Corn production in Iowa and the U.S. has been on an upward trajectory for decades and hit a record high in 2025.
But a new study prepared for the Iowa Corn Growers Association and Iowa Renewable Fuels Association predicts a growing gap between supply and demand over the next decade, which could continue to drag down corn prices.
Farmers need new and expanded markets for corn and ethanol to stay profitable, according to the study and industry leaders who spoke on a press call Wednesday.
“The bottom line is: We have high input prices, we have low commodity prices and we’re producing more corn all the time. We need more places to move our corn,” said Mark Mueller, president of Iowa Corn Growers Association.
Mueller, a fourth-generation farmer who grows corn, soybeans and alfalfa in northeast Iowa, said he’s worried low profitability will hinder the fifth generation from farming on his family’s land. Corn prices and input costs rose in 2020 and 2021, but inputs remained high while corn prices fell, he said.
Mueller said his farm’s operating loan has been renewed for another year, but that’s not the case for other farmers in the region.
Several speakers on the call warned of a farm crisis similar to what happened in the 1980s. Hundreds of thousands of Iowa farmers defaulted on their loans, significantly impacting farm families, rural communities and the state’s economy.
“I have taken some calls from farmers,” said Kevin Studer, Iowa Corn Growers Association’s vice president of government relations. “And it reminded me as a kid, being in the '80s, of neighbors stopping in to my dad and just saying, ‘Hey, I’m not in a good spot.’”
Studer said farmers are in urgent need of market solutions.
Three pathways forward for corn farmers
The study pulls in the U.S. Department of Agriculture's (USDA) Long-Term Outlook, which estimates acres planted with corn will decline over the next decade from its recent high in 2025, while corn yields will increase roughly 2 bushels per acre.
“You end up with about 180 million more bushels every year just from production,” said Dave Miller, chief economist at Decision Innovation Solutions, the company that prepared the study.
Miller laid out three pathways if farmers across the U.S. maintain the number of corn acres planted in 2025.
Without new or expanded markets, Miller said the gap between supply and demand will continue to grow, leading to lower corn prices and a greater reliance on federal subsidies.
A second pathway includes the year-round sale of E15, a gasoline blended with 10.5% to 15% ethanol.
Most states cannot sell E15 from June to September without temporary emergency waivers due to air pollution regulations. Some research indicates the risks are the same as E10, which can be sold year-round.
Replacing E10 with E15 across the U.S. could close the demand gap for corn by 2031, Miller said. But it's predicted to grow again starting in 2033, in part due to projected growth in electric vehicles and hybrids.
The third pathway includes year-round E15, plus the use of corn for low-carbon marine fuels and sustainable aviation fuel. Miller said this scenario could help corn stay profitable through 2040.
“E15 is not an efficient long-term solution,” Miller said. “It is a near-term solution that is very powerful, but at the long run, we need to be able to take and access two great big markets that exist.”
The marine fuel market is transitioning to low carbon fuel options and uses 70 to 80 billion gallons per year, according to the study. Sustainable aviation fuel represents a 35 billion gallon per year market.
When asked about the possibility of farmers shifting to other crops instead of growing more corn, Miller said it would swamp those other markets and pull down prices.
Mueller, with the Iowa Corn Growers Association, brought up the lack of infrastructure, explaining farmers grew sugar beets in northeast Iowa 100 years ago.
“My grandfather loaded up a horse drawn wagon and took those sugar beets to the Waverly sugar factory located just a few miles down the road,” Mueller said. “I could still grow sugar beets, but the nearest plant now is in north central Minnesota.”
Along with higher transportation costs, Mueller said he’d be competing against sugar beet farmers in Minnesota and North and South Dakota who pay less rent for their land. Mueller said his family also stopped growing sweet corn when the canning factory in Waverly closed in 2004.
“Believe me, I'd like to raise other crops. I do raise a little bit of alfalfa, but there's not a big market for that,” Mueller said. “We need corn because, once again, it's the thing that makes us the most money in our system, of our capitalist system.”
'Two battles' at the state and federal level
Monte Shaw, executive director of the Iowa Renewable Fuels Association, said the easiest and most cost-effective way for Iowa to compete in ultra-low carbon markets is through carbon capture use and sequestration.
Summit Carbon Solutions, a company based in Ames, is trying to build a multi-state pipeline to transport carbon dioxide captured from ethanol plants to either permanently store underground or use for “industrial purposes,” according to its website.
Several environmental groups, including the Iowa Chapter of the Sierra Club, and a group of landowners have pushed back on the project, largely over safety concerns and property rights.
The Iowa House passed a bill Wednesday that would ban the use of eminent domain for carbon capture pipelines. It now goes to the Iowa Senate.
In Washington, D.C., Iowa's 3rd District Republican Rep. Zach Nunn and several other Midwestern lawmakers are pushing for year-round E15 in exchange for their votes to approve a $1.2 trillion funding package.
“We have these two battles going: one for our immediate future, one for our long-term future today, and we need to do everything we can to win those battles, or I don't think we're going to like the future very much,” Shaw said.
