CHATHAM, Va. â Tomorrow, Jan. 19, is National Popcorn Day. To celebrate, why not appreciate the crop that has silently outperformed tobacco in Pittsylvania County for more than a century?
Corn production in Pittsylvania County experienced its first sharp hike in the 1880s, as locally-produced liquor was hard to come by and corn was king crop for liquor production at the time.
In one of Chatham s ten taverns on Main Street in the 1880s, corn malt liquor sold for $1 a gallon and sweet mash liquor, or corn drippings, sold for a quarter less, according to a Civil War-era manifesto.
Fast forward a century and a half â Pittsylvania County farmers last year received $540,857 in corn subsidies, ranking fourth-most among Virginia s 95 counties. The majority of those county farmers operate in Chatham.