Follow the yellow corn trail

Text by Rebekah Bovenmyer, Illustrations by Alison Weidemann

Question: What do these 3 products have in common?

1. Bacon
2. Soft drinks
3. Ethanol (gas for your car)

Answer: Corn!

Surprised? Here's how corn is part of these products:

1. Corn is fed to the pigs, eventually becoming bacon.
2. Corn is made into high fructose corn syrup, a sweetener in soft drinks (and lots of other foods!)
3. Corn is turned into ethanol, which is mixed with gasoline to fuel cars.

Farmers in the United States will harvest about 13 billion bushels of field corn this fall. One bushel is 56 pounds, so that's…a lot of corn! Most field corn is grown in the Midwestern United States, but it's used all over the world.

The corn we're talking about isn’t the sweet corn you eat on the cob with butter or the "baby corn" that's in Asian food. You don't eat this corn right out of the field, but it is turned into a lot of products we do eat and use every day.

Just like other products, corn is transported in semi-trucks, trains, barges, and ships. In fact, many farmers own their own semi-trucks.

Farmers usually sell corn to a grain elevator in town. The corn is stored in the elevator and sold to companies and other farmers who need it. 

Now that farmers have their own semi-trucks, though, they have more freedom to work directly with other buyers like ethanol or corn syrup processing plants. Or farmers can take it to an elevator farther away that pays more.

"This is a big thing, these semis," says Phil Baumel, emeritus professor of economics at Iowa State University.

Railroads are also important. Grain elevators are often right next to railroad tracks. Elevators send trains of corn to hog farmers in Phoenix, Arizona, corn processing companies in Iowa, and tortilla makers in Mexico. Companies that rely on large amounts of corn can't afford to run out, so they bring it in by the trainload.

Corn can also be sent in a barge down the Mississippi and put on a ship to Asia. Or taken by train to Seattle and then put on a ship. Hogs, cattle, and chickens in Asia are fed U.S. corn.

Corn is taken on a long journey from the field until we see it again at the store or gas station.

Follow corn on its journey from a field in Iowa (the state that grows the most) and turned into bacon, soft drinks, and fuel for our cars.

Corn zips across the country in trains to feed hogs. It's sent around the world on ships to feed livestock in other countries.

Corn travels on semi-trucks and trains to become the sweetener in a soft drink.

Semi-trucks and trains take corn from the field to a gas station near you.