Big Ag and the gov’t has done to regular farmers is criminal. Big Ag is also to blame for the Colorado River running dry.

[martindouglass]

“Knows it’s tied to suffering” - perfectly said.

[ralphiegouch]

I'm a Kansan farmer, I've met Wes Jackson, worked in ag policy, and currently getting my PhD in agronomy. To say I'm in the middle of all this is an understatement...and John Oliver has nearly all of this correct.
-Ethanol = Made-up BS
-Corn Lobby is powerful
-Subsidies mostly go to huge farms, all of which are divided into dozens of LCC/corps
-Small farms still struggle. Many are failing and families are effectively in poverty.
-We grow too much corn on land that can't support corn causing huge soil losses and nutrient runoff
-Cattle die after eating corn for months...this is one thing that is actually incorrect, obviously cattle can't eat 100% corn and nothing else. If you only ate one specific thing for months, then you'd die too.
-And for you city people, you can't 'just grow something else'. The choices are corn, wheat, sorghum, soybeans, and cotton/rice in some places. Everything you eat, like vegetables, require huge amounts of labor and markets that don't exist on the require scale needed.