Questions about Popcorn?

Question

Now, for a real stupid question, but I've always wondered about popcorn. First I'm addicted to it, but I always wanted to know:

1) where in North America is it grown (I've never seen it grown, at least to my knowledge and I grew up in farm country)

2) is it a real varitey of corn? Does it grow on cobs like other corn or is it called corn just because the kernals ressemble corn kernals?

3) do the kernals have that hard shell when it's ripe or does it have to be treated somehow?

4) Do the kernals need any sort of treatment, like drying, to make them pop or can the kernals come straight off the cobb and be packaged?

5) Is there any animal that eats popcorn while it's on the cobb?

6) Is the cobb with the kernals on it enough to grow a new plant?

7) Lastly, is a cash crop - a crop that makes that makes farmers money - or is it considered a commodity crop?

Answer 1

1. Van Buren, Indiana used to call itself the popcorn capital of the world. That's where Weaver Popcorn Company, the world's largest popcorn company, producing over 30% of the world's supply, is located.

Most US popcorn is grown in Indiana and Nebraska, but there's more being grown in Texas these days.

I grew up in a small NW Ohio town where the Betty Zane popcorn company (named for the first white child born in Ohio) was located. Any place you can grow corn, you can grow popcorn, but unless there's a popcorn packer near you, freight costs are prohibitative.

2. Yes, it's real corn. There are basically three types of corn - sweet corn, which has one endoderm, dent corn, which has two endoderms, the second one being called the "horny" endoderm and popcorn, which has a much larger "horny" endoderm.

3. All corn is hard when it's ripe. When you eat sweet corn, you're eating unripe corn. I prefer the taste of dent corn - more corn flavor, less cloying sweetness. The only treatment I know of for corn kernels is lye processing, which turns corn into hominy. Hominy doesn't pop.

4. Kernels will pop, straight off the ear. Or, for that matter, if you toss an ear onto the barbecue grill, while they are still on the ear, although it's not very easy to eat it that way. Orville Redenbacher put corn in glass jars to maintain the proper humidity. Too wet, and it rots, too dry and it won't pop.

5. Any animal that eats other type of corn will eat popcorn. Insects aren't animals, but they do, too.

6. Each corn kernel is a seed. A hundred years ago, corn farmers would pick an interior row of their corn field (outside rows often grow shorter, for some reason), and pick ears for seed. They'd snap off both ends of an ear, and use the seeds from the center of the ear. (I don't know if these kernels were the least likely to be damaged and thus most likely to germinate, or if there was some hocus-pocus to their thinking.)  These days, farmers buy hybrid seed. The corn produced by a hybrid does not breed true.

7. Most popcorn is grown under contract to popcorn packers. Neither contract crops nor commodity crops are very profitable to farmers. Most of them don't make enough to live on, and keep going deeper and deeper into debt, until they retire - and the appreciation on the land allows them (at least in theory) to pay off all those loans and retire.

There are exceptions. Truck farmers tend to have small acreage, and high income per acre. For those who raise corn, soybeans, wheat, oats, and other grains, though, it's a matter of hoping that land continues to grow in value for the next few decades, so you don't end up bankrupt and unemployable at the age of 53, possessing a broken body, and no history of working for someone else.

8. You didn't ask this, but take a stock pot and dump a cup of shortening in it, and melt it. When the shortening melts, drop a third of a cup of sugar in it. Rock the stockpot back and forth, and the sugar will melt. Eventually, the molten sugar will start to turn brown. At that point, dump in a quarter cup of popcorn, and start shaking the stockpot back and forth vigorously as the popcorn pops. As soon as it stop popping, dump the popcorn onto some clean newspaper - several layers, as it's kinda greasy - and salt it. (Dump some hot water into the stock pot fairly soon, and it will be easy to clean.)

The popcorn will stick to itself, and you'll want to break it up somewhat with a wooden spoon. What you have is the world's most wonderful caramel corn. Give your girlfriend a bowl of this while it's hot, and if you've bathed recently, it guarantees that you will get lucky. It really wows them. Be sure to eat it all within a short period, though, because it's not nearly as good the next day, no matter how you try to preserve it.

"Cuse me, but I have to go downstairs and make some caramel corn. It's been too long, and heck, it's the 4th of July, *something* oughta be exploding around here....

Answer 2

It's grown in Indiana, Iowa, and Nebraska. It's just corn, put through a special drying process so that it retains the water in it.  See, it's the water in it that makes it pop.