Corn is an incredibly useful and versatile crop. We use corn to make batteries, plastics, baby diapers, and vitamins. It supports our modern lives by making pills easier to swallow and helps cosmetics last longer. And, by the way, corn is also food. So it’s no surprise that farmers grow 90 million acres of corn annually.
As you might imagine, corn’s versatility also affects our economy. The Corn Refiners Association recently completed an economic-impact study to reveal how corn refining touches so many areas of our lives. The results are, quite frankly, mind blowing:
In the United States, the industry directly employs nearly 7,200 people with salaries and wages over $900 million. Further, every job directly supported by the corn refining industry adds an additional 23 jobs across the U.S. contributing an additional $10 billion in incomes.
Feed the Economy, CRA 2021
As the report says, agriculture generally touches so many lives from the field to the laboratory to your dinner table. More than a quarter of all U.S. jobs is tied to agriculture either directly or indirectly. It’s also a boon to our government, paying $913.13 billion in taxes. Agriculture is literally a cash crop.
If you’re interested, I strongly recommend you visit CRA’s website and look at the data yourself. It’s interactive so you can easily see how corn refining affects your state. Or you can pull up the report and really drill down into some of these numbers.
I’m not sure that we really appreciate just how much we rely on corn or agriculture. And I say that as the daughter of corn growers. CRA’s report gives the economic consequences some context. I’ll admit that I’m proud my family is part of this economic juggernaut by producing corn on our farm.
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