Blue Farm Blue Corn Chips

The producer of Blue Farm chips, A-Maize-ing Corn Products, based just south of Janesville, is a truly family-run company. In a video for Something Special from Wisconsin, owner and farmer Randy Hughes says, “When you buy a bag of chips from us, if there’s ever any issue, you’re talking to the guy who planted the corn, hauled the corn, picked the corn; my wife distributes it and my son markets it.” The Hughes farm has been organic since 1991, and the family has been farming for more than 150 years—Randy and Judy are the fifth generation, and son Willie is the sixth.

Growing such a unique crop as organic blue corn is not without challenges. The family has to grow the blue corn in well-isolated fields to avoid cross pollination with yellow corn and to avoid pesticide or genetically engineered corn pollen drift from non-organic farms. In addition, blue corn is native to the Southwest, so it’s difficult to grow in our northern climate.

But the success of Blue Farm chips—they’re distributed throughout the Midwest—shows that the benefits outweigh the challenges. Being organic has opened up opportunities that may have been the deciding factor between success and failure. Since their blue corn is not genetically engineered, the family has been able to save the best of each year’s crop to use for seed. Saving seed is more than about saving money, however. It also means that over the last 10 years, the Hughes family has been directly involved in the long process of selectively breeding a blue corn strain that has robust flavor and deep blue color, matures quickly in our short growing season, and fits perfectly within the microclimate of their southern Wisconsin farm. It’s something that farmers had been doing for millennia, but this kind of careful seed selection and breeding is a difficult-to-find practice in today’s agricultural landscape of genetic engineering and seed patents.

Try Blue Farm chips with some of our dips and salsa recipes. And because they’re a nice and sturdy chip, they’re perfect for loaded nachos and taco dips.