provides. Other research has determined it breaks even, while some more recent research indicates a slight net positive. But that is a distinction without a difference. Fuel ethanol made from sugar cane is net energy positive by a large margin. Canebased ethanol is blended at a 30 % ratio into gasoline in Brazil.
“ Any high-sugar or high-starch crop can be made into ethanol,” said Hart at Iowa State.“ Sugar cane is the best of the bunch, but the US is well north of the equator. The cane we do grow is worth more as sugar than as fuel. The energy balance for corn-based ethanol has improved, but there is still an argument.”
The political, environmental and scientific debates are beyond the scope of this article. The business and financial success of corn as an industry is clear as moonshine.
“ When the US got into biofuels, it was not a matter of one use [ for corn ] making room for a new one,” said Hart.“ The industry grew to absorb a new end use. Corn is an incredibly flexible crop that can be used in so many industries. Which is important because we get more bushels every year and have to find new uses. It’ s the Catch 22; we always need new uses.” To help find those uses, Iowa State is home to the Center for Crop Utilization.
After the two major industries of feed and fuel, human food is the end use market for most of the rest of the corn crop. One of the most valuable products is also one of the few that is commonly known, even notorious: high-fructose corn syrup( HFCS).
The turning point in the business history of HFCS is similar to other segments of the corn industry. The lab-scale processes to turn starch into sugar have been known for ages. Modest commercialscale chemical operations date to the mid- 1800s. A process using enzymes was first developed in the 1940s and commercialized in the 1960s. That is why HFCS was suddenly in practically everything on the supermarket shelf starting in the 1970s.
The same subsidies that keep corn prices low to underpin the meat and fuel segments also underpin the processedfoods segment. In the latter, there is the added effect of tariffs to protect domestic sugar from foreign competition and keep sugar prices high. That has enabled HFCS to take a large market share.
The last major piece of the corn-industrial complex is the most recent: genetic modification to make corn resistant to herbicide, specifically glyphosate, better known as Roundup. Monsanto patented Roundup in 1971. That patent expired in 2000.
The original work on modification was done for soybeans, said Howie Smith, a now-retired research geneticist with Pioneer Hi-Bred Seed Co.( no relation to Margaret Smith at Cornell).“ Weeding of soybeans every July and August was manually intensive, and around the mid-’ 90s there were some pretty good broad-leaf herbicides. Monsanto developed herbicideresistant soybeans that became extremely popular. After that it was decided to develop herbicide-resistant corn.”
With an herbicide-resistant crop, the farmer can simply spray the whole field. That is more efficient for the farmer, but also means a great deal more herbicide will be sold.
Not everyone was enthusiastic.“ Pioneer was resistant to using herbicideresistant corn,” said Howie Smith.“ People realized some of the things that could happen when you spray 100 million acres with herbicide.”
That question has become the most enflamed of all the controversies in the financial history of corn. Glyphosate has been linked to cancer in humans and colony collapse in honeybees. Manufacturers refute the links and have spent billions settling lawsuits. That, too, is beyond the scope of this article.
What can be stated definitively is that the booming corn industry has driven consolidation in the broader chemical and agricultural processing sectors.
For example, in 1999, DuPont bought Pioneer Hi-Bred. In 2017, DuPont Pioneer was combined with Dow Agrosciences as part of the merger of Dow and DuPont. Two years later that combination was spun off as Corteva. That firm controlled about a third of the US corn seed market in 2020, the most recent figures from the US Department of Agriculture. Bayer, which bought Monsanto in 2018, controlled another third.
Downstream, the corn-milling, meatpacking and fuel-ethanol sectors are also oligopolies. Cargill, Inc.— the largest private company in the US over the past four decades— holds the trifecta as one of the largest producers in all three sectors. Archer-Daniels-Midland is among the largest in milling and ethanol.
In meat processing, Tyson Foods holds the triple crown as largest poultry producer and also among the biggest in beef and pork. Shares are traded, but it is effectively controlled by the founding family and institutional investors. Chinese-owned Smithfield is the largest pork processor in the United States. Brazillianowned JBS is also big in beef and pork.
Gregory DL Morris is an independent business journalist, principal of Enterprise & Industry Historic Research and an active member of the Museum’ s edito rial board. In 2025, he joined the Museum of American Finance staff as a research associate.
www. MoAF. org | Fall 2025 | FINANCIAL HISTORY 27