Corn Production Essay

550 Words3 Pages
Corn 1) In the United States, over eighty million acres of land are devoted to the farming of corn. This is an area larger than New Mexico. Corn is the largest crop export in the USA. About 3 million tons are grown each year. 2) Sweet Corn is harvested after about 100 days of growing. It takes about five to six hours for the corn to go from harvesting to processing. After harvesting, the corn is weighed and brought to the processing plant. It is pushed onto a conveyor that vibrates so as to gently spin the corn and avoid damaging the kernels. It is brought to the husker, and then the cutter, and then the kernels are cleansed and inspected by hand. They are canned and then put into the cooker for about 16 minutes, then sent off to be sold. 3) The parts of the corn that are not used for human consumption are sold as animal feed. 4) 364 million pounds of field corn is grown is the US. Of the eighty million acres of corn in the United States only about 380,000 acres of it is sweet corn. The world’s population is around seven billion. 5) Field corn, also called dent corn, is used to make many foodstuffs. Examples of these are cereals, tortillas, cornmeal, and cornbread. Field corn is used to make High Fructose corn syrup, which is found in many different, often unhealthy, foods such as soda and icecream. 6) 40% of the world’s corn exports come from the United States. More than 1/3 of corn produced is used to raise livestock. 7) The corn belt consist of 12 states including Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, and Ohio. Iowa grows the most corn of all 12 states. They grow the majority of corn produced in the States. 8) Corn is used for a variety of non-food sources form adhesives to explosives. It is also used in plastic and has a total of about 400 non-food uses. 9) Corn as we know it was not found in nature, but was developed over

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