10/09/2026
🌽Harvest Season is Here🌽
Ohio grows A LOT of corn—and not all corn is destined for your dinner plate
When you drive past a field of corn in Ohio, do you ever wonder what happens to all that corn after harvest?
In 2025, Ohio farmers planted about 3.4 million acres of corn.
Of that, about 3.15 million acres were harvested for grain, producing approximately 579.6 MILLION bushels of corn.
That’s a LOT of corn!
For perspective, one bushel of shelled corn weighs about 56 pounds. 🤯
BUT NOT ALL CORN IS THE SAME!
There are three types of corn you’ll commonly hear about:
🌽 FIELD CORN
This is the corn you see covering most of Ohio’s countryside.
Field corn is generally harvested after the kernels have dried down. It isn’t usually the corn we eat off the cob.
It can be used for:
🐄 Livestock feed
🐖 Hog feed
🐔 Chicken & poultry feed
🐎 Animal feed
⛽ Ethanol
🌽 Cornmeal, starch & sweeteners
🥣 Cereals and other food products
🏭 Industrial products
Field corn can also be harvested while green and chopped as corn silage, which is an important feed source for dairy and beef cattle.
In 2025, Ohio harvested about 200,000 acres of corn for silage, producing about 4.4 million tons.
⸻
🌽 SWEET CORN
This is the corn we LOVE to eat! 😋
Sweet corn is harvested while the kernels are still tender and sweet.
You’ll find it:
🌽 On the dinner table
🥫 In canned foods
❄️ In frozen foods
🥗 In salads and recipes
🌽 At farmers markets and roadside stands
And here’s a fun fact: sweet corn represents only a tiny fraction of Ohio’s total corn acreage.
Most of those millions of Ohio corn acres are field corn—not sweet corn.
⸻
🍿 POPCORN
Yes, Ohio grows popcorn too!
Popcorn is a special type of corn with a hard outer shell and the right amount of moisture inside the kernel to make it pop when heated.
🍿 Movie night starts in the field!
Popcorn production is much smaller than Ohio’s field-corn industry, so you won’t see millions of acres of popcorn fields across the state.
🚜 SO WHERE DOES OHIO’S CORN GO?
Here’s where things get really interesting…
It doesn’t all stay in Ohio!
Some Ohio-grown corn is used right here in Ohio for:
🐄 Livestock feed
🐖 Hog and poultry production
⛽ Ethanol production
🏭 Food and industrial processing
Ohio also has ethanol plants that purchase locally grown corn. Ohio State researchers report that roughly 3,400 Ohio farmers supply about 201 million bushels of corn annually to seven Ohio ethanol facilities, producing ethanol as well as distillers grains that can be used as livestock feed.
But corn is a commodity, and commodity grain moves wherever the market needs it.
🚛 Some travels by truck.
🚂 Some travels by rail.
🚢 Some moves by water.
Ohio’s transportation system connects its grain to markets throughout the United States and to international markets. Ohio’s rail system, for example, moves corn and other agricultural products to places including the Southeast and to ports on the East Coast and Gulf Coast.
Ohio also has access to the Great Lakes and Ohio River, providing important transportation routes for agricultural commodities.
So that cornfield down the road could eventually help feed livestock in another state, become ethanol, become an ingredient in a food product—or even make its way into an international market. 🌎🌽
🤔 ONE MORE THING…
Corn doesn’t necessarily have to leave Ohio as a kernel.
It can be processed here into things like:
⛽ Ethanol
🥣 Cornmeal & flour
🌽 Corn starch
🍯 Sweeteners
🛢️ Corn oil
🐄 Distillers grains for livestock feed
🍺 Ingredients used in brewing and other food products
USDA says most U.S. corn is used domestically, particularly for livestock feed and fuel ethanol, with additional corn going toward food and industrial products.
What did you think corn was primarily used for?
Feed? Food? Ethanol? Something else?
Drop your answer in the comments!
