Reviewed September 2026 against USDA NASS Crop Production annual summaries and USDA NASS Charts & Maps (Field Crops).

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In 2019, U.S. farmers harvested corn for grain at a national average yield of 167.5 bushels per acre, and Iowa alone produced roughly 2.58 billion bushels — more than any other state. By 2020, national production reached 14.2 billion bushels at an average yield of 172.0 bushels per acre; by 2021, it climbed to 15.1 billion bushels at a record 177.0 bushels per acre, according to USDA’s National Agricultural Statistics Service. The table below breaks that down state by state, with the confirmed figures NASS has published and the exact reports to check for the numbers this page doesn’t have.

Table of Contents

Corn Production by State: Key Figures

The clearest confirmed numbers come directly from USDA NASS’s Crop Production 2021 Summary and the agency’s Corn Production Charts. Rather than repeat a single year’s snapshot, here is what’s actually documented across 2019–2021:

• Iowa produced approximately 2.58 billion bushels of corn for grain in 2019 — the largest state total that year (USDA NASS).
• Illinois produced approximately 1.84 billion bushels in 2019, the second-largest total (USDA NASS).
• Indiana produced 814.6 million bushels in 2019, rising to 981.8 million bushels in 2020 and 1.028 billion bushels in 2021 — a jump of roughly 26% over that three-year span, with 2021’s average yield hitting 195.0 bushels per acre (USDA NASS Indiana Annual Statistical Bulletin).
• Nebraska hit a record high of 1.82 billion bushels in 2021 (USDA NASS Crop Production 2021 Summary).
• National production went from 14.2 billion bushels in 2020 to 15.1 billion bushels in 2021 — a 6.3% year-over-year increase.
• National average yield rose from 167.5 bushels/acre (2019) to 172.0 (2020) to a record 177.0 bushels/acre (2021).

Several of the numbers this page is asked about most — full 2019 state-by-state bushel totals for Minnesota and Ohio, full 2020 state rankings, and county-level detail — are not something we can respond with a fabricated figure for. NASS publishes them, but our research pass for this refresh did not turn up a citable page for those specific cells. The verification section below tells you exactly where to pull them in under five minutes.

Corn Production by State Bushels Table (Sortable)

This table holds only figures we can trace to a specific USDA NASS publication. Where a state/year cell isn’t confirmed in our source set, it says so instead of guessing — click the state name link in the notes to pull the missing number directly from NASS.

Two things worth flagging before you screenshot this table: first, several rows are marked "not published in this source set" on purpose rather than filled with a plausible-looking number — see the verification section for the exact NASS report to pull each one from. Second, NASS revises prior-year figures when it publishes the annual Crop Production Summary each January, so a number sourced from an earlier in-season report can differ slightly from the final annual figure cited here.

Minnesota, Nebraska, Ohio & Indiana: What NASS Actually Published

Searches for specific states — Minnesota, Nebraska, Ohio — are common enough that they deserve a direct answer rather than a folded-in mention. Here's exactly what's confirmed and what isn't:

Nebraska corn production

Nebraska's confirmed figure in our source set is its 2021 record of 1.82 billion bushels, reported in USDA NASS's Crop Production 2021 Summary. The specific 2019 Nebraska bushel figure that "nebraska corn production 2019 bushels" searches for is not in this source set — the fastest way to get it is the state-level table inside that same NASS Crop Production Summary series, or Nebraska's own NASS Annual Statistical Bulletin (structured the same way as Indiana's, linked below).

Minnesota corn production

Minnesota's 2019 corn production in bushels is not confirmed in the sources gathered for this refresh. USDA NASS publishes it in the same Crop Production Summary series and in state-specific releases branded "NASS Minnesota Field Office" — the direct search pattern is site:nass.usda.gov Minnesota "annual statistical bulletin", which is how the Indiana figures below were sourced.

Ohio corn production

Ohio's 2019 bushel total isn't in this source set either. Same fix: the NASS Ohio Field Office publishes an annual bulletin with the identical table structure used for Indiana's 2021 report (page 31–32 of that document lists production, acreage, and yield together).

Indiana corn production — the one state we can trace year over year

Indiana is the one state in this research pass with three consecutive years documented: 814.6 million bushels in 2019, 981.8 million bushels in 2020, and 1.028 billion bushels in 2021, per the USDA NASS Indiana Annual Statistical Bulletin 2021 and the 2023–24 edition. Indiana's average yield reached 195.0 bushels per acre in 2021, roughly 18 bushels above the national average that year (177.0). That gap is a useful sanity check when you're evaluating any state's yield claim against the national figure.

How to Verify These Numbers Yourself (and Get Next Year's)

This is the part of the article that doesn't go stale: USDA NASS's reporting structure is stable even when the numbers inside it change every year. Here's the method, not just this year's snapshot.

1. For the national total and top-line state rankings: go to NASS's Crop Production Annual Summary series at nass.usda.gov/Publications/Todays_Reports. NASS releases the annual summary each January covering the prior calendar year, with state-by-state tables for corn, soybeans, wheat, and other major crops.
2. For year-over-year yield trends: use NASS Charts and Maps — Field Crops, which keeps a running historical chart of national corn production and yield going back to the 1960s and updates immediately after each January report.
3. For a single state's detail — acreage planted vs. harvested, county breakdowns, or a specific year NASS's national summary compresses into one line — search site:nass.usda.gov [state name] "annual statistical bulletin". Each state's NASS field office publishes its own bulletin; Indiana's is the model used for the figures in this article.
4. To confirm a number hasn't been revised: NASS sometimes updates prior-year figures in a later summary. Cross-check the year you need against both the original annual report and the following year's summary, which typically restates the prior year for comparison.

If you searched for "usda crop production 2021 summary corn production by state table" specifically, that document is the Crop Production 2021 Summary linked above — it's the single source for the national 14.2B (2020) and 15.1B (2021) bushel totals and the Nebraska 2021 record cited in this article.

Why Production Concentrates in the Corn Belt

Iowa, Illinois, Nebraska, Minnesota, and Indiana account for the majority of confirmed high-volume figures in every NASS summary, and the reasons are structural rather than seasonal:

• Soil — deep Mollisols across Iowa and Illinois hold moisture and organic matter well suited to row-crop corn.
• Climate — reliable summer rainfall and a long enough frost-free window for full-season hybrids.
• Infrastructure — dense rail, river barge, and grain elevator networks that move bushels to processors, ethanol plants, and export terminals without long truck hauls.
• Yield gap discipline — Indiana's 195.0 bushels/acre in 2021 versus the national 177.0 average shows how much a single Corn Belt state can outperform the national figure in a strong year.

None of this is new, but it's the reason state rankings are stable year to year even as absolute bushel totals shift with weather: the same five to seven states have occupied the top tier in every NASS summary for decades, and a state like Kentucky or Texas moving up the list within a given year is a story about that state, not about the Corn Belt losing ground.

Reading a state's yield against the national baseline

A quick benchmark worth keeping: national average yield moved from 167.5 (2019) to 172.0 (2020) to 177.0 bushels/acre (2021) — roughly a 5.6% gain over two years. Any state's reported yield can be measured against that same three-point baseline to tell whether a given year was a strong one locally or just tracking the national trend upward.

• Kansas and Texas integrate irrigation and drought-tolerant hybrids to stabilize output despite lower and less reliable rainfall than the Corn Belt core.
• Kentucky and other southern states contribute smaller absolute totals but play an outsized role in regional feed and food systems, and increasingly use tools like carbon footprinting and traceability as they diversify.

Storage, Transport & Infrastructure Behind the Numbers

A bushel total only matters if the grain can move. States with the largest confirmed totals — Iowa's ~2.58 billion bushels in 2019, Indiana's climb to 1.028 billion bushels by 2021 — carry infrastructure demands that scale directly with those numbers:

• Storage: High-production states depend on on-farm and commercial grain elevator capacity sized to hold a harvest until basis and freight rates favor selling. A short storage season concentrated at harvest raises the risk of quality loss and price-taking.
• Transportation: Rail, river barge (especially the Mississippi/Illinois River system for Iowa and Illinois grain), and trucking each move a share of the annual crop to processors, feedlots, and export terminals — and each mode has a different cost-per-bushel-mile that shifts with fuel prices and rail service levels.
• Traceability: Buyers increasingly want origin and handling data attached to grain lots, not just a bushel count. Farmonaut's traceability product is built for exactly this kind of chain-of-custody requirement.
• Field-level monitoring: Satellite platforms now track vegetation health and soil moisture across a season, which is a leading indicator of the production numbers that show up in NASS reports months later.

Why processing hubs cluster near the top-producing states

• Ethanol plants, feed mills, and export terminals locate near the largest and most consistent supply — which is why Iowa, Illinois, and Nebraska host a disproportionate share of processing capacity relative to their land area.
• Digital contracts and traceable handoffs between farmers, elevators, and buyers are becoming standard in these clusters, reducing settlement disputes over grade and moisture.
• Infrastructure investment decisions increasingly reference carbon footprinting data alongside raw throughput capacity.

Environmental Monitoring Tied to Production Data

Large corn-producing states also carry the largest exposure to soil health depletion, nitrogen runoff, and water demand — the same states topping the bushel tables above. Since 2019, several monitoring approaches have scaled specifically because they can be tied to field-level production and management records:

• Precision agriculture: variable-rate fertilization and satellite-guided irrigation, available through platforms like Farmonaut's farm management app, target inputs to where yield response justifies the cost.
• Soil health mapping: high-resolution imagery identifies which fields need reclamation or cover-crop rotation rather than applying a blanket program across an entire operation.
• Conservation tillage and buffer zones: increasingly standard in the highest-output counties, where nutrient runoff risk is highest simply because of acreage under production.
• Emissions tracking: carbon footprinting platforms let an operation document per-acre or per-bushel emissions intensity, which is becoming a purchasing criterion for some grain buyers.

Economic Impact & Risk Management

Production totals feed directly into risk pricing. A state producing 1+ billion bushels a year, like Indiana at 1.028 billion in 2021, represents a large enough base that a single-digit percentage yield miss translates into tens of millions of bushels of variance — which is exactly what crop insurers and lenders price against.

1. Market diversification: demand from ethanol, livestock feed, and food manufacturing keeps corn markets liquid even when one demand segment softens. The U.S. remains a major global corn supplier, and state-level output directly shapes export availability.
2. Financial services: insurers and lenders increasingly want field-verified yield and health data rather than self-reported figures alone. Farmonaut's crop loan and insurance tools bring satellite-verified field data into that underwriting process.
3. Rural employment: logistics, storage, processing, and plant science jobs concentrate in the states with the largest and most consistent bushel totals — the same states topping every NASS summary.

Climate Trends Affecting Future Yields

The three-year run from 2019 to 2021 (167.5 → 172.0 → 177.0 bushels/acre nationally) shows yields trending upward even as year-to-year weather varies by state. That trend is not guaranteed to continue in any single year — it reflects genetics, management, and favorable growing seasons together, not a fixed annual increment. What keeps changing under it:

• Weather volatility: shifting precipitation timing affects planting windows and can move a state's ranking up or down in a single year regardless of its long-term infrastructure advantages.
• Pest and disease pressure: shifting geographic ranges require region-specific, real-time monitoring rather than fixed regional assumptions.
• Input and market costs: production totals in bushels don't capture profitability — a state can post a record bushel total in a year when input costs erode the margin on every one of those bushels.

How Farmonaut Uses This Kind of Data

State-level bushel tables like the one above tell you what happened; satellite monitoring tells you what's happening in a specific field right now, ahead of the next NASS release. That's the gap Farmonaut's tools are built to close.

• Satellite-based monitoring: vegetation health, soil moisture, and crop condition tracking at the field level, rolled up to support regional planning and resource allocation.
• AI advisory: tailored water, fertilizer, and crop-protection recommendations rather than blanket regional guidance.
• Blockchain traceability: tamper-proof records of grain handling and origin, addressed via our traceability product.
• Emissions tracking: continuous carbon footprint monitoring for operations in high-production states.
• Fleet and resource management: tools for operations coordinating equipment across large acreages, available through the agro admin app.

To get started:

• Access the web or mobile app: Farmonaut App Access
• Integrate satellite and weather data directly: Farmonaut API | API Developer Docs

Corn Storage & Revenue Estimator

Plug in your own bushel total, expected yield, and price to see estimated crop revenue and how many bushels your on-farm storage can actually hold at harvest.

Assumes uniform yield across all acres and a single flat price with no basis adjustment, discounts for moisture/quality, drying costs, or storage shrinkage. It does not account for crop insurance indemnities, forward contracts, or partial-field losses. Use your own local elevator bid and actual field-by-field yield data for a real marketing decision.

Frequently Asked Questions

Further reading:

• Agriculture Analysis

Conclusion

The confirmed numbers: Iowa's roughly 2.58 billion bushels led all states in 2019; Illinois followed with about 1.84 billion; Indiana climbed from 814.6 million bushels (2019) to 1.028 billion (2021); Nebraska hit a record 1.82 billion bushels in 2021; and national production rose from 14.2 billion bushels (2020) to 15.1 billion (2021) at a record yield of 177.0 bushels per acre. Where this article doesn't have a number — Minnesota's or Ohio's 2019 total, for instance — it says so and points you to the exact NASS report to pull it from, because a wrong number is worse than an honest gap.

That's the durable part of this page: NASS's reporting structure — the January annual summary, the Charts and Maps yield trends, the state-by-state bulletins — doesn't change even when the bushel counts inside it do. Bookmark the method, not just this year's figures.

Ready to pair state-level production data with real-time field monitoring? Explore Farmonaut's satellite and AI-driven agricultural tools.