There were fewer local workers detasseling seed corn in Iowa in 2025 than in previous years as the number of temporary migrant laborers with H-2A visas doing the jobs increased, according to data reviewed by The Midwest Newsroom.
An analysis of information from Iowa Workforce Development showed there has been a significant reduction in the number of seed corn detasseling contractors working in Iowa, as well as in the mostly teenage workforce, since 2018.
The IWD data also revealed that, in 2025, H-2A workers outnumbered non-H-2A workers in Iowa’s seed corn fields four to one. And the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services H-2A database shows a higher ratio of migrant to domestic detasselers.
H-2A is a temporary nonimmigrant visa that allows U.S. employers to hire foreign nationals to fill temporary or seasonal agricultural jobs when there is a shortage of domestic workers.
Detasseling is the process of removing the tassels of seed corn plants to control pollination. The work goes hand-in-hand with roguing, which involves removing unwanted plants from seed corn fields. Both jobs are key parts of seed corn production.
The Midwest Newsroom requested the Iowa data as part of a story on a political movement in Nebraska to preserve detasseling as a job and rite of passage for local teenagers. There does not appear to be a similar effort among detasseling contractors in Iowa, where laws for detasseling center on age limits for workers.
In 2018, there were 25 Iowa destasseling companies registered with IWD, the state agency charged with providing job and workforce support across Iowa. These companies did not appear in the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services H-2A database seeking visas for migrant labor in that year.
The Midwest Newsroom found that in 2025, there are only eight companies still registered with IWD that performed detasseling and roguing labor without H-2A workers. IWD also reported that there were 17 detasseling contractors that employed H-2A workers for the 2025 season, which lasted from mid-July to early August.
In total, the IWD data shows that 33 non-H-2A detasseling companies became inactive between 2018 and 2025.
'They just kept cutting us'
Arends Detasseling is one of the local companies that is no longer on the IWD list. Owner Mark Arends hired and supervised local detasselers for 24 years until his contract was discontinued by Corteva Agriscience, a global agriculture company, after the 2024 season. He said that he always had enough local workers and had to turn many applicants away, with the exception of the 2021 season due to COVID-19 restrictions.
“We knew how many acres were available because we see the maps and we see all the acres available and then we see what other crews are getting and it’s like, ‘Well, that don’t make sense,’” Arends said. “It got to the point where I think they wanted us to quit. But we weren’t going to quit. So they just kept cutting us, cutting us, cutting us, and finally, they got rid of us.”
Corteva Agriscience hires mostly local detasseling crews in neighboring Nebraska, according to spokesperson Caroline Ahn. She said in an email to The Midwest Newsroom that the company’s workforce varies from state to state depending on its needs.
Based on what he saw in nearby fields over the years, Arends estimated that 20% of Iowa’s detasseling is still performed by local teenagers, a third of the number in Nebraska.
The eight detasseling companies that still do not employ H-2A workers hired a combined 418 workers in 2025, according to IWD. The Midwest Newsroom was unable to confirm if all eight non-H-2A companies employed mostly local teenagers in 2025. If they did, local teenagers would have made up about 19% of the total detasseling and roguing workforce.
The IWD records showed that the 17 companies employing H-2A workers applied for 2,154 visas in 2025. USCIS data showed that those same 17 companies were granted 2,623 visas in 2025 – 469 more than the number of visas requested, according to the IWD data. IWD did not respond to inquiries about this discrepancy.
Arends said local teens performed all the detasseling in the area around Corteva’s facilities in Dysart, south of Cedar Falls, until five or six years ago. He said that’s when the shift toward H-2A labor began.
The Dysart Chamber of Commerce president confirmed a decline in detasseling employment, long a reliable summer job, among local teenagers.
“Several factors have contributed, including increased mechanization, consolidation within seed companies, and a shift in where crews are being hired from,” said Nicole Taylor in an email to The Midwest Newsroom. “Because of that, fewer local youth are finding those first job experiences that detasseling once provided.”
Arends said that seed companies should consider local economies in addition to their own bottom lines.
“When we did 1,400 acres, that was about, oh, $250,000 in the Cedar Falls (and) Waterloo area where that money went,” he said, adding that those dollars are now leaving the country with guest workers.
Not enough teens?
Peter Orazem, interim chair of the economics department at Iowa State University, has studied H-2A labor in the livestock sector, and said he has not seen this kind of discrepancy – between visas requested and visa granted – before. He said he has seen the increased popularity of H-2A labor among agriculture employers, and said he understands the shift away from a traditional detasseling workforce.
“I think that the seed corn companies have decided that the risk of hiring an unreliable labor supply is too great now, in part because there are fewer teenagers who are willing to work,” Orazem said. “That makes the H-2A workers more attractive.”
Orazem linked the decline in teenagers available for detasseling to an overall decline of teens in the summer workforce. Data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics showed a nearly 30% drop in national labor participation among 16- to 19-year-olds from 1985 to 2025 in the month of July, when most detasseling work is done.
Detasseling contractors in both Iowa and Nebraska dispute that there are fewer teens willing to do the work.
In 2024, Nebraska legislators passed a law that aimed to provide greater transparency in hiring practices for detasseling. Some detasseling contractors in Nebraska had approached politicians as early as 2019, alleging that their acres and contracts were being reduced or eliminated altogether by seed companies that preferred to hire H-2A laborers.
The contractors claimed they were able to find enough domestic workers — largely teenagers — to do the job in Nebraska, which they said should preclude the hiring of H-2A workers, according to federal law.
The 2024 law required the Nebraska Department of Agriculture to create an annual report on detasseling and roguing labor to show who was performing the work, the first of which was published Sept. 30. The legislation passed with amendments that shielded some of the findings from the public, but it clearly reported that 60% of the detasseling labor was performed by crews of mostly teenage Nebraskans.
The Midwest Newsroom is an investigative and enterprise journalism collaboration that includes Iowa Public Radio, KCUR, Nebraska Public Media, St. Louis Public Radio and NPR.
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METHODOLOGY
Reporter Nick Loomis requested data on detasseling labor in Iowa from Iowa Workforce Development for a story on the political effort in Nebraska to preserve the job for local teenagers. The intention was to use the data as a point of comparison between the two states regarding detasseling labor, but it did not arrive in time to include in the first story. After analyzing the Iowa data, The Midwest Newsroom made the decision to publish an additional detasseling story focused on Iowa. Loomis cross-referenced the data with the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services H-2A database. He also reached out to current and former detasseling contractors, some of whom would not go on the record. He also spoke with labor and business experts in Iowa about the IWD data.
REFERENCES
A new law was supposed to reveal who’s detasseling Nebraska’s corn. It didn’t really
(Iowa Public Radio | Oct. 30, 2025)
H-2A Employer Data Hub
(U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services website)
TYPE OF STORY
News — Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources.
