Bad news for movie fans, U.S. drought hits popcorn crop

For more than half a century, the Shew family has harvested mountains of popcorn kernels to be buttered, salted and munched by movie fans. But as a crippling Midwestern drought sends commodity soybean and grain prices soaring, the family’s farmland in west-central Indiana is suffering. Plants are listing, stalks are spindly and corn ears small. It’s an ill portent for the snack food world. All across the Midwest, where rows of popcorn normally thrive alongside fields of soybeans, U.S. popcorn farmers have watched in horror as stifling, triple-digit temperatures and weeks without rain withered crops.