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“There’s no better place to raise a family than here in southern Minnesota.”

Greg Schwarz
Corn Farmer

Name: Greg Schwarz
Location: LeSueur, Minnesota
Years farming: I’ve been farming for 19 years.
My family: My wife, Joan, and I have two children; Tom is 14 and Allison is 11.
How I came to be a farmer: After working for two years as a farm manager in southern Minnesota, I decided that if I was ever going to farm, I’d better do it sooner than later. I bought my grandfather’s farm in 1991. A condition of the sale was that I leave a large oak tree in the middle of the field by his house as long as he was around. That is how we arrived at the name Lone Oak Farm. Grandpa is long gone, but the tree still stands.
The best thing about being a farmer: The variety of work and being your own boss.
My personal philosophy on farming: With the technical advancements, farming today is much easier than it was 50 or even 10 years ago. At the same time, it is very complex and requires a high level of management. All that being said, we still do things very much the same from year to year; we plant the seeds, pray for the right weather, and somehow it all works out for the best.

Corn Production in Minnesota and the United States

• Minnesota, Iowa, Illinois, and Nebraska account for more than 50 percent of the corn grown in the U.S.
• Olivia, Minnesota is known as the “Corn Capital of the World” because of the amount of corn grown in the area. And in 1973, they even built a 50-foot monument in the shape of an ear of corn.
• Livestock, poultry and dairy farmers are corn’s biggest customers – using almost six million bushels every year or almost half of the U.S. corn crop.
• Farm families grow 90 percent of America’s corn.
• Farmers today grow 5 times more corn than they did in the 1930s and on 20 percent less land.
• There are over 3,500 uses for corn. Seventy-five percent of all grocery items contain corn in some form.
• Per capita corn consumption in the U.S. is approximately 160 pounds.
• U.S. farmers account for around 40 percent of the world’s corn production.
• In the 1930s, a farmer could harvest an average of 100 bushels of corn by hand in a nine-hour day. Today’s combines can harvest 900 bushels of corn per hour – or 100 bushels in less than seven minutes.
• Corn is beneficial to the environment as it absorbs carbon dioxide and gives off oxygen -- just like a rain forest.
• The average ear of corn has 800 kernels, arranged in 16 rows. One pound of corn contains approximately 1,300 kernels.
• Corn is the main ingredient in most dry pet food.

For more information about corn farming in Minnesota, please visit  http://www.mncorn.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=57&Itemid=65.

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