A cornfield is a large field where corn is grown as a crop. When you drive through the American Midwest in summer, you'll often see cornfields stretching for miles, with rows of tall green stalks rising higher than a person's head. By late summer, the corn plants can reach eight or nine feet tall, creating walls of green leaves and golden tassels swaying in the wind.

Farmers plant corn in straight rows to make harvesting easier. Walking through a mature cornfield feels like being in a maze, since the tall plants block your view in every direction. This maze-like quality has made cornfields popular settings for stories and harvest festivals, where people cut paths through the stalks for entertainment.

The United States grows more corn than any other country, and much of it comes from states like Iowa, Illinois, and Nebraska. Some of this corn becomes food for people (sweet corn, cornmeal, corn syrup), while much of it feeds livestock or gets turned into products like ethanol fuel. A single cornfield might contain hundreds of thousands of individual corn plants, all carefully tended from spring planting through fall harvest.