Princeton Popcorn

Farmer Bob is a first-generation farmer. Born and raised in Overland Park, Kansas, he always had a love for agriculture. As an adult he was able to explore this interest and settled upon popcorn as his crop of choice.

Bob grew up in the suburbs but always felt the rural life was interesting. So, he bought some cows…. Then purchased a farm for his cattle, Bob needed to put up a fence since it didn’t have one. In preparing the farm for a brand new fence, he hires his friend, Bryan, to bring his bulldozer to the farm and clear the fence line. Bryan does this by pushing over trees and piling them up. After the fence was installed, the piles of trees were left to dry out. Eventually, when the weather was right [show snow on the ground], Bob lit the piles on fire and burned them up. Parts that didn’t burn were piled up again and burned. Eventually, it left the ground with a coating of ash. Bob had a thought! I have just enriched the soil. I ought to grow something… but what? How do you grow crops? Nobody in Bob’s family has ever had anything to do with agriculture.

After days of thinking about it and considering various crops, he decided on popcorn. He went to the store and bought a bag off of the shelf and planted it by hand in the soil with ash mixed in. After a week or so, the popcorn plants emerged from the soil! What a shock! It worked!

Carefully tending to the corn over the summer, it eventually reached maturity, matured, turned brown and dried out. Hand harvesting the ears, the anticipation was growing. There was elation when the kernels actually popped in a hot air popper. From that, a business was born. Popcorn it is! BUT, it must be vertically integrated so he can control each step of the process to ensure quality. The thought of seed-to-store was born. Bob, now Farmer Bob, will become a first-generation farmer and plant, raise, harvest, pop, flavor and package the popcorn himself. 

Scaling up, Farmer Bob plants many more aces of popcorn with well-researched hybrid popcorn varieties, formulates the recipe for the different flavors and purchases custom-designed production equipment. Now, Farmer Bob has planted 130 acres of popcorn that appeared on store shelves in late 2019.