The US Produces The Most Popcorn Worldwide, But 2 Small States Do The Heavy Lifting

To say that America loves its popcorn is a massive understatement, both in terms of consumption and production. Americans eat an estimated 14 billion quarts of popcorn each year. With a quart of popped popcorn weighing in at around 0.07 pounds, that's about 980 million pounds of popcorn eaten in the United States each year. When it comes to growing the crop, the majority of the popcorn consumed globally is grown in the United States, mostly in the Corn Belt — a stretch of various states in the South and Midwest. Among those states, Indiana and Nebraska do the brunt of the work.

In 2022 alone, Indiana produced over 400 million pounds of shelled popcorn, while Nebraska produced more than 333 million. The U.S. produced a total of 1.01 billion pounds that year, making the two states responsible for more than 70% of the popcorn produced in the entire country. To put these numbers into perspective, the average adult African elephant weighs 12,000 pounds, meaning Indiana and Nebraska combine to produce the equivalent of over 61,000 elephants in popcorn each year.

That's a whole lot of popcorn, to put it mildly. The next time you try making popcorn the old-school way, make homemade cornmeal with unpopped kernels, or transform your corn's flavor with seasoning blends, chances are high that your popcorn came from either Indiana or Nebraska.

Indiana became the United States' biggest popcorn grower in 2021, surpassing previous champion Nebraska by planting a record 97,000 acres of the crop. That number has since gone down to 77,000 acres in 2024, but their average yield of roughly 5,824 pounds per acre was enough to keep the state on top. Given Indiana's history with the snack, it only makes sense for them to be its most prolific producer.

While Chicago was the birthplace of the popping machine that started a snack revolution in the 1890s, it's Indiana's soil and climate that proved to be the most ideal for growing the specific variety of corn that made for the best popcorn (Zea mays). By 1928, Reverend Ira Weaver founded what would become Weaver Popcorn, the company that supplies nearly 30% of the world's popcorn. Over the next couple of decades, growers in Purdue would develop hybrids that improved upon the original crop for maximum snackability.

This period of development would eventually become the foundation for Orville Redenbacher's game-changing popcorn business. Redenbacher, an Indiana native, would produce his now world-famous hybrid alongside business partner Charles Bowman in the 1960s. His extreme marketability and the quality of his new hybrid would essentially make him the face of the snack in pop culture throughout the late 20th century, cementing Indiana's place in popcorn history. The fact that Orville Redenbacher's continues to be one of the best microwave popcorn brands on shelves today is a testament to the quality of their corn.

Like in Indiana, Nebraska's soil quality and climate conditions are excellent for growing corn, which in turn encouraged the cultivation of popcorn and the development of improved varieties. The snack has become such an intrinsic part of Nebraska's culture that the state's longest continuously running festival is Popcorn Days in the town of North Loup in Valley County. The event was first held in 1901 and was established to celebrate the crop, which helped the area recover after a particularly difficult drought.

To this day, popcorn has been a significant part of the state's traditions, as well as its economy. Nebraska, for instance, is one of three states where AMC — the top seller of movie theater popcorn in the entire world — grows the kernels for its Perfectly Popcorn brand. Zangger Popcorn Hybrids, which produces 20% to 30% of popcorn hybrid seeds across the globe, is headquartered in North Loup. Preferred Popcorn processes roughly 60% of its popcorn in Nebraska, which is no small feat when you consider that the company supplies nearly a billion servings of popcorn across 70 countries worldwide. However you cut it, that's a lot of business being generated by Nebraska's popcorn industry.