Do Teenagers Still Detassle Seed Corn?

I worked for Pioneer for a couple summers when I was 13 or 14. On a crew of about 20 kids. Not a whole lot of fun. They don't grow any seed corn where I live now, but do they still hire kids or have they all gotten soft?

I really doubt it, probably wouldn't be able to find any motivated kids to go out it the sun and do even a mediocre job at it. Also probably be child labor laws against it nowadays.

Think much is done mechanically, but they were looking for volunteers to work last summer through the school.

They do in my neighborhood, although there seem to be a lot of immigrants that do it too. They bus kids in from Waterloo 40 miles away as there are not enough local kids to do the job. Part of it might be that this is a highly concentrated area of seed production. My brothers kids did a lot. They lived in Marshalltown. The oldest is 37 now and a teacher. He ran a crew for some years, but I don't think he does anymore.

They do in my neighborhood, although there seem to be a lot of immigrants that do it too. They bus kids in from Waterloo 40 miles away as there are not enough local kids to do the job. Part of it might be that this is a highly concentrated area of seed production.

I know some farmers who grow seed corn and all done at first mechanically and gone over afterwards to get any missed tassels with hired teenagers. Last year had trouble finding enough workers, so next year (2016) they will hire mexican workers.

I worked a summer doing field inspections for a seed corn company where I grew up in SW Minnesota. After the production year of 1993, when we had a cold growing season and a lot of rain, the company no longer raised seed corn. My job was to inspect the seed corn production field early on for evaluating how the "rogueing" crew did for removing "rogue" corn plants, and then later on for de-tasselling. The company had just purchased mechanical de-tasselling machines made by Hagie, the highboy sprayer company. These machines covered 6-30 inch rows per pass. They were powered by 318 Chrysler V-8 engines with dual exhaust..........nice sounding engines back then. They went through with the first machine which had rotary cutting blades, during the early part of tassel emergence. After that, they went through with the next type machine which had rollers resembling the rollers in a ringer type washing machine. By going through first with the cutter style attachment, they hoped to remove the 50 to 60 percent of the tassel itself AND leave a "stump" which could be pulled by the rollers. By leaving that "stump," it was caught easier by the rollers. They typically did 2 trips through with the roller type de-tasseller, and sometimes three trips. After these trips, it was expected to have at least 95 percent of the tassels removed, and leaving the rest to the detasselling crews. I walked through 12 fields a day during the critical tassel stage of these production fields prior to the emergence of tassels until the detasselling was complete and the corn completed pollination. I am not sure about today, but I think the female plants today are "male sterile" and do not need the tassels removed.

About 5 years ago they had a pivot with damaged wiring kill a kid and hurt several other while detasselling. Eastern Nebraska or Iowa.

Monsatan at Farmer City uses mostly mexicans for crews. The Hagies run over the fields 2-3 times. Rogueing is a thing of the past because of electric eyes that do most of the sorting at harvest. More man power is the "safety people" furnishing enough portapotties for OSHA standards or not to pollute their precious seed corn in the field.

Just what does that do to the corn plant? I thought the corn plant needed the tassle to make seeds. Please lease explain this to someone on the west coast. Stan

See some south of Columbus Nebraska every year on my way to Lincoln. I detassled in the same area 30 years ago. Would wake up at 3 am to make it from Clarkson to Columbus by 430-5 o'clock so we could be in the fields by 6 am. chris

Stan, to get a AB cross-breed, you plant A corn (four rows) then B corn (two rows) and remove the tassels from the A corn. The B corn produces enough pollen to fertilize most of both A plants and B plants. Then you chop the B plants before maturity ( or leave it to finish) but only harvest the A plants, which now yield AB seeds.

We used to put male rows on each end of 6 row planter, then you got two males next to each other with each pass. Now they use a 32 row planter near here. With GPS, precision makes all of this easier. Males and females are often planted at different times to synch the pollen and silk.

I actually ran one of those Hagie detailing rigs that 2002Silverado described back in 1986. Worked day shift maintaining test plots from Ohio to The Mackinaw Bridge, then ran the detasseller at night (I'll sleep when I'm dead!). Got one row off for half a round one night and really got my arse chewed! We had a crew of over 200 following up, mostly Spanish folks back then, even.

Maize (corn) is hermaphroditic. It has both male and female organs on the same plant, but not in the same location. The tassels are male, and the cobs are female. To make a hybrid seed, two different genetic varieties are planted. The male plants (chosen for their genetic advantage) are planted (usually 2 rows) between 4 to 6 rows of female selected variety. The male plants are left to grow through pollination. The female plants are detassled to prevent self pollination. Thus the only pollen in the field comes from the male select plants and hybridization of the female plants is the result. The male select plants are most often chopped as forge harvest because the genetics do not produce good ear structure or productivity. The female plants also do not produce great ears or productivity, but the seeds are the hybrid, and do produce the desired production. I hope this makes sense. Jim

Talking to a guy in charge of crews and he said kids don't show up Hispanic do so they had no choice high school kids talked themselves out of work just another sad fact about work ethics

I don't think they've gotten soft. Like every other activity in rural communities, they're competing for fewer and fewer kids. If you don't know already, ask your local schools for their enrollment compared to thirty or forty years ago. In our local case, we've lost over 50%, which means that everything from the football team to the detasselers are trying to fill their needs from a smaller and smaller pool. Things were a lot different when a farm was 300 acres, every farm had a family, and every family had four kids.

I can't answer your question, but I might add some insight.

When I was younger I'd mow burms for our township on all the back roads.
Would park the machine a Farmall B with a mid mount mower at one of the
township dwellings & ride my bike home ur drive the tractor home if I was
in our area. At 13 years old I could change a section or a guard & the
supervisors liked how a treated their machine. I learned all thout on our own
farm. When I was 15 I was wondering why no had been in touch with me about
mowing so I called & asked? They told me I wasn't aloud to do it anymore,
Thinking I had done something wrong I asked Why.. The supervisor told me
that they had been happy with my performance & maintainence of the tractor.
It was for Insurance reasons I was aloud to mow. Darn it I planned on the
money befor I ever got it.....

My neighbor, gets ball teams to plant tobacco. Says they have a good work ethic! But gets Mexicans to cut and strip later. Like they say not enough kids. Our county continues to lose people. And our last major manufacturing plant is closing. SE Illinois. Just over river in Indiana is different.

My brother and I used to do this while in high school many years ago and got paid 4.00 per DAY from 7-6. We were the only kids hired so must have done a good job.

Yes- here, neighbor drives a bus every summer, picks up kids in Litchfield and other towns, taking them to Olivia, MN for detassling. Used to be another company at Dassel, I think they still operate, but much smaller scale. Also, Nietfeld Seed SW of Melrose, MN.

My old boss was good friends with Dan Nietfield.

Monsatan-I love it!

I wonder if Nietfields wasn't the seed corn dad bought up around St. Cloud for a few years back in the 80's from a farm supply store. It was $29.00 a bag. Some of it was good some not so good and dropped ears. Some of it ended up in the silo and was cheap silage corn.

In the mid to late 90's our FFA chapter would take a field trip to Seed Consultants in Washington Courthouse Oh. And they were always trying to recruit kids for detassleing. I don't know of anyone in our chapter ever doing it. Would have been about 45 min.drive for Minumim wedge.

(quoted from post at 17:30:00 02/14/16) I don't think they've gotten soft. Like every other activity in rural communities, they're competing for fewer and fewer kids. If you don't know already, ask your local schools for their enrollment compared to thirty or forty years ago. In our local case, we've lost over 50%, which means that everything from the football team to the detasselers are trying to fill their needs from a smaller and smaller pool. Things were a lot different when a farm was 300 acres, every farm had a family, and every family had four kids.

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When I was in JR High and early High School I could not find a summer job in Colo. Springs that was steady with reasonable pay (If you could clear $10 a day you were doing pretty good) SO I would catch the train (R.I. Rocket) and make the trip back to W. Central Illinois, lived with my grandparents, and de-tasseled for Pfeister's in N. Henderson. Since we worked from 5am to 1pm you could go uptown in Alexis and get on with somebody bucking bales or shelling corn for the rest of the day; life was good!. (The detassel crew was divided into 2 crews, boys & girls but they didn't let us 'mix' much! :roll ): So reading the comments here is disheartening to me; There should be no lack of youngsters to 'get the jobs done' whatever they may be but I'm afraid that we've been 'too easy' on the kids and they haven't learned the value of a buck and where money comes from. However, all the kids today (especially in the cities) really need is a CHANCE and a bit of leading by example to pick up some needed skills and common-sense. But, with so many things being phased out by technology and the like there isn't much left that needs to be done so the need for the youngsters' help is dying. I'd hate to see the time when they all have 'higher education' and start looking for a job, there's enough of that going on right now. Technology can be a wonderful thing, but like so many 'good things' it turns bad when there is TOO MUCH of it. As they say ' The road to perdition is paved with good intentions!'. So, whenever we get the chance we need to offer a 'helping hand' to all of those that are being deprived of a 'REAL' education and help them along. 8) :roll:

Nietfeld is commonly sold at farm stores like Fleet Supply in some central MN towns, and Mimbach"s in east St. Cloud. Their production farm is between Paynesville and Sauk Centre, east of MN Hwy 4.

Change always amazes me. Dad planted 200 acres seed corn for many years. I detasseled for 5 summers. Got paid 75 cents per hr. Worked entire summer to purchase 6 transsitor portable radio. Worked mostly on detasseling machine with crew of 8. Area forman spot checked and if we averaged more than 1/2 a leaf with each tassel we got chewed on. Now they cut off 1/3 of the stalk with the rotary cutters. In those days seed corn avg. 25 bu/acre Dad had contract with DeKalb paying supplement to normal yield. Some years Dad was permitted to harvest bull rows for feeding and some years DeKalb destroyed them after pollination. Dad had to furnish harvest equipment (2 row mounted picker), 4 wagons and load on to transport trucks. Now seed company uses 6 row harvester with self contained wagon that dumps into semi. We had some sterile female corn back then. Change is amazing.