Clarion, Iowa. Photo: Brandonrush, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons.
Clarion officials are already planning for life after Hagie Manufacturing, the Deere-owned plant that has built self-propelled crop sprayers in Wright County for 79 years and is scheduled to close by the end of October 2029.
City Administrator Clint Middleton called Deere’s decision disappointing and said the hit will land across north-central Iowa, not only inside Clarion city limits. Workers commute from surrounding towns; when a plant that size winds down, Main Street sales and school enrollment feel it in every direction.
Wright County Economic Development puts employment at about 300 when the plant runs at full capacity. Ray Hagie invented the first self-propelled crop sprayer in 1947. Deere bought the company in 2020 and now plans to move that production line to Louisiana.
“It’d be hard to find people over the age of 40 in this area that either they themselves didn’t work at Hagie at some time or someone in their family didn’t work at Hagie at some time,” Middleton told Radio Iowa.
Two buildings, three years
The Clarion campus has two large buildings separated by a private street — a manufacturing floor with assembly, welding and fabrication, and a warehouse Hagie bought in 2008 that holds engineering and related work. Middleton said the split layout could let the city market the sites to different buyers.
He is pressing Deere for a transition plan and meeting local managers to inventory power, infrastructure and floor capacity so economic-development staff can shop the space while production is still running. Waiting until 2029 to start that file, he suggested, would waste the only advantage Clarion has: time.
Clarion’s other major employer is Iowa Specialty Hospital. Losing Hagie without a replacement manufacturer would leave the hospital as the dominant payroll in town, a risky concentration for any county seat.
A wider Deere map
The Clarion notice landed in the same week Deere said it will shift hay-cutting and baling equipment from Ottumwa to Des Moines and close the Ottumwa plant in fall 2028. That factory dates to 1911. Together, the moves shrink Deere’s Iowa footprint even as the company keeps a deep dealer and supplier network in the state.
State and regional partners are already on Middleton’s call list. The pitch Clarion will make to prospects is straightforward: a ready manufacturing shell, a trained workforce that knows metalwork, and three years to stage a handoff instead of a sudden dark building. Whether a buyer shows up before the last sprayer rolls off the line is now the town’s central economic question.
Workforce agencies will need retraining slots that match metal fabrication and assembly skills, not generic classroom hours. Some Hagie employees may follow the work to Louisiana; most will not. Keeping those skills in Wright County is the difference between a closed plant and a restarted one under a new logo.
Middleton’s point about commuting patterns cuts both ways. A replacement employer that draws from the same 40-mile radius can rebuild the payroll faster than a business that only hires inside city limits. Regional marketing — Clarion plus neighboring counties — is the honest map of this labor shed.
School leaders will model enrollment under a 300-job loss even if the closing is three years out. Houses listed near the plant will carry the rumor in their showing notes long before the last shift. Starting the buyer search now is how Clarion tries to keep those rumors from becoming the only story in town.
Deere’s Louisiana plan is a company decision. Clarion’s response is a local one: inventory the buildings, court the buyers, support the workers and refuse to treat 2029 as a surprise. Three years is short in economic-development time. It is long enough to try.
Curt Hanneman writes for Clarion News Online.