The actual land area used to grow the food Americans eat is only about the size of Indiana, Illinois and half of Iowa combined. Source: Bloomberg
Cropland together takes up more than a fifth of contiguous America, but between pastures and cropland that is used to produce feed, 41 percent of the contiguous states is devoted to livestock. Land actually used to grow food consumed by Americans is only about the size of Indiana, Illinois and half of Iowa combined — more than a third of the country’s corn crop goes to ethanol production, and most cropland is used for livestock feed, exports or is left idle to support land recovery.
View an interactive created by Bloomberg that gives you a rough sense of how all the land in the US is used.