I watch Laura Farms on the YouTubes and she goes into great depth on growing seedcorn as her family’s farm does it under contract.
The de-tasseling is mostly automated these days with a sprayer attachment chopping off the tops and the legions of kids coming behind to get the ones missed.
Then they come along with another specialized attachment to ‘destroy’ the males. Basically just chop them up and leave in the rows which later on gets eaten by the cows. The outside border rows of males gets harvested and turned into winter feed for the cows.
Eventually the remaining corn gets harvested by a crew hired by the seed company because they want the full heads of corn to do their evil deeds to.
The de-tasseling is mostly automated these days with a sprayer attachment chopping off the tops and the legions of kids coming behind to get the ones missed.
Then they come along with another specialized attachment to ‘destroy’ the males. Basically just chop them up and leave in the rows which later on gets eaten by the cows. The outside border rows of males gets harvested and turned into winter feed for the cows.
Eventually the remaining corn gets harvested by a crew hired by the seed company because they want the full heads of corn to do their evil deeds to.
Fascinating stuff this modern farming.