o show how it towered over all other states in corn production, Iowa created a 27-foot-tall tower of corn at San Francisco’s Panama-Pacific International Exposition in 1915. The Midwestern state produced 11 percent of the total U.S. corn crop that same year, a fact Iowans celebrated with songs and beauty pageants. By 2007, Iowa harvested more than seven times its 1915 totals, as the demand for corn grew so fast it became the country’s main crop export. Ultimately, corn byproducts found their way into more than 2,500 items in a typical grocery store, including toothpaste, trash bags, soda, and even batteries.