^{by Madison Longenecker}

My late grandfather, Max Longenecker, was a corn seed salesman. Every year until his passing in 2022, Pap Max made calls and visits to farmers across rural Central Pennsylvania, often recruiting my older brothers to help deliver heavy bags of seed. After the corn was planted, we’d see his name proudly displayed on signs along local fields: Max Longenecker. T.A. Seeds, (then, Local Seed Co.).

By the end of October, corn fields across PA mostly sit barren from the fall harvest. The one sitting behind my childhood home is still standing, but browning with the leaves. Corn has surrounded me my entire life in the valleys of the Allegheny Mountains. But what I didn’t realize growing up, not until I started my work on food systems reform at Compassion in World Farming, is that most of that corn isn’t feeding Pennsylvanians. It’s feeding cows.

In 2024, Pennsylvania produced about 91 million bushels of corn grain. But according to Penn State, “little of Pennsylvania’s corn makes it directly to market—most is used for feeding animals.” Just 4% or less is sweet corn—the kind you buy at the grocery store or farmer’s market and eat on a hot summer’s night. The rest becomes animal feed for dairy cows, pigs, and other farm animals.

Meanwhile, nearly 2 million Pennsylvanians rely on SNAP benefits to buy groceries, and over 475,000 children in the state were considered food insecure in 2023, a number that rose by more than 14% from the previous year. And in Blair County, where I'm from, nearly 11.1% of residents face food insecurity, says research from the Central Pennsylvania Food Bank. The situation has worsened, with the Big Beautiful Bill slashing hundreds of billions in food assistance. As Feeding Pennsylvania put it, these cuts represent “the largest rollback of food assistance in our nation’s history.”

So, how is it that food seems to grow in every direction in PA and across the United States, yet hunger continues to grow, too?

The problem isn’t the small family farmers my grandfather once served. It’s the industrialized food system that dominates U.S. agriculture—one that diverts enormous amounts of land, water, and crops to feed animals, not people. Federal corn and soy subsidies translate into artificially cheap feed, providing an effective multi-billion-dollar annual windfall to big Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs). This system isn’t just inefficient; it’s unjust. While industrial farms grow corn to fatten livestock, nearly 1 in 6 kids in Pennsylvania, and 1 in 5 across the country, don’t have enough to eat.

Should we keep pouring our best farmland and resources into producing feed for animals, or should we start growing more food for people?

Our neighbors are going hungry. We need to bridge the gap between the corn we grow and the mouths we need to feed.

Check out Compassion in World Farming's report, Food Not Feed: How to Stop the World's Biggest Form of Food Waste