Does Iowa have more farmland suitable for growing corn and wheat than Canada?

Question

Stephen Haber ("professor of political science, professor of history, and professor of economics" at Stanford) claims in a 2014 podcast:

the state of Iowa has more farmland suitable for growing corn and wheat than the entire country of Canada.

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From some quick Googling:

• Statistics Canada: In 2021, "Total area of farms" was 153,687,771 acres.

• USDA: "Total land in farms for Iowa during 2021 was 30.5 million acres."

(But Haber's claim could still be true, if for example most of Iowa's land is suitable for growing corn and wheat, while little of Canada's is.)

Answer 1

The acreage of corn and wheat actually grown is always less than the suitable land acreage, because land has other use besides crops, because other crops are grown too, and because of crop rotation. So comparing the acreage harvested is a difficult comparison.

But let's look at the actual corn and wheat harvest anyway.

Iowa's 2022 State Agriculture Overview shows that about 13 million acres of corn were planted. As another answer shows, not much wheat is planted in Iowa.

Canada's Reuters and Nasdaq report shows that in 2022 about 30 million acres of wheat and corn were planted - double the amount in Iowa.

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The OP's quote mentions nothing about actual crops or yields, only the suitability of the land, and this article about global warming discusses the increase in Canada's suitable land:

Canada could be a huge climate change winner when it comes to farmland

Currently, only a million square kilometres in Canada are warm enough for growing crops like wheat, corn and potatoes.

The Wikipedia article about Iowa states that its total land area is

• Iowa land: 144,669 sq km

So even if the entire state of Iowa were devoted to corn and wheat farming, it would still be only about one seventh of Canada's suitable land area.

But Stephen Haber's podcast was in 2014, and global warming is rapidly increasing the area of suitable land in Canada:

The study, published today in the journal PLOS ONE, predicts about 4.2 million square kilometres of Canada that are currently too cold for farming crops like wheat will be warm enough by 2080 if greenhouse gas emissions continue to climb.

That is four times the present area in a time span of 57 years, so it is quite unlikely that there was a seven-fold increase in the 9 years since the podcast.

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Now I'll compare the actual farmland used for arable crops.

From Iowa Farm Facts and
from official Canada statistics in Field crops and hay, Census of Agriculture, 2021

• 26,256,347: Acres devoted to cropland in Iowa.

• 92,905,737: Acres of field crops and hay in Canada.

If all the arable crop land was devoted to wheat or corn, Canada has more than three times as much suitable land, by these statistics. And again, it's more than twice the area of the entire state of Iowa.

So the claim is false.

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Edit: @reirab questioned the fact that hay is included in Canada's "Field crops and hay" census figures, and whether land used for hay is even suitable for cereal crops.

A subset of the data posted is to be found on a version the same page for Ontario

Total area of field crops and hay - Acres 8,831,431

I'll put that against this report from Glacier FarmMedia which says

...just over 1.5 million acres of hay were harvested in Ontario in 2019

which is about one sixth of the acreage of Ontario's field crops and hay. So although that makes quite a bit of difference, it does not affect the almost three times difference mentioned above all that much.

Answer 2

Estimates of principal field crop areas shows that in 2021, Canada had 27 million acres dedicated to wheat and corn.
It grows many other crops too, including 22 million acres growing canola.

If it's true that all the farms in Iowa grew nothing but corn and wheat, then yes, this claim would be true.

But, IA-Crop-Production-Annual-01-22.pdf shows that Iowa had 13 million acres of corn, yet it doesn't even mention wheat.

Iowa Farmers Interested In Growing Wheat states:

Not much wheat is grown in Iowa. It's less than 40,000 acres compared to 14.3 million acres of corn planted for grain in 2007.

Perhaps the critical phrase is "suitable for growing", as opposed to actually growing.

Iowa Farm Facts - Living History Farms says:

35.7 million: Acres of land in Iowa
30,622,731: Acres farmed in Iowa

So, if all farmland in Iowa (30.5) were dedicated to growing wheat and corn, it would be more than the amount of land Canada actually uses for those two crops (27), which are a relatively small fraction of the total crop production.

If the claim is that Iowa has more farmland suitable for growing corn and wheat than Canada [uses], it is true, and I suspect that is what the claim is based on (30.5 > 27).

But if the claim is that Iowa has more farmland suitable for growing corn and wheat than Canada [could use], it is false, but I suspect this is what the claim wanted the audience to think.