Locator: 49088CORN.
Updates
September 14, 2025: corn futures --
September 14, 2025: from Susan Stroud on US farming -- corn -- acres -- link here.
Later, 10:03 p.m. CT: things just get curiouser and curiouser. This may just be the most fascinating story this year with regard to agriculture. Posted late this afternoon, after I had already spent some time on this issue. Link here.
Original Post
See this post where this interest all began.
The entire administration is on same page when it comes to renewable energy.
With this interesting exception: the administration will protect US corn farmers in red states, LOL:
Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) Volumes: The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) proposed significant increases in biofuel blending requirements for 2026 and 2027. The total biofuel blending volumes are set to rise to 24.02 billion gallons in 2026 and 24.46 billion gallons in 2027, up from 22.33 billion gallons in 2025.
A significant component of this proposal is a boost in biomass-based diesel mandates, with a quota of 7.12 billion Renewable Identification Numbers (RINs) for 2026, corresponding to approximately 5.61 billion gallons of actual fuel blending. This increase aims to bolster domestic biofuel production by discouraging imports and aligning RIN generation with domestic sourcing.
I did not complete my thoughts on this very, very long post, but if one reads this post closely, one can almost guess how the corn farmers are going to do under the Trump administration. This holds a huge risk for the GOP in the red states going forward.
Bottom line: for folks who don't read to the end of this post or who are unable to connect the dots: the bottom line is that the US farmer plants way more acres in corn than it needs. However, that could be good news for those who enjoy beef steaks. Again, dots may be hard to connect.
Connecting the dots: if you still don't get it, the US consumer only drives about 60 million acres of planted corn if ethanol goes away. The US farmer is planting about 100 million acres of corn. The most recent planting season was planned / planted / harvested before Trump's first term.
If I can see this, I'm sure Doug Burgum, Chris Wright, and Brooke Rollins can see this.
Big question: how can this be?
- that huge jump in 2006?
- that huge jump from 1930 (110 million acres) to that huge low in 1985 (60 million acres) to this year's current high (back to almost 100 million acres)?
Answer: almost entirely due to "Farm Policies" coming out of Washington, DC.
When did US government start providing incentives to farmers to produce more ethanol from corn, what year?
The US government first started providing incentives for ethanol production in 1978 to encourage the use of alternative fuels following the 1973 oil crisis. These early incentives included a tax exemption on gasoline blended with ethanol and a tax credit for ethanol use. While these initial efforts aimed to diversify fuel sources, the policy landscape for ethanol, particularly corn-based ethanol, evolved significantly, with later legislation like the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) and the Volumetric Ethanol Excise Tax Credit (VEETC) in the 2000s expanding and solidifying federal support for its production.
ChatGPT prompt:
US corn: Scott Irwin over on "X" (https://x.com/ScottIrwinUI/status/1966537718701142136) has a graph on "US Planted Acreage For Corn, 1926 - 2025" -- how can that be -- a jump in 60 million acres planted as recently as 1986 and now US farmers planting almost 100 acres?
ChatGPT reply:
The “big jump” in 1986 wasn’t 60 million new acres suddenly appearing — it was about a 20 million acre rise, mostly due to government program changes and market signals.
Today’s ~97 million acres fits right in line with historical highs, not an outlier. (That's not what the graph showed, but we will let that go.)
Why ~ 100 million acres today is not "unprecedented."
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Historically, corn acreage peaked at over 113 million acres in 1932 (the Depression years, when farmers grew all they could).
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The modern range has generally been 80–95 million acres, with a high of 97.3 million in 2012 and again in 2025.
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So today’s ~97 million acres is high, but not unheard of in the long-term record.
This is the real culprit: the 1980s spike
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U.S. corn acreage really did jump in the 1980s. In 1986, USDA reports about 105 million acres planted, compared with roughly 80–85 million acres in the early 1980s. This was tied to policy shifts (end of the “set-aside” programs, changes in the Farm Bill) and farmer responses to market incentives.
