I Believe In Happy Endings

The Nebraska Corn Board has the most comprehensive information on the subject of American-grown corn, and although it has no date stamp, the most recent year mentioned is 2022, so I'm assuming this article was written around that time.

Below are screenshots of that website (link here), and I'll post some additional links below that from other websites:

Corn in the USA is predominantly grown for two reasons: animal feed and biofuel production.

The USDA backs this up with some additional details (link here), from 2026, which I will screenshot below in small sections so it's easier to read. The graphs are also downloadable if you follow the link:

Wikipedia concurs on who produces the most corn globally, with data taken from February 2024 (link here):

Worldostats again produces similar data, taken from 2025, along with some reasoning as to usage in each country. I've screenshotted only the relevant section of the article (link here):

EBSCO has a research starter that delves into some of the reasoning for US production of corn and a bit of its history (link here):

Corn is also predominantly used in feeding swine (pigs), which Kansas State University has an article about the usage of corn compared to other cereal grains on the feeding efficiency (i.e. how fast can swine grow on a diet of one grain compared to another grain, something that affects market turnover and business profit) as well as swine health impacted by particular feeds (link here):

The fact sheets I will link directly: first link here and second link here.

As Kansas State University indicates with their cited sources, corn is simply the cheapest feed source, not necessarily that which is healthiest for swine feed.

From the publisher ACS Symposium Series (ACS means "American Chemical Society"), editor Joseph M. Awika has posted online the first chapter of the book Advances in Cereal Science: Implications to Food Processing and Health Promotion, titled "Chapter 1: Major Cereal Grains Production and Use around the World" (link here). I will be posting below relevant screenshots from within this chapter, which come from various sections of the chapter. If you click on the provided link and do an in-page text search, the information is readily-available:

With respect to biofuel production, aka ethanol, Devin Pratt of Consumer Reports on July 1, 2026, posted at article titled "Can Using Gas With 15 Percent Ethanol Damage Your Car?" (link here). I've ran out of space in this post for taking screenshots, but I'll cite some relevant parts below:

You might have noticed that some gas stations occasionally offer specials on unleaded 88 octane gas—also known as E15—which contains 15 percent ethanol. Ethanol is an alcohol that’s derived from corn. The advantages are it’s sustainable and burns cleaner than fuels that are purely petroleum based. The disadvantages are you might get lower fuel economy, and a recent study has shown that the land-use aspects of growing corn are carbon-intensive.

“It depends on the age of your vehicle,” says Ryan Pszczolkowski, Consumer Reports tire program leader and test driver.

“I looked at two random cars we purchased for our test program—a 2025 Ram 1500 and a 2025 Subaru Forester. Both of those manuals said 15 percent ethanol is the maximum percentage you should be putting into those cars,” says Alex Knizek, associate director of auto test development at Consumer Reports. “And another thing to remember is that ethanol isn’t as energy-dense as regular gasoline, so you will see worse fuel economy with E15 gas.” The bottom line is to check your manual to see what type of fuel the manufacturer recommends. If your car is a 2001 model or older you’ll probably find the recommendation is no more than 10 percent ethanol, which is the most common blend of regular gas in the U.S. One tank of E15 isn’t going to kill your car, but it will affect it over time.

The research paper mentioned in the Consumer Reports article is the Open Access paper by Jason Hill titled "The sobering truth about corn ethanol", published March 9, 2022 in the journal PNAS (PNAS stands for "Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences"; link here).

Again, because of limitations on screenshots, I'll cite the text directly below, with the abstract in its entirety:

Agricultural interest groups promote corn ethanol as an environmentally beneficial alternative to gasoline, but many independent scientists have long questioned this view (1–3). Nevertheless, the United States has aggressively pursued measures to expand biofuel production. The key policy has been the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS2) in the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007, which requires greater use of ethanol up to the current level of 15 billion gallons annually. Ethanol proponents have argued that this reduces greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, but as Lark et al. (4) show in PNAS, the opposite occurs. The authors find that the life-cycle GHG emissions of the ethanol produced to meet RFS2 are no less than those of gasoline, and are likely even greater. This is because using more corn for biofuel has led to an increase in the intensity and the extent of corn farming in the United States. Thus, RFS2 not only fails to mitigate climate change but is actually counterproductive. Furthermore, the authors conclude that RFS2 has exacerbated other environmental problems commonly associated with row crop production, including poor water quality and soil erosion.

Additionally, from the same article:

Evidence that RFS2 increases rather than reduces GHG emissions adds to long-standing criticism of its high economic and environmental costs. At current prices, $20 billion of corn is converted to ethanol annually, which is approximately a third of all corn grown in the United States. This requires an area of cropland equivalent to all the land planted to corn in Iowa and Minnesota, the first and fourth largest corn-producing states, yet it offsets just 6% of domestic gasoline use. To put this in perspective, the current US average vehicle fuel economy is 22 miles per gallon (MPG), and a modest improvement of just 2 MPG (from 22 to 24) would, all else being equal, offset as much gasoline. What is more, this 6% offset is a gross value, not net, and does not account for fossil fuel use in ethanol production. Ethanol’s small contribution to the domestic fuel supply, while providing a sizable guaranteed market for corn farmers and ethanol producers, comes at substantial cost to the American public, three times over in fact. First, they pay higher taxes to subsidize crop insurance programs. Second, they pay more for fuel at gas stations and for food at supermarkets and restaurants. Third, they pay the economic costs of climate change, reduced water and air quality, degraded soils, habitat loss, and other environmental damage caused by corn ethanol production and use (8, 17).

And the end paragraph:

Corn ethanol production under RFS2 is slated to continue indefinitely, even as it is all the more clear that this, our nation’s most prominent biofuel policy, is making climate change and other problems worse. Furthermore, the United States is pursuing this policy of using some of the most productive farmland in the world for fuel production at a time when demand to feed the growing and increasingly affluent global population continues to needlessly expand agriculture into natural ecosystems (20). The paper by Lark et al. (4) provides us with yet more evidence that our corn-based biofuel initiatives run counter to our nation’s and the world’s environmental, economic, and social goals. It is worth questioning the wisdom, logic, and ethics of continuing to use large expanses of our best farmland to produce a small amount of fuel at great environmental cost when better transportation alternatives exist.

Additionally, while I will also list the myriad other articles I found, I will make a mention of the impact on High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS) on health statuses such as diabetes, because it was mentioned above as one of the main products of corn production.

Below is the cited abstract from the Open Access research paper written by Majid Almansouri, from the Department of Clinical Biochemistry, Faculty of Medicine, King Abdulaziz University, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. His paper was published in Frontiers in Clinical Diabetes and Healthcare on 17 March 2026 and is titled "The association between high fructose corn syrup and the development of type-2 diabetes" (link here):

Fructose and high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) have become central to the debate on metabolic health and the rising prevalence of type 2 diabetes. Chemically, fructose is a monosaccharide found naturally in fruits and honey, whereas HFCS is an industrially produced sweetener composed of varying proportions of free fructose and glucose. While fructose has unique metabolic effects, its impact is comparable to other sugars when consumed in excess. HFCS is widely used in processed foods and sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs) due to its high sweetness and low production cost. However, its metabolic effects remain a topic of scientific and public health concern. Animal and human studies suggest that excessive fructose consumption contributes to metabolic disturbances, including insulin resistance, impaired glucose tolerance, and increased fat accumulation in the liver through de novo lipogenesis (DNL). Unlike glucose, fructose bypasses key regulatory steps in glycolysis, leading to unregulated hepatic uptake and lipid synthesis. Epidemiological studies have reported a higher prevalence of type 2 diabetes in countries with greater HFCS availability, independent of obesity rates. Despite this, there remains controversy regarding whether HFCS is a direct contributor to diabetes or if overall energy intake plays a more significant role. This study aims to analyze the chemical composition of fructose and HFCS and their potential role in the development of type 2 diabetes. Additionally, it briefly discusses the global policy measures, such as sugar taxation and public health interventions, aimed at reducing sugar consumption and mitigating diabetes risk.

The section titled "Fructose and high fructose corn syrup composition" (link here) also has a table comparing Sucrose, HFCS, Fructose, and Glucose, inclusive of how the body reacts to it and digests it, in case anyone wanted to argue that the body "can't tell the difference".

TL;DR

Corn production, particularly in the US, is:

an environmentally damaging crop, whose main products are feed that is not as healthy for its main animal recipients as other cereal grains

fuel that may damage vehicle and incurs additional climate costs

and a sweetener which increases the risk of, particularly, type II diabetes and the associated damages to a patient's health and their internal organs, even in comparison to other sweeteners

Further Reading

Domestic Corn Usage in the U.S. Categorized by Purpose by Statisto, published January 2024

Chapter 1 - Corn History and Culture, Corn (Third Edition), Chemistry and Technology, 2019, Pages 1-18

PDF Excessive Intake of High-Fructose Corn Syrup Drinks Induces Impaired Glucose Tolerance by Hidemi Hattori et al., 2021 May 12, Biomedicines

PDF Subnational mobility and consumption-based environmental accounting of US corn in animal protein and ethanol supply chains by Timothy M. Smith et al., September 5, 2017, PNAS Sustainability Science

PDF Corn-based ethanol production compromises goal of reducing nitrogen export by the Mississippi River by Simon D. Donner and Christopher J. Kucharik, March 18, 2008, PNAS Sustainability Science

High fructose corn syrup and diabetes prevalence: A global perspective by Michael I. Goran et al., 27 Nov 2012, Global Public Health

PDF Countries that use large amounts of high fructose corn syrup have higher rates of type 2 diabetes by Zosia Kmietowicz, 2012, BMJ (hosted on ProQuest)

The Role of High-Fructose Corn Syrup in Metabolic Syndrome and Hypertension by Leon Ferder et al., 14 April 2010, Current Hypertension Reports

Argentina Cattle Feed Market Overview, 2029, by Manmayi Raval, 31-10-2024, Bonafide Research

Federal farm subsidies: What the data says by the USAFacts team, Jun 23, 2025, USAFacts

and after looking at the first one again it is also, a beatle photo