Uses for Cornstalks

Crafts and Decorations

• The classic use for dried cornstalks is to make a scarecrow. Bundle up the stalks and stuff them inside an old shirt and a pair of pants to make the scarecrow's body. Tie smaller pieces of cornstalk together with raffia string to make decorative accents for a rustic look. Cornstalks also complement a Halloween pumpkin or witch display. If you've got cornstalks coming out of your ears, donate the extras to a local school putting on a haunted house.

On the Farm

• Cornstalks can be shredded green in the field after harvest and baled for use as animal fodder or bedding. Corn is a species of grass, although the corn it produces is a grain, so cornstalks can be fed to grassfed cows, as per U.S. Department of Agriculture rules. Farmers sometimes graze cattle in harvested corn fields, to eat the stalks, husks and left-behind corn. One advantage of this process, writes Todd Vagts, a field crops specialist with the Iowa State University Extension, is that most of the nutrition stays in the field as the cows recycle it via cow patties.

Energy

• In China, cornstalks are dried and ground to produce fuel pellets. These pellets, used to heat stoves and boilers, are five times as energy efficient as coal, the traditional fuel. At home, you can use cornstalks as kindling for a wood stove or a burn pile. Using cornstalks to make ethanol takes far less energy than using corn, according to the State of Texas Energy Conservation Office. The process also results in fewer greenhouse gas emissions. Using agricultural "waste" like cornstalks as material for ethanol also means no extra pesticides, fertilizer or water are used.

Compost

• Composting your cornstalks means returning their nutrients and cellulose to the soil to use again for next year's crop. Large pieces thrown into a compost pile will take longer to decompose, but it's easy to chop your stalks into smaller pieces. Putting cornstalks--or any organic material--through a shredder first makes it turn into compost more quickly. Farmers who've used shredded cornstalks for animal bedding can add the manure-enriched material to compost piles when they clean out their barns.