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Industry Primers

Bottom-up NAICS industry primers written for both public-market and private investors. Leaf industries are researched from the ground up; every group, subsector, and sector above them reads as a contrast across the industries beneath it.

2122 industries · 24 sectors · NAICS 2022

Researched with AI assistance from official U.S. statistics and independent sources, with citations on every page. Figures are not individually verified against pinned evidence — primers marked Evidence-verified are. Industry research, not investment advice. Methodology.

IndustryNAICS 11115Agriculture, Forestry, Fishing and Hunting

Corn Farming in the United States

NAICS 2022 code 11115 — the industry group covering U.S. establishments primarily engaged in growing corn (except sweet corn) and/or producing corn seed. NAICS stands for the North American Industry Classification System, the standard the United States, Canada, and Mexico use to group businesses by activity.

This is a rollup page. NAICS 11115 (a 5-digit "industry") contains exactly one 6-digit child, 111150 (Corn Farming), so this level and its child describe the same set of businesses. This page gives the level's own figures and the short version. For the full treatment — investable universe, economics, demand drivers, regulation, consolidation, risks, and how-to-invest — read the 111150 Corn Farming primer.

1. Overview

Corn is the largest crop in American agriculture. In 2022, about 289,000 U.S. farms harvested roughly 80.6 million acres of corn for grain and produced 13.7 billion bushels, with a crop value near $88.5 billion — the single most valuable crop and second only to cattle across all farm commodities.[1][2] Corn sits at the base of a very large supply chain: it is the main feed for cattle, hogs, and poultry; the feedstock for nearly all U.S. fuel ethanol; and a leading export, in which the United States is the world's top shipper.[3][4]

The key thing to grasp: you cannot really buy "a corn farm" on a public exchange. Growing corn is overwhelmingly private, family-owned, and fragmented across hundreds of thousands of operators. Public and private capital reach the industry indirectly — through input suppliers (seed, fertilizer, machinery), the buyers and processors (grain merchants, ethanol makers), the farmland itself, and the commodity via futures and funds. Those routes are covered in the 111150 primer.

2. What's inside — and why this level equals its one child

NAICS is a nested hierarchy: the 4-digit industry group 1111 (Oilseed and Grain Farming) splits into several 5-digit industries — corn (11115), soybeans (11111), wheat (11114), rice (11116), and others. This page is the 5-digit corn slot, 11115, and at the next level down it has a single 6-digit child:

Child code Name Share of this level
111150 Corn Farming 100%

Because there is only one child, NAICS 11115 and NAICS 111150 are effectively the same industry — the extra digit adds no further subdivision. Everything true of 111150 is true of 11115. The scope is the growers of field corn (dent corn) for feed, ethanol, and processing; it excludes sweet corn (a vegetable crop, 111219), ethanol manufacturing (325193), wet corn milling (311221), grain elevators and merchant wholesaling (493130 / 424510), and hired field work (support activities, 115112–115114).[5] The 111150 primer lays out those boundaries in detail.

3. How big it is (this level's figures)

Because the level equals its one child, the rollup figures for NAICS 11115 are identical to those for 111150. From USDA's (the U.S. Department of Agriculture's) 2022 Census of Agriculture:[1][2]

  • ~289,000 farms harvested corn for grain.
  • ~80.6 million acres of corn for grain harvested — about 29% of all U.S. harvested cropland.
  • ~13.7 billion bushels produced; ~$88.5 billion in crop value — the top U.S. crop.

More recent USDA production data show the crop still growing: the 2024 crop was 14.9 billion bushels, and the 2025 crop set a record near 16.7 billion bushels at a record yield around 186 bushels per acre.[6][7]

No ingested business statistics for this level. Our ground-truth federal statistics file for NAICS 11115 contains no ingested metrics at all — no establishment count, revenue, payroll, or employment — so every figure on this page is drawn from the cited USDA and other sources, labeled as such, not from our own ingested data.

The undercount caveat (important). Standard federal business statistics badly understate this industry. Counts built from employer firms — County Business Patterns, the Economic Census, and the Small Business Administration's (SBA's) tallies — miss most corn farms because the great majority have no paid employees: they are family operations, often part-time, structured as individuals or partnerships rather than payroll-carrying firms. The SBA's small-business size standard for corn farming is just $2.5 million in average annual receipts,[8] and most operations fall well under it. To size this industry, use USDA's Census of Agriculture (which counts farms), not the business registers that count companies with payroll.

4. Investable universe (where value concentrates)

With only one child, the exposure map for 11115 is exactly that of 111150: there is no pure-play, publicly traded "corn farm." Value that public and private investors can actually buy sits in the layers around the grower — inputs (seed, fertilizer, machinery), buyers and processors, farmland ownership, and the commodity itself. The 111150 primer carries the full company-by-company table and the list of major private and cooperative players (Cargill, CHS, POET, Nuveen/TIAA farmland, and others). Tickers, yields, and valuation multiples belong in that per-company analysis, not in a generic corn-farming valuation.

5. How the money works

Corn farming is a commodity, price-taker business: the grower sells an undifferentiated product at a market price set globally and cannot mark it up. Revenue is roughly yield × price (adjusted for local basis), while costs — seed, fertilizer, rented land, fuel, machinery, and interest — are large and mostly fixed for a season. That gives the business heavy operating leverage, so margins swing from very good (2021–22) to negative (2024–25) within a few seasons. For owners, long-run return often comes as much from land appreciation as from the crop. Full economics — break-even math, the landlord-versus-operator split, and co-product value (DDGS, corn oil) — are in the 111150 primer.

6. Demand drivers

U.S. corn use splits into a few big buckets: livestock feed (~40%), ethanol (~35–40%), exports (~15%, with the United States the world's top shipper), and the remainder in food, seed, and other industrial uses.[3][9] Feed demand tracks herd sizes; ethanol demand is policy- and gasoline-driven; exports hinge on competing crops in Brazil, Argentina, and Ukraine and on the dollar. See the 111150 primer for the detail and the forward-looking questions (electric vehicles versus ethanol; sustainable aviation fuel as a new outlet).

7. Regulation

Corn is one of the most policy-shaped crops in America, and the rules that matter apply identically at this level and its child: the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) run by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which underpins ethanol demand; the Farm Bill safety net (Price Loss Coverage and Agriculture Risk Coverage, whose reference prices were raised in July 2025); heavily subsidized federal crop insurance; and EPA/USDA oversight of pesticides and biotech traits.[10][11][12] The 111150 primer explains each.

8. Consolidation

The grower level is fragmented and competitive — hundreds of thousands of price-taking farms with no pricing power. Consolidation is steady but slow and mostly private, happening through land leases, neighboring-farm expansion, and succession rather than corporate takeovers.[13] The striking concentration is in the layers around the farm — seed and traits, fertilizer, equipment, and grain buying/processing — squeezing growers who buy from concentrated suppliers and sell to concentrated buyers. Detail is in the 111150 primer.

9. Risks

The risk profile is that of 111150: price cyclicality (corn prices can halve in a couple of seasons); weather and climate shocks concentrated in the Corn Belt; input-cost spikes (especially natural-gas-driven nitrogen fertilizer); policy dependence (ethanol demand and farm-program income rest on federal policy); trade and geopolitics (exports concentrated in a few buyers); and land/rent risk for both renters and owners. The single biggest long-run question mark is whether electric-vehicle adoption erodes the gasoline demand that props up the ethanol bucket. Full list in the 111150 primer.

10. How to invest & outlook

You cannot buy the farm — you buy around it. Public routes are the commodity itself (a corn-futures fund or broad ag-commodity ETF, where ETF means exchange-traded fund), the value chain (input, equipment, and processor stocks, or an agribusiness basket ETF), and the land (farmland REITs, where REIT means real estate investment trust). Private routes are direct farmland ownership, farmland funds and fractional platforms, and direct operating or cooperative equity. Choose the exposure first, then do company- or asset-specific diligence.

Outlook. Corn is the anchor crop of U.S. agriculture — enormous, strategically central, and deeply cyclical. Its growers are mostly private, family-run price-takers whose fortunes swing with weather, world prices, and Washington. After a record 2025 harvest pushed prices toward roughly $4 per bushel and many growers into losses, the near-term tension is a loss-making price trough set against a firmer policy safety net and record export and ethanol demand.[6][7] The strongest long-term exposure is likely to come from efficient operators, high-quality land, strong tenants, and companies that earn margins from inputs, logistics, processing, or technology — rather than from simply betting on a higher corn price.

For the complete analysis, read the 111150 Corn Farming primer.

Sources

Drawn from the child primer (111150), which carries the full source list.

  1. USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS), 2022 Census of Agriculture — U.S. National Level Data (Volume 1, Chapter 1); corn: ~289,000 farms, 80.6M acres for grain, 13.7B bushels. https://www.nass.usda.gov/Publications/AgCensus/2022/Full_Report/Volume_1%2C_Chapter_1_US/usv1.pdf
  2. USDA NASS, 2022 Census of Agriculture data release / Grain and Oilseed Production Highlights (corn crop value ~$88.5B; top commodities), 2024. https://www.nass.usda.gov/Newsroom/2024/02-13-2024.php
  3. USDA Economic Research Service (ERS), Feed Grains Sector at a Glance (use split; top states; >95% of feed-grain output; export competitors), 2026. https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/crops/corn-and-other-feed-grains/feed-grains-sector-at-a-glance
  4. U.S. Grains Council, U.S. Corn Exports Up Nearly 27 Percent, Breaking Record (2024/25 record shipments; Mexico, Japan, Colombia), 2025. https://grains.org/2025-annual-report/panels/u-s-corn-exports-up-nearly-27-percent-breaking-record/
  5. U.S. Census Bureau, 2022 NAICS definitions — Corn Farming (111150) and adjacent codes (111219, 311221, 325193, 424510, 493130, 115112–115114). https://www.census.gov/naics/?input=111150&year=2022
  6. USDA NASS, Corn Production Down in 2024 (2024 final: 14.9B bushels; record 179.3 bu/acre), 2025. https://www.nass.usda.gov/Newsroom/archive/2025/01-10-2025.php
  7. USDA NASS / World-Grain, Record US, global corn output projected in 2025 (~186 bu/acre; ~16.7B bushels), 2025. https://www.world-grain.com/articles/21394-record-us-global-corn-output-projected-in-2025
  8. U.S. Small Business Administration, Table of Size Standards (NAICS 111150 = $2.5M average annual receipts), 2023. https://www.sba.gov/document/support-table-size-standards
  9. National Corn Growers Association (NCGA), Extracting More from Each Bushel: Corn in Fuel & Feed (~5.5B bushels to ethanol; DDGS co-product), 2025. https://ncga.com/stay-informed/media/the-corn-economy/article/2025/12/extracting-more-from-each-bushel-corn-in-fuel-and-feed-use
  10. Congressional Research Service (CRS), The Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS): An Overview, 2025. https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/R43325
  11. USDA Farm Service Agency (FSA), Agriculture Risk Coverage (ARC) & Price Loss Coverage (PLC) Overview, 2025. https://www.fsa.usda.gov/resources/income-support/arc-plc
  12. USDA Risk Management Agency (RMA), USDA Announces New Margin Coverage Option (MCO) for Row Crops (crop years 2026+), 2025. https://www.rma.usda.gov/news-events/news/2025/davis-california/davis-ro-usda-announces-new-margin-coverage-option-row-crops
  13. USDA NASS, Family-Owned Farms Account for ~95% of U.S. Farms (farm typology; large-scale family farms produce ~half of output value), 2025. https://www.nass.usda.gov/Newsroom/archive/2025/08-19-2025.php