If you have ever traveled through the Midwest—particularly Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, or Ohio—you may have noticed a singular plant: corn. It is hard to miss. Fields of it stretch in every direction. It even makes an effective setting for a horror movie.
But perhaps the most unsettling thing about corn is how little of the crop ends up directly on people’s plates.
How much potential food energy is represented by that corn? At 179.3 bushels per acre and 56 pounds per bushel, an acre yields about 10,000 pounds of grain. Using a rough value of 1,500 calories per pound, that is approximately 15 million calories per acre. Dividing the 5.5 billion bushels used for ethanol by the 2024 national yield produces an acreage equivalent of about 30.7 million acres—not 45 million acres.
