BECAUSE I have no need for ingame cash, I've stopped searching for cornstalks.
I only get event currency for the first 90 stalks tapped. With 84 neighbors, I don't need to "search" for three stalks. If no corn is visible on entry to their town, I do a quick, little teensy scroll in one direction, to see if I spot any. If none show up in the first few seconds, I move on. So far, I've always reached my 90 "profitable" corn stalks maximum.
In this event, the neighbors don't benefit squat by our visits or our taps, nor can we even let them know that we have visited, unless we have seeds to drop to them. I drop whatever seeds I have as I go, which doesn't require any searching on my part. :)
(If I needed CASH, it would be an ENTIRELY different story! I'm fortunate to be in the small group that has no use for ingame cash.)