What Are the Top Five Corn-Producing States?
Ranked in order, the top five states that produce the most corn are Iowa, Illinois, Nebraska, Minnesota and Indiana. Those states alone produce around 60 percent of the corn grown in the United States.
Iowa produces, by far, the most corn in the United States. It supplies almost 20 percent of the country's annual corn. Corn is the largest crop grown in the United States. In 2011, over 92 acres were farmed for corn alone, which results in between 12 and 13 billion bushels of corn per year. The price for corn that year was set at $6.20 per bushel, which resulted in a total value of $76.5 billion. Prices have been continually increasing. In 2004, corn was sold for only $2.00 per bushel.
The majority of corn harvested goes towards the production of ethanol or to feed livestock. As of 2014, ethanol production has increasingly used more of the corn crop each year, due in part to regulations on fuel mileage and the use of ethanol for gasoline. Only about 10 percent of the corn harvested is exported, but that amount accounts for almost half of the entire amount of corn traded around the world. Increases in fuel regulations increase the likelihood of the United States continuing to increase the production of corn.
