Which state grows the most popcorn?
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Which states grow the most popcorn? Tap them most-to-least.
Tapping assigns 1→4 in order
Corn means Iowa. Iowa! Locking it in 🐾
Answer
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.
📚 Background Popcorn 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) (opens in a new tab)
🔍 Explore more: 🍿『The third corn: the only one that explodes』→ Corn means Iowa. Iowa! Locking it in 🐾
Compare
Popcorn grown (2022, pounds)
Most: Indiana (400,110,354 pounds); fewest shown here: North Carolina (1,430 pounds).
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 printing a state’s number would give away information about individual farms, USDA withholds it.
Popcorn draws its own map 🐾
Recap
🏅 Today's discovery
🏅 Indiana is the USA's #1!
🐕 States in Numbers
Quiz a friend!
📋 See the ranking table (top 20)
| Rank | State | Value | Share of U.S. total |
|---|---|---|---|
| #1 | Indiana | 400,110,354 pounds | 39.5% |
| #2 | Nebraska | 333,276,821 pounds | 32.9% |
| #3 | Illinois | 116,201,205 pounds | 11.5% |
| #4 | Ohio | 79,575,961 pounds | 7.8% |
| #5 | Missouri | 37,016,437 pounds | 3.6% |
| #6 | Iowa | 18,137,193 pounds | 1.8% |
| #7 | Kentucky | 5,331,089 pounds | 0.5% |
| #8 | South Dakota | 3,395,000 pounds | 0.3% |
| #9 | Michigan | 2,776,874 pounds | 0.3% |
| #10 | Pennsylvania | 2,491,274 pounds | 0.2% |
| #11 | Wisconsin | 1,472,780 pounds | 0.1% |
| #12 | Idaho | 184,187 pounds | 0% |
| #13 | Vermont | 52,775 pounds | 0% |
| #14 | Utah | 49,500 pounds | 0% |
| #15 | New York | 46,548 pounds | 0% |
| #16 | Massachusetts | 38,250 pounds | 0% |
| #17 | Kansas | 9,450 pounds | 0% |
| #18 | Minnesota | 2,485 pounds | 0% |
| #19 | Virginia | 2,250 pounds | 0% |
| #20 | North Carolina | 1,430 pounds | 0% |
| 🇺🇸 USA (total) | 1,014,168,600 pounds | 100% |
Only the 20 states with a published popcorn figure are shown — where printing a state’s number would give away information about individual farms, USDA withholds it.
Source: USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service (2022 (Census of Agriculture))
Sources
Data as of: 2022 (Census of Agriculture)
USDA NASS Quick Stats: POPCORN, SHELLED - PRODUCTION, MEASURED IN LB, 2022 Census of Agriculture, by state (opens in a new tab) (2026-08-08) — Published values only (the committed raw file holds the API response verbatim). The Census of Agriculture published a popcorn figure for 20 states; states whose value is withheld to protect individual farms are simply absent, so this is an honest partial ranking.
↳ In Quick Stats, pick POPCORN / POPCORN, SHELLED - PRODUCTION, MEASURED IN LB, Census year 2022, Total domain, and compare states.