Which states grow the most popcorn? Tap them most-to-least.
Tapping assigns 1→4 in order
Corn means Iowa. Iowa! Locking it in 🐾
2Answer
The real order is…
Indiana! Popcorn is a third kind of corn — not the sweet corn on your plate, not the field corn grown for animals and fuel. Its kernel wears a hard shell with a little water locked inside: heat turns the water to steam, the shell bursts, and the starch blows up into white fluff, turning the kernel inside out. In this count Indiana grew about 2 out of every 5 pounds of America's popcorn — about 1.2× as much as Nebraska — while Iowa, the state that grows the most corn of all, sits at #6. Growing the most corn does not make you the popcorn champion.
📚 BackgroundPopcorn is a third kind of corn. Its kernel wears a hard outer shell called the pericarp with a little water locked inside; heat turns that water into steam, the shell finally bursts, and the starch blows up into white fluff — the kernel turns inside out. Sweet corn and field corn kernels cannot do that. When America's farms were last counted, in 2022, Indiana grew the most, with Nebraska close behind — and the Corn Belt champion Iowa, the #1 state on this site's corn quiz, was only #6 for popcorn. Growing the most corn does not make you the popcorn champion.(USDA NASS Quick Stats)
Note: pounds of popcorn kernels harvested, from the 2022 Census of Agriculture — the count of every farm in the country, taken once every five years. USDA NASS. Only the 20 states with a published popcorn figure are shown — where too few farms grow it, USDA withholds the number to protect them.