Corn Belt

Corn Belt
Agricultural or cultural region of the United States
2022 production of corn in the United States
2022 production of corn in the United States
Country United States
States Illinois
Indiana
Iowa
Kansas
Kentucky
Michigan
Minnesota
Missouri
Nebraska
North Dakota
Ohio
South Dakota
Wisconsin
Railroad grain elevator facilities (2014)
110 or greater grain car
100 to 109
Less than 99
Announced facility (2014)
Corn fields in the United States

The Corn Belt is a region of the Midwestern United States and part of the Southern United States that, since the 1850s, has dominated corn production in the United States. In North America, corn is the common word for maize. More generally, the concept of the Corn Belt connotes the area of the Midwest dominated by farming and agriculture, though it stretches down into the South as well reaching into Kentucky.

Geography

There is lack of consensus regarding the constituents of the Corn Belt, although it often includes Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, southern Michigan, western Ohio, eastern Nebraska, eastern Kansas, southern Minnesota, and parts of Missouri. It also sometimes includes South Dakota, North Dakota, all of Ohio, Wisconsin, all of Michigan, and Kentucky.

The region is characterized by level land and deep fertile soils with high concentrations of organic material and nitrogen.

As of 2008, the top four corn-producing states were Iowa, Illinois, Nebraska, and Minnesota, accounting for more than half of the corn growth in the U.S.

More recently, the Corn Belt was mapped at the county level using the Land use and Agricultural Management Practices web-Service (LAMPS), along with animated maps of changes in time (2010–2016).

History

William Scully (1821–1906), from a wealthy landowning Catholic family in West Tipperary, Ireland, immigrated to Chicago in 1851. He bought up hundreds of thousands of acres of prime Corn Belt farmland in the Midwest, and rented it to tenants. By 1906 he owned 225,000 acres in Illinois, Kansas, Nebraska, and Missouri, renting it out to 1200 tenants.

On account of new agricultural technology developments between 1860 and 1970, the Corn Belt went from producing mixed crops and livestock into becoming an area focused strictly on wheat-cash planting. After 1970, increased crop and meat production required an export outlet, but global recession and a strong dollar reduced exports and created serious problems even for the best farm managers.

In 1956, former Vice President Henry A. Wallace, a pioneer of hybrid seed, declared that the Corn Belt had developed the "most productive agricultural civilization the world has ever seen".

Most corn grown today is fed to livestock, especially hogs and poultry.[citation needed] In recent decades, soybeans have grown in importance.

By 1950, 99% of corn has been grown from hybrids.


EPA ecoregion

In 1997, the USEPA published its report on the United States' ecoregions, in part based on "land use". Its "Level III" region classification contains three contiguous "Corn Belt" regions, Western (47), Central (54), and Eastern (55), stretching from Indiana to eastern Nebraska.

Corn fields near Cayuga, Indiana
Corn fields near Royal, Illinois

See also

References

  1. ↑ Hansen, John Mark. Gaining Access: Congress and the Farm Lobby, 1919-1981. American Politics and Political Economy Series. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. p. 138.
  2. ↑ McIlwraith, Thomas F.; Muller, Edward K. (September 13, 2001). North America: The Historical Geography of a Changing Continent. Bloomsbury Publishing PLC. p. 186. ISBN 978-0-7425-0019-8.
  3. 1 2 Hart (1986)
  4. ↑ "2007 Census Ag Atlas Maps". U.S. Department of Agriculture. Archived from the original on October 20, 2017. Retrieved June 1, 2010.
  5. ↑ "Corn Belt | region, United States". Encyclopedia Britannica. May 1, 2024. Archived from the original on May 3, 2015. Retrieved December 22, 2025.
  6. ↑ USDA State Fact sheets
  7. ↑ Kipka, Holm; Green, Timothy R.; David, Olaf; Garcia, Luis A.; Ascough, James C.; Arabi, Mazdak (January 1, 2016). "Development of the Land-use and Agricultural Management Practice web-Service (LAMPS) for generating crop rotations in space and time". Soil and Tillage Research. 155: 233–249. doi:10.1016/j.still.2015.08.005. ISSN 0167-1987.
  8. ↑ Green, Timothy R.; Kipka, Holm; David, Olaf; McMaster, Gregory S. (March 15, 2018). "Where is the USA Corn Belt, and how is it changing?". Science of The Total Environment. 618: 1613–1618. doi:10.1016/j.scitotenv.2017.09.325. ISSN 0048-9697.
  9. ↑ Homer E. Socolofski, "William Scully: Ireland and America, 1840-1900." Agricultural History 48.1 (1974): 155-175.
  10. ↑ Griffith, Robert; Shapsmeier, Edward L.; Shapsmeier, Frederick H. (September 1, 1971). "Prophet in Poltics: Henry A. Wallace and the War Years, 1940-1965". The Journal of American History. 58 (2): 496. doi:10.2307/1917665. ISSN 0021-8723. Archived from the original on June 3, 2018.
  11. ↑ "Ecological Regions of North America: Toward a Common Perspective" (PDF). Commission for Environmental Cooperation. 1997. Retrieved February 26, 2018.
  12. ↑ "Ecoregion Maps and GIS Resources". United States Environmental Protection Agency. Retrieved April 10, 2008.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: deprecated archival service (link)

Further reading

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