We sing her praises near and far, Iowa, TO! I-O-Way

Iowa sits in the middle of the American map, a farm state where cornfields roll to every horizon and hog lots hum with steady work. For decades, the state's great engines have been corn and pork, each feeding the other in a closed loop that keeps barns full and supper tables hearty. Across all ninety-nine counties, tall stalks rise in endless ranks, and 24 million pigs outnumber the people who tend them. Those endless miles of cornfields help produce Iowa's world-class pork, the kind that becomes the great tenderloin sandwiches that pair nicely with an ice-cold draft beer. On sultry summer nights, the air grows thick with corn-sweat, that heavy, crop-fed humidity every Midwesterner knows. Rodgers and Hammerstein's State Fair, set among these farms, helped carry Iowa's wholesome, blue-ribbon spirit across the country — dollars to donuts. - Phantom