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Share of Corn Crop for Feed

The USDA broadly estimates that animal feed “typically accounts for about 40 percent of total domestic corn use.”[1]

 

  1. USDA Economic Research Service (January 2025) Corn and Other Feed Grains, Feed Grains Sector at a Glance. https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/crops/corn-and-other-feed-grains/feed-grains-sector-at-a-glance/

Not included in the USDA estimate that 40% of corn usage is for feed:

 Exports used for animal feed – which is how most U.S. corn exports are used.
 Corn silage – which are whole corn plants fed directly to farmed animals.
 Dried distiller grains (DDGs) – which is a coproduct of ethanol used almost exclusively as animal feed.[1]

 

  1. David Olson & Thomas Capehart, USDA Economic Research Service (2019) Dried Distillers Grains (DDGs) Have Emerged as a Key Ethanol Coproduct. https://www.ers.usda.gov/amber-waves/2019/october/dried-distillers-grains-ddgs-have-emerged-as-a-key-ethanol-coproduct/ [“Dried distillers grains are a major coproduct from the production of ethanol from grain. DDGs are typically used as a protein-rich animal feed.”]

The amount of corn usage that went to animal feed in 2023 was ~64%. See the detailed calculations in the questions below.[1-3] In 2022, it was also ~64% (with fewer exports but more corn silage acres factored in). We use 64% as part of our tallies of total crop share for animal feed.

Year-to-year figures may fluctuate, though from a review of the last few years, the fluctuations would generally be within about two percentage points. We would expect that to be true in coming years unless there is significant change in animal-source food consumption or factory farming practices.

 

  1. This is an estimate based on many calculations, some of which are complex. The figures are almost all based on USDA data. However, there are some broadly estimated figures within their data, and the percentages of animal feed are measured with different metrics. The percentage of exports used for feed is based on weight. The percentage of corn silage is based on acreage harvested. The percentage of DDGS is based on coproduct values.
  2. Note that animal feed usage is calculated as a percent of “disappearance” rather than “production.” Disappearance refers to the usage in a single year. It can be different from production because of imports and changes in beginning and ending stocks. Disappearance is therefore a good reflection of annual usage. However, corn silage is not a part of the USDA’s regular corn calculations. It is treated as a separate crop since it is not harvested as bushels, but rather as the entire corn plant. Therefore, corn silage is calculated as a percent of total cropland harvested for corn and for corn silage.
  3. The USDA Feed Grains Yearbook Tables are updated monthly, and past figures may be adjusted. There will be slight changes depending on when the tables are accessed. These updates are usually small and should only slightly affect the overall percentage of corn used for animal feed.

 About 39% (by weight) of corn disappearance is directly used for domestic animal feed.
 About 8% (by value) of corn disappearance is a coproduct of ethanol production used for animal feed.
 About 11% (by weight) of exported corn disappearance is exported and then used for animal feed.
 About 7% (by land use) of all corn cropland is harvested as corn silage and used for animal feed.

Totals may not always add due to rounding. See further details about each channel in the questions below.

In 2023, about 39% of total corn usage went directly to domestic animal feed under the USDA category “feed and residual use.”[1,2] There is some inherent uncertainty within this category since “residual” is, by definition, a “catchall” category used to balance beginning and ending stocks.[3]  

However, the USDA regularly estimates the feed use of individual species by relying on the entire volume in the “feed and residual” category, referring to it as “implied feed use.” The agency’s estimates of feed consumption per Grain Consuming Animal Units (CGAU) reflect this.[4] Other USDA and USDA-supported reports also use the entire volume of the “feed and residual” category to estimate actual feed consumption figures by state or by species.[5] Therefore, we make the same assumption, using the full 39% as feed. 

This figure of 39% does not include exports, silage, and DDGS, as analyzed below.

 

  1. The term “disappearance” is the utilization of a crop or product, e.g., food, industrial use, exports, see, USDA NASS (1999) Understanding USDA Crop Forecasts, No. 1554, p. 9.
  2. USDA ERS Feed Grains Yearbook Tables, table 4 Corn: Supply and disappearance, MY 2023-2024 (updated 9/12/24) [Domestic feed & residual use (5,775 million bushels) / Total disappearance (14,920 million bushels) = 38.71%]
  3. Tom Capehart, USDA Economic Research Service (2013) Feed Outlook: Special Article Animal Unit Calculations – First Projections for the 2013/14 Crop Year, p. 1. [“However, there is no survey or other direct measurement available for the volume of grains fed to livestock. As a result, feed use becomes part of the “residual” category of use after total supply and all other directly measurable usage categories have been estimated and accounted for in supply-and-use tables.”]
  4. Feed Grains Yearbook Tables, table 29 (updated 9/12/24), Processed feeds: Quantities fed and feed per grain-consuming animal unit. [In 2023: Corn fed per GCAU = 146,692,000 metric tons, which is equivalent to 5,775 million bushels or 38.71% of total disappearance. Similarly, in 2022: corn fed per GCAU = 139,350,000 metric tons = 5,486 million bushels, or the entire volume of “feed and residual use” for 2022]
  5. Tom Capehart, USDA Economic Research Service (2013), p. 2.

In 2023, about 11% of all corn usage was made up of exports that went to animal feed. This figure is based on the percentage of U.S. corn exports used for animal feed by the top 10 export markets.

The U.S. exported 2,290 million bushels in 2023, which was ~15% of total disappearance (14,920 million bushels).[1] The top 10 export markets for U.S. corn accounted for ~92% of all corn exports.[2]

Weighting each country’s market share by the percent of corn used for feed, ~69% of exported corn goes to animal feed in these top 10 countries.[3] We assume that the share of corn used for animal feed in the other export markets (outside of the top 10) is about the same and therefore use 69% as the amount of all corn exports used for feed. Therefore ~11% of all corn disappearance was exported for feed.[4]

 

  1. USDA ERS Feed Grains Yearbook Tables, table 4 (updated 9/12/24) Corn: Supply and disappearance, MY 2023-24
  2. USDA Foreign Agricultural Trade of the United States (updated 6/10/24) Top 10 U.S. agricultural export markets for wheat, corn, soybeans, and cotton, by volume, Feb. update of Dec. 2023 data (Jan – Dec 2023). 
  3. USDA Foreign Agricultural Service, Production, Supply and Distribution (PS&D) database, reporting period January 2024 for year 2023. [Analysis: Grains/Corn/Countries and calculating feed & residual use (in metric tons) as a percentage of total consumption. Corn used as feed in top 10 countries = 28,990,130 metric tons / 42,211,224 metric tons of total U.S. corn exports to the top 10 countries] 
  4. Calculation: 15.35% exports * 68.68% to animal feed = 10.54%. 

In 2023, about 7% of total corn acreage was corn silage used for animal feed. This figure is based on the acres of silage harvested as a share of the total of acres harvested for both silage and grain. The USDA does not count corn silage in their tally of corn disappearance presumably since the end product (tons of silage) is not comparable to bushels of corn. Still, the similar resource usage (land, water, soil, fertilizers and pesticides) warrants the inclusion of corn silage in any tally of corn used for animal feed.

Corn silage is a forage crop, roughly a 50:50 blend of stems and leaves to grain, used primarily to feed dairy cows but also used as feed on some beef cattle operations.[1,2] It is generally seen as a separate cropping system, but a “producer may decide partway through the season to harvest the corn crop as silage, rather than wait to harvest as grain, depending on market and weather conditions.”[3]

The USDA estimates that in 2023, the area harvested for grain was 86,513,000 acres. The area harvested for corn silage was 6,471,000 acres.[4-6]

 

  1. Penn State Extension (2001) Corn Silage Production and Management, https://extension.psu.edu/corn-silage-production-and-management [“Corn silage is roughly 50:50 blend of grass stem and leaves to grain, and is considered by nutritionists and farmers a forage crop for ruminants, primarily dairy cows.”]
  2. Dr. Jason Smith, Univ. of Tennessee Inst. Of Agriculture (2019) Corn Silage for Beef Cattle, 2019 Tri-State Beef Conference, Blountville, TN.
  3. Field to Market (2021) Environmental Outcomes from On-Farm Agricultural Production in the United States, 4th edition, p. 20. https://fieldtomarket.org/national-indicators-report/report-downloads/
  4. USDA NASS Acreage report (June 30, 2024) ISSN 1949-1522, table: Crop Area Planted and Harvested, Yield, and Production in Domestic Units, 2022, p. 32.
  5. Calculation: 6,471,000 acres / 92,984,000 acres (the total of grain and silage harvested acres) = .0696 or ~7%.
  6. Both the acreage and the value of corn silage may be slightly underestimated in this figure. Some corn silage (stalks and grain) is used directly for pasture, either from damaged or unharvested crops. Additionally, there is some value in the corn stalks that remain after the grain is harvested. See, for example: Shelia Grobosky (October 2021) Corn stalks, most underutilized feed resource, Wisconsin State Farmer. https://www.wisfarmer.com/story/news/2021/10/27/corn-stalks-most-underutilized-feed-resource/8515915002/

In 2023, slightly under 8% of all corn disappearance went to dried distiller grains (DDGs), a product used for animal feed. This is calculated by approximate value, rather than weight (which would generate a higher percentage).

About 37% of corn is used for ethanol production. Of that, ~21% by value ends up as DDGs, a coproduct of ethanol.[1] DDGs (also known as DDGS when including “solubles” as is common) are almost exclusively used for animal feed.[2,3]

The sources used for these calculations are noted below.[4-7] Other assumptions are made to arrive at this estimate.[8,9]

In 2022 this calculation came out to slightly above 8%.[10,11]

 

  1. Calculation is based on the following 2023 values: $5.95 Avg price for bushel of corn; $2.15 Avg price for gallon of ethanol, $197.40 Avg price per ton of DDGS, $0.60 Avg price of corn oil per pound. Based on these figures $6.02 is the value of ethanol per bushel (= price of one gallon x 2.8); $1.68 is the value of DDGS per bushel (= price per ton x .0085); $0.42 is the value of corn oil per bushel (= oil per pound x .7); $8.12 is the total value created from one bushel of corn. $1.68/ $8.12 = 20.7%; 20.7% of 36.6% (share of corn used as ethanol) = 7.6%.
  2. David Olson & Thomas Capehart, USDA Economic Research Service (2019) Dried Distillers Grains (DDGs) Have Emerged as a Key Ethanol Coproduct. [“DDGs are typically used as a protein-rich animal feed.” “DDGs are most commonly used in feeding cattle, dairy cows, swine, and some poultry.”]
  3. Kurt Rosentrater, Distillers Grains Technology Council, Distillers Dried Grains with Solubles (DDGS) – An Effective and Available Livestock and Poultry Feed Ingredient, Iowa State Univ. [“Animal feed is the most important use for ethanol coproducts (more than 99%, in fact).”]
  4. USDA Economic Research Service (updated July 2024) U.S. Bioenergy Statistics, tables 5, 9, and 15. Marketing Year 2023.
  5. CME Group (2010) Commodity Products: Trading the Corn for Ethanol Crush, “The Corn Crush Spread” https://www.cmegroup.com/trading/agricultural/files/AC-406_DDG_CornCrush_042010.pdf
  6. Scott Irwin, Dept. of Agricultural and Consumer Economics, Univ. of Illinois (2016) The Profitability of Ethanol Production in 2015. https://farmdocdaily.illinois.edu/2016/01/the-profitability-of-ethanol-production-in-2015.html
  7. Agricultural Marketing Resource Center (2022) Ethanol, Iowa State Univ. and USDA. https://www.agmrc.org/renewable-energy/ethanol
  8. Note: By weight, DDGS makes up a higher percentage of ethanol coproducts. A bushel of corn weighing 56 pounds generates about 17 pounds of DDG or DDGS (about 30%). But we think that the value of the products is a better index. For those that would argue that DDG/DDGS is a by-product and therefore not a generator of usage, we think the opposite may be true. It seems likely that without the extra value of the animal feed, and additionally without the vast amount of cropland and infrastructure that had already been devoted to growing feed for animals, corn ethanol would never have been viable and is likely still not viable today. In 2023, the value of coproducts DDGS and corn oil was about 26% of the total value of processing corn for ethanol. ($1.68 + $.42 / $8.12 = .26)  
  9. Although distiller’s corn oil is used for animal feed, we don’t know how common it is, and have therefore removed the value of the corn oil and only used the value of the DDGs. See, U.S. Grains Council, DDGS User Handbook, 4th ed., Chemical Composition and Energy Value of Distillers Corn Oil for Swine and Poultry, p. 15. [“Distillers Corn Oil is used as a high quality energy source primarily in poultry and swine diets because of its high metabolizable energy (ME) content and relatively low price compared with other feed fats and oils.”]  Also see, Sampath Jayasinghe (2016) Recent Trends in Ethanol Profitability: The Contribution of Distillers Corn Oil, Iowa Grain Quality Initiative, Iowa State University. [“In addition to the biodiesel market, DCO (Distillers Corn Oil) has become a vegetable fat supplement for the livestock and poultry industry, but it’s hard to estimate how much is used in the animal feeding industry.”]
  10. Based on the following 2022 values: $6.67 Avg price for bushel of corn; $2.29 Avg price for gallon of ethanol, $232.30 Avg price per ton of DDGS, $0.74 Avg price of corn oil per pound. Based on these figures $6.41 is the value of ethanol per bushel (= price of one gallon x 2.8); $1.97 is the value of DDGS per bushel (= price per ton x .0085); $0.52 is the value of corn oil per bushel (= oil per pound x .7); $8.90 is the total value created from one bushel of corn. $1.97/ $8.90 = 22.2%; 22.2% of 38.1% = 8.449%.
  11. This estimate is similar to the latest estimate of 8.3% for “Ethanol – Animal Feed” for 2022 based on “revenue per acre by segment” from: National Corn Growers Association – World of Corn. https://ncga.com/world-of-corn-iframe/#us-corn-revenue

Feed Crop Figures & Conversion