By the late 1970s, American grocery shelves were filling up with cheaper processed foods and sweetened drinks as manufacturers looked for lower-cost ingredients. One big reason traces back to U.S. farm policy in the early 1970s, when Agriculture Secretary Earl Butz pushed farmers to grow far more corn.
The policy shift that changed food manufacturing
In 1973, the Nixon administration backed a new direction for federal farm policy that favored large-scale production of commodity crops, especially corn, and Butz became the public face of that shift, according to USDA histories and congressional records. His message to farmers was direct: plant “fencerow to fencerow,” a phrase widely cited in accounts of 1970s agriculture. As production climbed, corn became cheaper and more abundant across the Midwest, especially in Iowa, Illinois, and Nebraska.
That mattered to food companies because high-fructose corn syrup, or HFCS, was becoming commercially viable at almost the same time. Japanese researchers developed key enzyme processes in the 1960s, and U.S. manufacturers began expanding HFCS production in the 1970s, according to the Encyclopaedia Britannica and industry histories. By 1984, both Coca-Cola and Pepsi had shifted many U.S. soft drinks from cane sugar to HFCS, a move widely documented in food industry reporting.
What the change meant across U.S. grocery aisles
The impact was national, but it was especially visible in processed foods made and sold across corn-producing states such as Iowa, Indiana, and Illinois. HFCS did not stay limited to soda. By the 1980s and 1990s, it was common in ketchup, hamburger buns, breakfast cereals, salad dressings, and packaged snacks, according to ingredient records and food market research.
What is not fully captured in one public database is a single, complete list of every product category that switched formulas during those years. Recipes changed brand by brand, and manufacturers did not always publicize each reformulation. What is confirmed is the scale: USDA data shows U.S. per-capita consumption of corn sweeteners rose sharply from the 1970s into the 1990s, while cane and beet sugar lost ground in many packaged foods.
Why corn syrup beat sugar on cost
Price was the main driver, according to economists and long-running federal trade policy. In 1974, the United States also tightened sugar import protections through quotas and tariffs, which helped keep domestic sugar prices above some world prices, according to the Congressional Research Service. When sugar cost more and subsidized corn stayed plentiful, HFCS became an attractive alternative for food manufacturers trying to control ingredient costs at national scale.
For shoppers today, that 1970s policy legacy still shows up on ingredient labels in stores from California to New York. Not every sweetened product uses HFCS, and some brands have switched back to cane sugar in recent years, especially in specialty beverages. But USDA and food industry data continue to show corn-based sweeteners remain a major part of the American processed-food system that took shape after the farm decisions of the 1970s.
