How America’s Food Producers Continue to Innovate for Consumers

We Americans have always expected our food to meet changing needs. We want food that is safe, affordable, nutritious, and convenient, and we also expect new choices that reflect changing tastes, lifestyles, and health priorities. 

Those shifting consumer expectations have continually pushed the food and agriculture industry to accommodate them through innovation. For generations, America’s farmers and food manufacturers have responded by listening to consumers and finding new ways to deliver the products families rely on every day.

Our food industry transforms American crops into the building blocks of the foods we eat, producing hundreds of ingredients with countless uses. Corn production alone accounts for over $61 billion in annual economic activity. Those ingredients are woven directly into daily life, helping food taste better, stay fresher, and remain affordable while making possible the safe, consistent, and nutritious products families depend on.

Consumer expectations have never stood still, and neither has the American food industry. Families want food that fits busy lives, delivered through low prices and better nutrition. America’s food manufacturers meet those expectations the way American innovators always have — by putting sound science to work and improving the products already in the cart.

Meeting those expectations often means improving the ingredients that go into the foods consumers already buy. Much of that innovation happens during food processing, which has become increasingly misunderstood in conversations about nutrition.

Yet processing is not the enemy of good nutrition; it is often the vehicle for it. Food processing helps make foods safer, longer-lasting, and more accessible, while allowing better nutrition to reach consumers year-round through rigorous, science-based standards. Innovation that meets people where they are is innovation that improves lives.

I’ve spent four decades in the food and agriculture industry, and one pattern has held true for even longer than that: consumers speak, and the industry responds.

In the 1960s and 1970s, as American families sought foods that fit increasingly busy lives, manufacturers advanced freezing, packaging, and food technologies that made convenient foods safer, more reliable, and more widely available.

In the 1980s, consumers came to expect foods that stayed fresh longer and stayed affordable year-round, and that demand pushed the industry to refine and scale food processing and preservation methods that extended shelf life and cut waste. Consumers also began paying closer attention to nutrition labels, prompting manufacturers to introduce fat-free products that defined the 1990s before expanding into “no sugar added” options as tastes and health priorities changed.

Today, Americans increasingly want foods with better nutrition without giving up the products they already enjoy. Manufacturers continue to meet those expectations through biofortified crop and ingredient technologies and resistant fiber enrichment, added to breads, tortillas, and snacks to boost fiber content without changing taste or texture. What consumers ask for will keep changing; what stays constant is an industry that listens and builds to match.

That relentless commitment to meeting consumer needs has helped create one of America’s largest economic sectors, generating more than $10.4 trillion in economic activity and supporting nearly one in five American jobs, from the farm to advanced manufacturing.

As an American agricultural product, corn tells that story better than any statistic. For more than two centuries, the same crop has been reinvented to meet changing consumer needs, and today it appears not only in the foods on our tables but also in medicines, cosmetics, and renewable materials that continue to expand with new technologies. 

Trust is the foundation of every innovation in our food system. Americans should place their confidence in decades of rigorous safety standards and the farmers who dedicate their careers to producing safe, affordable food. The food industry will continue to earn that trust by listening to consumers, following the evidence, and delivering products that meet the needs of American families. That approach has served this country well for generations, and it will continue to do so.

John Bode is president and CEO of the Corn Refiners Association, the trade association representing the corn milling industry, and he chairs the Agricultural Policy Advisory Committee, which advises the Department of Agriculture and U.S. Trade Representative on trade policy.