It’s harvest time in Kansas. Across the state, combines have begun shaving down and chopping up over 6 million acres of corn.
Isaac Yara is a truck driver, so he sees almost nothing but those corn fields hauling grain across the high plains. This season is a busy one for him.
“I would say the main thing that I haul the most would be corn,” Yara said as he parked his semi for the day.
Why are those signature corn fields so ubiquitous in rural America, including western Kansas where the crop relies on the shrinking Ogallala Aquifer to thrive?
That’s because in western Kansas, there is a huge demand for it. The major corn industry is connected to most of the jobs, like truck driving, the cattle industry and farming.
But the problem is, corn is not as well suited as other crops to this region. All of the economic infrastructure and pressure makes growing corn a simple choice for now, but in the long term it might not be a sustainable option.
THE CORN you see is generally not for human consumption. A lot of states, including Kansas, plant a shorter, starchier version called field corn.
This corn won’t taste good to us, but it’s perfect for cattle. It’s also good for producing biofuel in ethanol plants. But that main use is pressing that starchy corn into a softer, highly digestible, high-protein feed.
It starts out on the farm. Yara drives his truck out to a farmer’s field, gets loaded up with corn and takes it to feedlots. But not usually the feedlots across western Kansas.
“I’ll go pick up in Greensburg, Kansas, or around those areas,” Yara said. “I’ll pick up corn there and then I’ll just bring it down over to the Texas Panhandle.”
Yara described what the industry refers to as the southward flow of grain across the Plains. Despite Kansas being covered in millions of acres of corn, truck drivers and cattle feedlots will tell you a lot used here still comes from the original corn belt in Nebraska, Iowa or Illinois, not down the road.
“We take fertilizer up north to Nebraska or South Dakota, and we’ll bring back corn product, or corn itself,” Yara said.
GRAIN MARKETING economist Mark Welch at Texas A&M University said corn is the staple crop for the beef industry. It’s virtually always in demand, it’s also reliable, so a lot of farmers will plant some corn for a steady crop and good returns.
“In terms of dollars per acre, the return possibilities for corn are pretty attractive,” Welch said.
Over the years, hybrids have capitalized on irrigation to survive drier periods, and subsidies from the federal government have made corn common.
Since 1995, the federal government has paid out $21 billion in subsidies for corn to farmers nationwide, making it the most subsidized crop. Second place is wheat with about half of those subsidies.
