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It'd be more accurate to say that corn grows in many more places in North America than sugar cane. I was surprised to learn that vastly more pounds of sugar from cane is produced in the US (~32 million pounds a year) than corn syrup (~8 million pounds a year).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sugar_industry_of_the_United_S...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-fructose_corn_syrup#Unite...



The values listed there are the sugar cane harvest, not the sugar produced from it.

Per https://www.ers.usda.gov/webdocs/outlooks/100085/sss-m-388.p... the recovery rate varies from 9 to 14 percent.

Cane sugar production runs about 4 million short tons, which is about 8 billion pounds. Beets add a similar, somewhat larger amount.

HFCS production is also on a similar scale, billions of pounds a year. But then 80% of corn goes to animal feed and ethanol production, so HFCS isn't the major end use.




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