No, not really. How tall is the variety you are growing supposed to grow under 'normal' conditions?

Farmers will grow corn for many different reasons and so they may have many differnet size of corn. In my area it's very odd to have any sweet corn grow much over 6 foot. As far as the farmers corn did you notice anything different other then the height? Many times it will be short because all the effort goes into making ears. He may have more or larger ears on it then your. The shorter stalk also helps in the event of a storm it doesn't have such a big chance of getting knocked over. There are many different things that it could be.

My sweet corn this year only got to about 4 foot. I planted it and it started growing then it got cold again so it stopped growing. We harvested it in mid July. The ears were okay but not very large but holy cow did it taste good!