Grassley Celebrates Centennial of Iowa Innovation at Pioneer Seeds

Grassley Celebrates Centennial of Iowa Innovation at Pioneer Seeds

Floor Remarks by Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa
Senate President Pro Tempore
"Celebrating a Century of Pioneering Innovation"
Tuesday, April 28, 2026

VIDEO

2026 is an opportunity to talk about a centennial of progress in American agriculture and a famous Iowa family that was involved in that.

Before I give my remarks on that centennial, I'd like to give a little history about the Wallace family of Iowa.

Three generations: a grandfather, Henry Wallace, that I don't have a lot of history on. But Henry C. Wallace, his son, was President Harding's Secretary of Agriculture from 1921 until Henry's death in 1924.

And then, Henry C. Wallace had a son, Henry A. Wallace, [who] was Secretary of Agriculture and [later] Secretary of Commerce from 1933 to 1941 under Franklin Roosevelt's first two terms.

Unlike his father, who was presumably a Republican under President Harding, Henry A. Wallace was obviously a Democrat to serve in Franklin Roosevelt's cabinet. And then, he went on to be Vice President during the third term of Roosevelt.

In 1948, the same Henry A. Wallace was the Progressive Party's candidate for president of the United States, a time when Harry Truman was re-elected president.

So, that's kind of the politics of the people that I'm talking about. But I'm talking about their role[s] in American agriculture, and what it has meant for the production of corn today in the United States.

So, we celebrate the work of an Iowan who pioneered new frontiers in American agriculture.

That pioneer was Henry A. Wallace. Like many farm kids, Henry grew up with soil, the very soul of Iowa, running through his veins.

Henry's dad and grandfather, both named, as I said, Henry, co-founded a publication called "Wallaces' Farmer," a trusted farm journal for farmers across the Midwest.

Exactly 100 years ago on April the 20th, 1926, Henry's hybrid seed corn business was incorporated.

At that time, Iowa corn farmers planted seeds that they saved from the previous year, called open-pollinated corn. Yields were about 20 bushels per acre from one year to the next, year after year.

In fact, history tells us that the production of corn in the United States [was] about 25 bushels per acre from the Civil War until the 1930s. That's when Wallace's research made great progress in increasing yields.

So, Henry A. Wallace, the famous Secretary of Agriculture and Vice President of the United States, revolutionized corn yields by crossing open-pollinated corn varieties.

Together, with an Iowa State University professor, he developed [the] Iowa Corn Yield Test. In 1924, Henry A. Wallace won the contest with a hybrid called "Copper Cross."

Like many American innovators, Henry had an idea and put that idea to work to accomplish his goals. His efforts would transform production agriculture. But first, Henry needed markets for his new research and his product that resulted from that research.

So, using famous Iowa ingenuity, he cultivated trust with his customers. Those customers, of course, were the family farmers of that day. He adopted a farmer-to-farmer sales model.

In 1935, Henry [re-]named Hi-Bred Corn Company to the name of "Pioneer." And Pioneer is still a famous name for famers in Iowa, and that company was the Pioneer seed corn company, until recently, a company named Corteva took it over.

Iowa, of course, is known as the "Tall Corn State," thanks in large part to the adoption of hybrid corn.

So, Henry A. Wallace helped corn farmers go from 20 bushels of corn an acre to now, the average is over 200 bushels of corn per acre.

And we have some people in contests over the United States that, on five-acre plots that they do a lot of extra things to accomplish it, have even produced corn yielding 350 bushel of corn per acre. And I don't know if that's going to be something that's going to be common 20 years from now, or maybe even 10 years from now, but we have sure made great progress.

When I started farming in 1960 when my dad died, I was probably producing about 50 bushel of corn to the acre. More recently, we've reached that 200 bushel level.

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