Drive Iowa’s roads in the fall, and you’re surrounded by more than 12 million acres of corn. Iowa’s excellent soil and growing season are ideal for corn production, and Iowa’s farmers are some of the best in the world. The result: Iowa leads the nation in corn production.
Despite this year’s weather problems, Iowa produced more than two billion bushels of corn – a crop so large it supports thousands of food, feed, and industrial uses. So where will Iowa’s corn go this year?
Almost a quarter of the crop will feed livestock in Iowa, and much of the corn that leaves the state will feed animals in other states and nations. Even the corn that is processed into ethanol contributes to food production, since a third of each bushel ends up as animal feed.
Most of Iowa’s crop will travel far from the field to be turned into ethanol, starches, sweeteners, plastics, grits, meal, and more. In thousands of industrial and consumer products, these corn-based ingredients contribute qualities that improve our daily lives.
Throughout the day, we use thousands of products that depend on corn – shampoo in the shower, cereal for breakfast, the morning newspaper, in the walls of our homes, when we fuel our cars, and more.
As we approach Thanksgiving, it’s a perfect time to be thankful for Iowa’s corn industry and its ability to squeeze so much from one little kernel.
For more information on products made from corn, visit www.iowacorn.org/cornuse.
The U.S. Crop
On average, one seed will produce 800 kernels, the highest rate of production in the cereal world. Those kernels contain four major components: starch, protein, oil, and fiber. In the milling processes, those components can be ground into corn grits, corn meal, or corn flour or converted into multiple forms of starch, corn sweeteners, or ethanol. Further conversions can turn corn ingredients into environmentally friendly plastics, industrial chemicals, enzymes, vitamins, and more