Popping corn.

• Position: Eastern

This might be remembered as the year corn got creamed. Blame falling prices, soaring expenses and bad weather. The bright side? It would have been worse last year.

Driven by ethanol-fueled prices, farmers planted 1.1 million acres of corn then ("Fool's Gold?" November 2007). This year, they cut back to 890,000. Good thing. In late spring, futures prices for December delivery peaked at $8 a bushel. "Since then, we've had a near collapse," says Nick Lassiter, the N.C. Department of Agriculture's corn-marketing specialist. "Traders began taking profits and shoring up their balance sheets."

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