Why Corn and Soybeans Rule American Agriculture

This Week In Ag #179

Say what you will about the Big 2 row crops, but they keep on growing.

Corn and soybeans now cover a record-setting 183.5 million acres across the fruited plain. That’s larger than the combined area of California and New Mexico.

Corn and soybeans are expected to combine for over 20 billion bushels of yield in 2026. That’s enough to fill 200 million hopper cars. Placed end-to-end, these cars would circle the Earth’s equator 95 times. And stretch from the Earth to the Moon 10 times.

It’s no wonder these two crops dominate US agriculture. Much of our entire agricultural infrastructure is set up to grow, handle, process, export and support huge volumes of these commodities. They account for 60% of all US fertilizer demand and 85% of herbicide demand.

So why corn and soybeans?

For starters, they are relatively easy to grow. They don’t require unique climates, elevations, or soils, unlike, say, cotton, chili peppers, or blueberries.

They are easy to mechanically harvest, unlike apples, melons and tomatoes, which are commercially harvested by hand and require lots of labor. Plus, harvest windows can be extended, compared to more perishable crops.

They are easy to handle, store and ship, since they can be harvested, stored and shipped in bulk. They are hauled (with low threat of damage) in trucks, rail cars, barges and sea shippers.

As former US Secretary of Agriculture Earl Butz would tell me, the USA, with its extensive network of connected rivers and lakes — and bookended by two oceans — is blessed with a natural and highly efficient transportation system. Plus, our country’s unmatched infrastructure of rail and roadways gives us a competitive advantage.

Market access is seldom an issue. There is an abundance of country elevators and river terminals. On-farm storage is popular, affordable and easy to manage.

They are in relatively high demand across a variety of uses, including animal feed, renewable fuel, cooking oils and food products, as well as industrial uses. Export demand is substantial.

They make excellent crop rotation partners. Grasses and legumes go together like biscuits and gravy. Soybeans fix nitrogen for corn to use the following year; corn produces fibrous root systems that improve soil structure, while leaving high amounts of residue on the surface that manages erosion. When corn follows soybeans, farmers can usually apply about 30-40 pounds less nitrogen to their corn the following year.

Yet one of the strongest motivators for producing massive amounts of corn and soybeans is that our government incentivizes it. To the tune of $5.1 billion in 2024.

The Big 2 account for nearly half of all farm subsidies. In 2025, corn and soybean growers received an additional $6.6 billion as part of the farmer bridge program, for losses due to tariffs and other hardships. This represented 60% of all crop payments.

Government farm subsidies take various forms, including direct payments for simply growing the crop and participating in the government program, disaster relief and loans. But the biggest subsidy-laden reason for growing corn and soybeans is crop insurance benefits.

Federal Crop Insurance is more like assurance than insurance. It can guarantee a set level of income per acre. In doing so, it incentivizes high production. FCI is calculated based on your Actual Production History (APH), which considers your documented yield over recent years (combined with a set price determined each February). The higher your APH, the more income you can guarantee. Tanking on your crop will lower your APH, which will, in turn, over time, lower your potential payouts. Interestingly enough, a farmer can actually produce a higher yield than his APH, but still collect FCI payments, if market prices dip too low. In 2022, the indemnity total of FCI was $21.4 billion.

If you were a cynic, you might draw a connection between a private sector (controlled by a handful of massive companies) set up to handle large volumes of two crops and a government incentivizing high production of those crops.