The carbon footprint of Maize (corn)
🌿Carbonle#17 of 43
🌽Carbon footprintMaize (corn)
1.7kg CO₂e / kg
Same as a 10 km drive · 4× a kilo of apples
carbonle.pidak.cz
A kilogram of Maize (corn) works out to about 1.7 kg CO₂e (kg CO₂e / kg).
That lands it #17 of the 43 foods on Carbonle, middle of the pack.
The number is a farm-to-shop average. It counts land use, growing, feed, processing, transport, retail and packaging, with methane folded in as its CO₂ equivalent.
Call it 4 times a kilo of apples (0.43 kg).
Growing a kilo throws off about as much CO₂ as a 10 km drive in a diesel car.
Modest. Fertiliser, the field itself, and a bit of milling.
Eat it freely. This is the kind of food a low-carbon plate is built on.
Compare with
Head-to-head
Figures from OWID / Poore & Nemecek 2018, licensed CC-BY 4.0.
How we get these numbers: Methodology.