McCain popped off about the measure, but Mike Johanns's office said little. | AP Photos McCain heated about popcorn

Nebraska grew more popcorn than any other state last year, and Omaha is home to ConAgra Foods, the corporate giant whose brands run from the classic Orville Redenbacher’s to Fiddle Faddle, Poppycock, Crunch ‘n Munch and Screaming Yellow Zonkers!

But don’t expect straight answers from Nebraska’s two U.S. Senate offices about 31 words tucked into a more than 1,000-page farm bill to give popcorn — well — a little more pop.


A spokesman for Republican Sen. Mike Johanns quickly got defensive: “I don’t think this is a Nebraska-specific issue,” he said. When POLITICO next asked Democratic Sen. Ben Nelson’s office to at least suggest contacts in the industry who might explain, this email came back: “My apologies. Can’t help with contacts. Anything else?”

Really? No contacts? That’s news to the Popcorn Institute, a Chicago-based industry trade group that has been working with the senators. And didn’t Johanns and Nelson start the ball rolling in April from their seats on the Agriculture Committee?

Indeed, it all began as an almost advisory opinion: the secretary of Agriculture “may” do such and such on popcorn’s behalf. But with little public notice, a “technical correction” to the bill in May changed “may” to “shall” in what’s become a full-fledged campaign to qualify popcorn growers for what could be millions in revenue insurance subsidies.

( Also on POLITICO: Farm bill wins careful W.H. support)

Enter Sen. John McCain, who knows a headline — and comedy — when he sees it.

The Arizona Republican wasted no time last week before filing an amendment to strike the popcorn language. And this sets up one of those classic farmyard brawls: an obscure provision (made more obscure by its sponsors) that invites ridicule but is also serious stuff for real producers caught up in the shifting maze of subsidies that passes as policy in Washington.

For McCain, who is also going after catfish and mohair provisions in the farm bill, the popcorn amendment is just that, political popcorn to nourish him for the floor battle he’s itching to join.

For Bruce Anderson, a 59-year old grower in Antelope County, Neb., it’s part of his way of life: “It’s one of those small industries but one we need to hold onto.”

And for the taxpayer? It’s a primer on the Golden Rule of commodity politics: One good subsidy deserves another.

It begins with what’s genuinely a landmark shift in the Senate bill away from direct cash payments to farmers — a much-criticized system begun in the mid-90s — and toward a more market-oriented approach keyed to crop insurance to protect not just yields but also farm revenues.

Given the record profits of recent years, the farm lobby no longer can defend the cash payments costing about $5 billion a year. But before giving up all that money, it would reinvest about $3 billion a year in a new Agriculture Risk Coverage program to reduce the deductibles farmers pay on their crop insurance.

Thanks to friends in high places like Jim Talent — an adviser now to Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign — popcorn acres have qualified for direct payments since 2003. Talent, back then a Republican senator from Missouri, took the lead for the industry in attaching an amendment to the 2003 agriculture appropriations bill, using this route to correct what he saw as an error in the 2002 farm bill.

“The correction is simple,” Talent told his colleagues. “Popcorn is simply treated as a variety of the traditional corn for the purposes of determining bases and yields.”

As a result, popcorn has enjoyed a rough parity with its Midwest field corn and soybean cousins, who have had a major hand now in writing the new ARC program. But jumping aboard this new train will be harder since popcorn is typically sold under contract and doesn’t fit easily into a revenue insurance program tied to commodity markets.

In fact, the first pilot program for revenue insurance for popcorn was only begun for the crop year 2012. And it typically takes three to five years for the Risk Management Agency, which oversees crop insurance, to make a full assessment.

The Senate bill demands answers a lot faster. The secretary “shall study the feasibility of including popcorn as a covered commodity by 2014” and, if judged feasible, “shall designate” popcorn as qualified for the ARC benefits.

“This popcorn carve-out is a perfect example of farm bill politics,” McCain said in a statement Monday. “There isn’t a kernel of evidence that shows they need this support from the taxpayers. Popcorn is doing just fine — prices are up and recent free-trade agreements with Colombia and South Korea are creating a boom for our popcorn exports.”

But processors worry that time is not on their side, and without some resolution, their stable of growers will otherwise desert them. That, they say, would result in less popcorn to pop or costlier contracts to make up for the lost subsidy.

“One of the basic pillars of farm program modifications has been to ensure that those changes do not alter farmer-planting decisions or penalize farmers who have followed the rules of the current farm program,” said Garrett Smith, president of the family-owned American Pop Corn Co. in Sioux City, Iowa. In written testimony submitted to the House Agriculture Committee last month, Smith went on to argue: “We understand and support the necessity that farm program costs be reduced sharply. We only ask that whatever is done is not punitive to popcorn producers.”

The equities are complex. At one level, all popcorn is asking for is to be treated for what it is: a variety of corn as old as the Aztecs. Then again, the relatively small popcorn acreage — less than 1 percent of field corn — the contract sales and specific food use resemble more a specialty crop than a typical commodity.

This is reinforced by popcorn’s marketing image: Redenbacher in his horn-rimmed glasses or the Rev. Ira Weaver in his horse-drawn wagon, making the first rounds in the 1920s when he started what became Weaver Popcorn, a big producer today based in Indiana.

A survey by the Popcorn Report — “an industry update from the Popcorn Board” — estimates that total U.S. farm acreage devoted to popcorn hovers between 190,000 and 200,000 planted acres. This is spread across 15 states running from New Jersey and Maryland in the east to Colorado in the west. Nebraska and Indiana alone accounted for about two-thirds of production in 2011, with Nebraska approaching 62,000 acres.

Ironically, popcorn kernels weigh more than field corn: A bushel can weigh 65 to 68 pounds compared with 56 pounds for field corn. But the stalks are also narrower in diameter, making them more vulnerable to wind. And pound for pound, a typical popcorn field in Nebraska produces about 57 percent of what the same acre sowed with field or dent corn would yield.

That said, the price per pound of popcorn can be double what field corn gets. And for farmers who have mastered the art, popcorn is an attractive cash crop, conveniently harvested between soybeans and field corn in the fall and requiring no storage costs since the popcorn processors are often waiting at the door.

For all those reasons Denny Mauser, a 63-year-old farmer in northwest Iowa, would like stay on but admits he will have to re-evaluate “in the context of the farm bill.”

And that’s exactly what worries Greg Hoffman, a soft-spoken vice president at American Pop Corn. He talks with excitement of the jobs generated and improvements in seed lines that allow a bigger volume pop from the kernels harvested. Exports now account for 30 percent of the market for popcorn, but higher costs, Hoffman says, could hurt American companies facing new competition from countries like Argentina.

“Why would McCain care about something that’s discretionary for a small industry?” he asks sadly.

A reporter reminds Hoffman that the language was changed from “may” to “shall.”

“Yes,” he replies, “that’s true.”