Ag Minute: Candy Corn - The Only Corn Crop Harvested with a Pillowcase

What did the cornstalk say to the candy corn? "Nice try, but you're not fooling anybody." Every fall, Illinois farmers spend weeks running combines across roughly 11 million acres of field corn. Meanwhile, the most famous corn of October is harvested by the handful from a candy dish at the bank teller window. October 30 is National Candy Corn Day. The candy was invented in Philadelphia in the 1880s by George Renninger of the Wunderle Candy Company, but Illinois has a claim to it too. Starting in 1898, candy corn was popularized by the Goelitz family, whose candy business began in Belleville, and it was marketed to farm families as "Chicken Feed.”

Halloween traces back about 2,000 years to Samhain, a Celtic festival marking the end of the harvest, which Christian tradition later turned into All Hallows' Eve. Trick-or-treating took off in America after World War II, once sugar rationing ended, and candy corn went from a farm novelty to a Halloween staple.

Americans take Halloween seriously. According to the National Confectioners Association, we buy roughly 600 million pounds of candy for the holiday each year, about 1.75 pounds for every person in the country. Candy corn makes up only a small share of that, at about 35 million pounds a year. That’s roughly 9 billion kernels, enough to fill about 51 million standard 11-ounce bags, or around 26 pieces for every American.

Despite the name, candy corn doesn’t contain a single actual corn kernel. Its two main ingredients are sugar and corn syrup, and the syrup is there for a reason: it keeps sugar from crystallizing, which gives candy corn its smooth, chewy bite. In a typical homemade recipe, corn syrup makes up roughly a quarter of the batch by weight. Not every candy uses it. A Kit Kat or a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup has none. But many of the most popular Halloween treats do. Skittles and Starburst both list corn syrup as their second ingredient, right behind sugar, and it also shows up in chocolate bars like Snickers, Milky Way, Twix, and 3 Musketeers. That syrup doesn’t come from sweet corn. It comes from the same No. 2 yellow dent corn coming out of most Illinois corn fields right now.

Corn syrup is made by wet milling. According to the Corn Refiners Association, corn is soaked in warm water for 30 to 40 hours, then ground and separated into germ for corn oil, fiber and protein for livestock feed, and starch, which makes up about 70 percent of the kernel. Acid or enzymes break that starch into glucose, which is filtered and cooked down into syrup. One more enzyme step turns part of the glucose into fructose, creating high fructose corn syrup (HFCS), a different product than the corn syrup in candy. A 56-pound bushel yields about 33 pounds of sweetener.

Illinois is wet milling country. ADM and Primient both run corn wet mills in Decatur, about 40 miles east of Springfield, and Ingredion's Argo plant in Bedford Park has been grinding corn for over a century. Nationally, HFCS uses about 410 million bushels a year, and counting glucose syrup and dextrose, corn sweeteners use about 745 million bushels, roughly 5 percent of U.S. production.

Now for the fun math. A single bushel of Illinois corn yields about 33 pounds of sweetener. If candy corn is roughly a quarter corn syrup, that one bushel can sweeten about 130 pounds of candy corn, or around 190 bags. Scale that up to an average Illinois acre, which yielded 214 bushels in 2025, and you get enough syrup for about 7 million pieces of candy corn. That’s a fun comparison, because the same acre grows roughly 19 million real kernels. The average American eats about 26 pieces of candy corn a year, so one acre’s worth would cover everyone in Sangamon County with plenty to spare. The entire nation’s 35 million pounds of candy corn needs only about 1,240 acres, close to 2 square miles.

Candy corn may be the most debated treat in the candy bowl, but it fits farm country. It began as a nod to rural America, it borrows its name from the crop that blankets Illinois, and it is held together by a syrup that likely started as a kernel in a Midwestern field. As trick-or-treaters head out on Halloween night, thank an Illinois farmer for the sweet end of the season.