FARMER CITY - Surrounded by corn about as tall as she is, Kali McMullen trudges through a muddy field and pulls off the top part of a corn stalk. | Video

Feeling the moisture a mid-morning rain left behind, the teenager grasps another tassel and yanks it from the corn stalk in a field near Farmer City before moving a few steps ahead.

Crew member Morgan Lishka, 14, of rural Bloomington, is inches away in the row next to her, and crew boss Kaitlin Gher, 17, of Downs, follows closely behind as the corn leaves swat the Tri-Valley-area teens in the arms and face and bugs fly nearby.

"It's not too hard once you get used to it," said McMullen, 14, of Downs.

The students are among groups of junior high and high school students who find summer employment detasseling corn for seed companies, such as Monsanto Co. in Farmer City. They walk several miles a day, up and down a cornfield, and battle through blisters, heat, rain, slippery footing and tired legs.

"It's a character-builder," said Robin Roberts, a seventh-grade social studies teacher at Tri-Valley Middle School in Downs who's in charge of the Downs group. "There will be some days they'll find out just how hard they can push themselves."

And while the work can be tedious, it's critically important: Detasseling can triple the yield potential of a crop.

The job also is a rite of passage of sorts for many kids from rural communities, but advanced technology reduces their workload these days.

"Nowadays, it's a little different …," said Pat Geneser, site manager at Monsanto Co. in Farmer City. "The crews are really just walking through and cleaning up what's left."

Faster work

Corn must be detasseled before the pollination and reproduction cycle starts. Four rows of what will be the female corn are planted for every row of male corn, Geneser said.

Pollen from tassels falls on the silks of its own ear and the ears of neighboring plants and creates kernels of corn, or seeds.

"The job is to detassel the female corn so that it does not pollinate itself," Geneser said. "The whole point in making a hybrid is to make that cross."

Inbred corn - corn that pollinates itself - produces yields of about 60 to 70 bushels an acre, while corn that's cross-pollinated can reach 200 bushels an acre, Geneser said.

Seed companies are more likely than farmers to detassel corn because they make the hybrid seeds farmers buy and plant in their fields, Geneser said.

And the teens and other migrant workers who do detassel corn can move faster and cover more ground than their predecessors, Geneser said.

In fact, Roberts said he's waiting for the day when the seed companies tell him they don't need their crews anymore because of the advanced technology.

"The kids don't know how easy they have it compared to 10 years ago," Roberts said.

When he detasseled as a teenager, mechanized cutters prepared a field first, but the machines didn't do the precise job they do today that leaves kids with only about 20 percent of the work.

Today, the machines have the capability of traveling through mud and are computerized, Geneser said. But people will always need to pull tassels, he said.

In the old days, detasseling crews had to pull all of the tassels from the female corn by hand, Geneser said. In the late 1970s, machines started to do some of the work, and technology has advanced so machines now pull about 80 percent of the tassels today.

It costs the company about $130 an acre to detassel with machines, whereas costs would reach about $200 an acre if people had to pull 100 percent of the tassels, Geneser said.

"The machines do save us a lot of money as far as our labor cost," Geneser said.

Machines handle a fair share of the grunt work, but Monsanto actually increased its hand labor work force about 60 percent this year because of the company's growth. It has about 800 people detassel corn in a 50-mile radius around Farmer City, including about 500 school kids, Geneser said.

One crew will pull the remaining tassels that the machines missed, while a second crew will follow behind and clean up what other crew members missed, Geneser said.

That's where crews like the Downs group and another from LeRoy come into play.

Rain or shine

The job teaches youngsters discipline and gives them a sense of pride, said Mark Moberly, a driver's education teacher at LeRoy High School who runs a crew of 90 detasselers from LeRoy and Downs. The teenagers start their days at about 6:30 a.m. and work until 2 p.m., Moberly said.

"It's not the easiest job in the world, but they're dedicated enough to come out here and put forth the effort needed," Moberly said.

Of course, a big incentive is money.

Depending on experience and counting end-of-the-season bonuses, the kids from Downs and LeRoy make between $7.50 and $9.15 an hour, Moberly said. That equals about $700 to $850 for about 15 days of work.

Money was a big draw for Nicholas Martzahn, 17, of rural Bloomington.

He makes $1.50 more an hour in his role as detasseling crew boss than he does at his part-time job at Dairy Queen.

Unfortunately, he'll have to use some of that money to pay for a cell phone he lost on the job in the cornfield.

But he doesn't mind the work.

"I've heard people talk about it. Honestly, I don't think it's that bad," Martzahn said. "The rain sucks; the mud sucks. I'm used to it because … I've gotten into worse."

He and his fellow co-workers also manage to have some fun in the fields.

"Kevin sings," Martzahn said, pointing to one crew member.

"Yeah, I do," admits Kevin Chrisman, 13, of Downs.

Chrisman might burst into a round of "We are the Champions," and Martzahn might chime in a sing-song, "Hey, ho, let's go," to encourage his crew to work.

"It lightens the mood and helps us get through it," Martzahn said.