This is a Rather Corny Story

From the title above it may not be clear what this blog concerns, but let's be clear- it's all about-----corn. Before Europeans arrived on this continent corn had been one of the major sources of food for Native Americans. Once Europeans arrived, and realized the significance of this crop, corn was exported to Europe and became a larger part of the world diet. Not only did corn become a food supply for humans, but also for farm animals. Corn came to be the "Holy Grail" of nutrition. Even today, corn is the largest field crop grown in America, and it supplies the largest source of food around the world. However, for the purposes of this blog we will focus on the decades after the American Civil War, or what is better known as the Postbellum era, to discover the production of corn yields in northern, midwestern, and southern regions of the country.

This blog could easily be conducted as a statistical report with fancy charts and graphs to dazzle the reader or if you are not that sort of individual who find charts interesting, to bore to death. Instead, we will present the information in a narrative form. After conducting research to locate historical charts and data from the mid 1800's the process now is to tell the story. So hopefully you will find the following narrative full of information as well as enjoyable.

So, let's dig (pun intended) into our topic, corn. Data research provided information about this field crop beginning in 1866, when records began to be recorded. The data records show the yearly yield on corn production was stagnant this era. That's not to say crop yields were declining. Not at all. It just shows yearly yields were not increasing year after year. The country continued to produce around the same number of bushels per year give or take based on weather conditions. For example, in Pennsylvania the annual crop yield in the year 1870 was 45.38M (million) bushels, in 1880 yields were 51.37M bushels, in 1890 yields were 44.8M bushels, and finally the yield in 1900 was 50.24M bushels. After reviewing the data for those 4 years the reader can easily see corn yields were fairly constant, but certainly stagnant. There was no substantial increase in crop yields over this period. Coincidentally, New York's crop yields show 1890 yield to be 21.045M and 1900 yield to be 29.15M bushels. While corn production was smaller in New York than Pennsylvania it does corroborate that corn yields in the Northern region were not increasing.

In the Southern region the data shows much of the same. Both Mississippi and Alabama confirm corn production was stagnant. For example, looking at the data for the two years of 1890 and 1900, Mississippi's corn yield was 21.125M and 23.1M bushels respectively. Alabama, during the same two years produced yields of 26.145M and 28.93M bushels respectively. Again, corn yields in these two southern states show yields were steady, but stagnant.

The Midwestern region of the country is known as the corn-belt and these states certainly contributed more to the national total; however, the two states listed here, Illinois and Iowa, show basically the same information; corn yields were steady, but stagnant. That is until the late 1890's to 1900 when something changed, and each state showed a dramatic increase in yields. Illinois's production yields in 1870 were 254M bushels, in 1880 274.04M bushels, in 1890 260M bushels, and by 1900 the yield had increased to 418.4M bushels. The data points show corn had been steady, but also stagnant until 1900 when Illinois realized an increase of 158M bushels, a sixty percent increase from 1890 totals. In Iowa, the results were similar. This state produced 246.1M bushels in 1890, but by 1900 produced 409.5M bushels, representing an increase of 66% over 1890 total yield.

So why did these Midwestern states show such a large increase in corn yields? The answer seems to be a combination of events. First, the population in Illinois was growing rapidly, almost doubling since the end of the Civil War. Second, with population increase came increases in farming and acres under cultivation. Third, railroads were more accessible allowing farmers to get their corn crop to market. Fourth, Chicago had become the largest stockyard in the nation and required more food for animal feed. Each of these points provides an answer why corn yields increased in this region of the country as other regions remained steady, yet stagnant.

Using data collected from the United States Department of Agriculture, along with historical grain yields reported from Purdue University, the reader can begin to understand the importance of corn in this country, not only in terms of food supply, but also to the local, state, and national economies. While railroads were important to the national economy during the latter half of the nineteenth century, it was corn that fed the nation. Now, after reading through the numbers one can begin to understand this was really a corny story after all.