USDA data show rising corn use for ethanol and feed price shifts
May corn use for alcohol and other uses hit 524 million bushels, with 92% going to alcohol. Ethanol plant corn costs averaged $4.30 a bushel as co-product values stayed in play.
USDA's National Agricultural Statistics Service on July 1 said corn consumed for alcohol and other uses reached 524 million bushels in May 2026.
That was up 9% from April 2026 and up 5% from May 2025, with 92.0% of the total going to alcohol and 8.0% to other purposes. The split kept ethanol at the center of USDA's corn disappearance picture even as the feed side continued to absorb coproduct volume.
USDA's World Agricultural Supply and Demand Estimates, approved July 10, updated 2026/27 grain and feed expectations against that backdrop. USDA's Agricultural Marketing Service had already put a price on the crush side on April 13, with average corn input at ethanol plants at $4.30 a bushel in its National Weekly Grain Co-Products Report. The same report listed distillers corn oil values across the Eastern Cornbelt, Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri and Nebraska, a reminder that ethanol margins are being shaped by both feedstock costs and coproduct pricing.
USDA's National Weekly Ag Energy Round-Up tracked ethanol quotes in Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska, South Dakota, the Eastern Cornbelt and Wisconsin, along with biodiesel B100 quotes in Iowa/Minnesota and IL/IN/OH. That regional price map is the piece plants and blenders watch when they line up rack values, basis and blending economics from one market to the next.
USDA's Economic Research Service has long said growth in corn dry-mill ethanol production created distillers' grains, the coproduct feed buyers know as DDGS. The University of Nebraska's Center for Agricultural Profitability noted in 2019 that distillers grains move in dry DDG, modified wet MWDG and wet WDG forms, each with different handling and water content. Those coproduct streams remain central to the margin stack when corn values move and feed buyers reprice replacement protein and energy.
IndexBox's July 24 feedstuff market note sat inside a broader run of weekly USDA feedstuff updates, including a July 17 bundle covering ag energy, animal by-product, grain and mill-feed prices. The series kept ethanol, biodiesel and feed on the same page, with corn use and coproduct value moving together through late July.
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