Original photo by © SimonSkafar/iStock
The United States grows more corn than any other country, and it’s a true team effort. Corn is the only crop grown in all 50 states, from the lower 48 to Alaska and Hawaii. From 2024 to 2025, the U.S. produced a total of 416.97 million tons — roughly a third of all corn grown in the world.
The states don’t all grow the same amount, of course: Iowa produces the most corn at about 2.4 billion bushels a year, with Illinois (2.2 billion-2.3 billion), Nebraska (1.7 billion), Minnesota (1.3 billion), and Indiana (1.07 billion) rounding out the top five. Due to its versatility and high yields, corn is also grown on every continent except Antarctica.
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It's a factThey usually have between eight and 20, and they're almost always even-numbered because each row doubles itself early in development.
Corn has myriad uses, from feeding livestock and humans to producing ethanol fuel, bioplastics, and countless other products you wouldn’t expect to find it in, including diapers and tires. The U.S. is followed in corn production by China (325.09 million tons), Brazil (149.91 million tons), Argentina (55.12 million tons), and India (47.18 million tons). Corn isn’t the most widely produced crop in the world, however; that title belongs to sugarcane.
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Corn originated in ______.
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Corn originated in southern Mexico.
Illinois and Iowa also grow more soybeans than any other states.
States that grow a lot of corn also tend to grow a lot of soybeans, though the ranking is slightly different. Illinois edges out Iowa in this regard, growing 663 million bushels in 2025 compared to the Hawkeye State’s 609 million. Minnesota is a distant third with 375 million bushels, followed by Indiana at 331 million and Nebraska at 292 million.
Soybeans are the second-largest crop in the U.S., with crops covering an area of about 85 million acres — nearly 89% of the size of the entire Northeast (New England, New York, New Jersey, Maryland, and Delaware).
Michael Nordine is a writer and editor living in Denver. A native Angeleno, he has two cats and wishes he had more.
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