Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture

Interim Director: Voices from the past: Iowa's Wallace family

Back to Leopold Letter Winter 2011

By MARK HONEYMAN, Interim director

This fall, Jean Wallace Douglas passed away at the age of 91. She was a leader in conservation and environmental issues and a generous contributor of advice and support to the Leopold Center.  She was the last of her generation – the children of Henry A. Wallace. Some have called the Wallaces Iowa’s “premier agricultural family.” Her great-grandfather was “Uncle Henry” Wallace, the white-bearded pastor who started Wallaces Farmer in 1895. The farm paper’s motto was “Good Farming, Clear Thinking, Right Living.”

Uncle Henry’s son was Henry C., or “Harry,” Wallace who took over Wallaces Farmer in 1916. He was a champion for progressive agricultural issues including fair freight rates for livestock farmers. Harry was named U.S. Secretary of Agriculture by President Harding in 1921. His term was cut short when he died in 1924. A memorial to Henry C. Wallace was placed on the ISU campus by the American Country Life Association — a granite boulder with a plaque among nine hard maple trees west of the Campanile. It states that he “worked for a richer and happier rural life” … that he “provided an economic service for the American farmer” and that he “led the vanguard in the battle for equality for agriculture” and “as prophet he saw in the fertile lands of the corn belt the bases of a rural civilization finer than any the world has yet known.”

Harry’s (Henry C.) son, Henry A. Wallace, was born on a small farm in Adair County, Iowa, in 1888. Henry A. Wallace, perhaps Iowa’s greatest agricultural mind and leader, graduated from Iowa State University in 1910, and took over Wallaces Farmer management early because of his father’s public service and then death. He was an early developer of hybrid seed corn and a co-founder of the Pioneer Hi-Bred Company in 1926. In 1933, H.A. Wallace was named Secretary of Agriculture and later served as Vice President and then Secretary of Commerce.  His life was chronicled in 2001 by J. Culver and J. Hyde in the book American Dreamer.

Here are excerpts about Henry A. Wallace from American Dreamer:

From an early age, and for the remainder of his life, a central characteristic of Henry A. Wallace’s personality was independence of mind. He was open to any idea however silly sounding, until he could test its validity. He was prepared to test any idea, no matter how broadly accepted, that would not stand the weight of inquiry.

Wallace’s senior thesis (at Iowa State) was a 40-page treatise entitled “Relation between Livestock Farming and the Fertility of the Soil.” It was a technical analysis and a call for progressive reform (related to soil conservation). He stated that “We have our choice between that (soil conservation) and ruin.

Only a handful of men in 1924 understood what was about to happen. Foremost among them was Henry A. Wallace. He was the prophet and evangelist, the teacher and preacher of agricultural scientific advancement. “A revolution in corn breeding is coming that will affect every man, woman, and child in the corn belt within 20 years,” he wrote in the mid-1920s.

With the passing of Jean Wallace Douglas, I have been thinking about the Wallaces and our current times. It seems that what is needed now in agriculture is a Wallace viewpoint or outlook. A Wallace outlook combines science, passion, voice, civic duty and community responsibility to generate leadership that brings about long-term change. This remarkable combination is key to policies, science and business that will help ensure a sustainable and resilient Iowa agriculture.

Back to Leopold Letter Winter 2011