OMAHA, Neb.—Abi Swanson is a self-described girly girl who’s doing hard labor.
The 13-year-old from Lincoln is saving money for ballet lessons, so she’s been slogging through eastern Nebraska farm fields detasseling corn six or seven hours a day since the second week of July.
Modern technology has revolutionized agriculture over the years, but pulling the tops off stalks to help create superior breeds of corn must still be done by hand.
Each summer, thousands of adolescents, some as young as 12, are hired to trudge through fields in Corn Belt states.
“I refer to it as demented summer camp,” said Dawn Buell of Lincoln, owner of Not Afraid To Sweat Detasseling, Inc.
Buell, a 44-year-old stay-at-home mom, started her business 12 years ago after supervising a crew of detasselers for another company. She hires about 375 teens a year, including four of her own children, to pull tassels for three seed companies.
The need for detasseling originated in the 1940s, when farmers discovered the superior yields offered by hybrids.
Hybrids are created by planting a female variety of corn in rows next to a male variety used for pollination. Machines are used to remove most of the tassels from the female plant to keep it from pollinating itself.
The machines can’t get everything, and that’s where the teenagers come in.
Farm states have tweaked their labor laws to allow the temporary employment of kids as young as 12 for the brief detasseling season. Buell and other companies pay the minimum wage of $7.25 an hour to rookie detasselers such as Swanson; seasoned detasselers usually earn more.
“I like cleaner jobs with air conditioning rather than detasseling, but it makes a lot of money in a short amount of time,” said Swanson, who figures to earn $600 for about three weeks of work.
Buell has a stable of seven buses that pick up her detasseling crews and take them to fields as far as an hour from Lincoln.
Swanson packs a lunch and, with her 16-year-old brother Caleb, catches the bus at 5:30 a.m. Detasselers are in the fields until 2 or 3 p.m.
Detasselers have caught a break with the this month’s unseasonably cool temperatures, but it’s still a grimy job. There isn’t much air flow between the rows, and bugs are a constant distraction.
“A lot of people are surprised I’m detasseling,” Swanson said. “It’s really not that bad. You just have to deal with being a little gross.”
Seed companies generally require detasselers to wear safety glasses, gloves and a hat with a mosquito net. Teens also are encouraged to wear sunscreen, long pants and long sleeves to protect them from razor-sharp leaves that can cause a red corn rash.
Buell said she’s had a detasseler bothered by allergies caused by corn pollen, but serious injuries are rare.
“Blisters are the bane of detasselers,” she said.
Those foot sores come from walking through wet and muddy fields. Buell recommends detasselers put strips of duct tape on their feet to absorb the friction.
The job is tougher for short kids. Swanson stands 5 feet 2, making it a challenge to reach the tops of stalks 7 or 8 feet high.
“Yesterday, I had to keep craning my neck to find the tassels, and then I had to jump to get them, or bend them down and break them off,” she said.
For all the things that annoy and irritate the workers, some good comes of it—camaraderie.
Conversation breaks up the monotony in the fields. The teens discuss how they’re going to spend their money. Sometimes they make up songs or change the lyrics of popular tunes to include detasseling words.
“When you’re working together trying to accomplish something,” Swanson said, “you make friends automatically.”
