National Corn King Grows Ripe for Another Trophy

Modest champion that he is, Walter (Duke) Hasselbring wonders if he’ll be able to defend his title this year. After all, he didn’t have time to spread a winter blanket of buffalo manure on his cornfield.

Hasselbring is the king of corn, the sultan of stalk, the titan of tassel.

He has won nine trophies from the National Corn Growers Assn. for crop yields that have left his competitors in the dust.

Soon, farmers across the Corn Belt will plant their fields, pray for good weather and hope for the kind of success that has made Hasselbring a celebrity from furrow to furrow.

“We go to a convention and he gets surrounded by people,” his son Robin said. “When you win the corn contest as many times as he has, you have status.”

Hasselbring’s award-winning corn is grown with kernels from Gutwein Seeds, which has rewarded him with trips to Mexico, Europe, Hawaii and Alaska.

“When you’ve got a good thoroughbred winning a lot of races, you take good care of him,” said Eric Gutwein, vice president of the Francesville, Ind., company.

Hasselbring, 57, grows corn on half his 1,800 acres in Iroquois County, 70 miles south of Chicago. Last year, the plot he set aside for the contest produced a whopping 290 bushels per acre, compared with an Illinois average of 149 and a national average of 131.

“You get a lot of people who say, ‘Wow, that couldn’t be!’ ” Hasselbring said. “They call you and congratulate you. Some of them get very technical. ‘How much fertilizer did you use? What kind of insecticide did you use?’ That’s OK.”

Hasselbring said he has been blessed with enough rain, rich soil, good seed and an abundance of his favorite nutrient: buffalo manure.

He started his 250-head herd five years ago to diversify his farm. The meat goes to Chicago restaurants; the chips fertilize the ground.

“There’s no substitute for a little good ol’ manure,” he said.