Corn, sweet corn

Corn, sweet corn is there anything you cannot do?

You can eat it fresh, frozen or from a can, make tortillas or bread with its flour, or feed it to livestock. You can even drive your car using ethanol made from corn.

Let’s shuck the husks off of our big pile of corn data and dig into this super, sweet vegetable.

Fresh field sweet corn on the cob, ripe for the picking

It’s August now, and fresh Canadian field sweet corn is starting to go on sale across the country.

Last year was a down year for fresh field sweet corn growers, with marketable production falling 2.4% to 191 581 tonnes.

While that sure is a lot of corn, production was down 13.6% in 2021 from a decade earlier and almost one-third lower than in 2007.

Over three-quarters of the corn grown in Canada annually sprouts from fields in Ontario and Quebec.

Last year was a challenging one for Ontario fresh field sweet corn growers, with marketable production falling 4.0% to 107 061 tonnes. Quebec farmers fared better, with production of fresh field sweet corn up 1.6% to 63 877 tonnes.

Fresh, frozen, and canned

One way to follow food preferences is by tracking the amount of food that is physically present in a country for consumption. We found that there were almost 5.5 kilograms of corn available per Canadian in some form or another in 2021.

Judging by its availability, fresh corn is most popular among Canadians, accounting for 2.9 kilograms of the corn available in 2021. However, this was down from 3.7 kilograms a decade earlier. Availability of canned and frozen corn were also both down from a decade earlier.

Conversely, there was greater availability of corn flour and meal compared with a decade earlier, rising from 1.2 kilograms to 1.4 kilograms.

Corn for grain

Canadian farmers grow a lot more corn for grain than they do of the fresh, frozen or canned varieties. Corn for grain is primarily used for animal feed and ethanol, but it is also used to make bread, tortillas, and other baked products.

In 2021, Canadian corn farmers grew 14.0 million metric tonnes of corn for grain, up 3.1% from a year earlier. Over half of corn for grain was grown in Ontario (9.5 million metric tonnes) in 2021, followed by Quebec (3.4 million metric tonnes).

In Ontario, where over 60% of all corn for grain in Canada is grown, farmers reported a 6.0% increase in seeded area to 2.3 million acres in 2022.

In Quebec, farmers reported planting 892,300 acres of corn for grain, up 0.7% compared with 2021.

Corn in the cow

Corn for silage is used to feed livestock, especially cattle. Canadian farmers grew 10.6 million metric tonnes of corn for silage in 2021, down 5.4% from a year earlier and almost over one-fifth less (22.0%) than the recent peak set in 2016. Nevertheless, corn for silage production was 80.8% higher compared with 2000.

It’s not surprising that Ontario (4.0 million metric tonnes) and Quebec (2.8 million metric tonnes) are Canada’s biggest corn for silage growing provinces, given that both provinces are also home to Canada’s largest dairy herds.

The next time you consume a glass of milk or a scoop of ice cream, you can thank corn for the experience.

Corn in the car

A mix of corn and wheat can also be transformed into clean, renewable fuel that is blended into gasoline to help reduce carbon emissions. Depending on where you live in Canada, up to 10% of the fuel in regular gasoline that you pump into your automobile is ethanol.

Ontario motorists are the most likely to drive with ethanol, accounting for 10% of regular gasoline in the province.

In 2021,1.6 million cubic metres of ethanol was produced in Canada using both domestic and imported corn and wheat.