LINCOLN — They’re the Navy SEALS of corn detasselers.
At least Dawn Buell says so. She’s the owner of Not Afraid to Sweat Inc., a corn detasseling company, and she employs a group of detasselers that calls itself The Force.
“They’re very good at what they do,” Buell said. “Not a lot slips through their fingers.”
Every year, small armies of mostly teenagers descend on fields for the brief detasseling season. The task is essential to creating hybrid corn seed, and the labor-intensive work only lasts a few weeks.
These days, most of the work is done by machine. A grower will lop off the tops of some plants to allow another breed planted nearby to cross-pollinate them, creating a hybrid.
But the machine can’t get all the tassels, and growers say leaving behind more than one-quarter of a percent will contaminate the field. The detasseling teams walk through the fields and manually pull any remaining tassels. Usually, it takes more than one sweep.
That’s where The Force comes in. Continue reading
