Transcripts

American Dreamer:
The Legacy of Henry A. Wallace in Agriculture and Progressive Politics

Eugene Lang

Henry Wallace's Role in the
Development of Hybrid Seed Technology

I was certainly aware of the beginning of Hybrid Corn, because being born in 1924 I had the privilege of helping my father handpick corn from 1930 to 1935. These were tough times of the Great Depression and Drought of the Mid-30's. We were a large family of seven children-so including my parents plus one Grandfather, a total of ten.

I very well remember these days. While hand picking, my Dad a bushel basket tied to the side of the wagon. Any large, good-looking ear of corn we would throw into this basket. At the end of the day we would place the ears in a wire single-hole rack for each ear-about 100 ears to a rack. Then we'd hang the racks in the corncrib for winter drying, then shell off the kernels for the next spring planting. This was our seed. I also very well remember a Saturday my brother and I worked all morning for 50 bushel of ear corn in the wagon.
The 1931 U.S. average yield per acre was 24.5 bushel. Then by 1933, during the Depression, corn was 12 to 15 cents per bushel. I remember Dad selling a neighbor 500 bushel of corn for 15 cents per bushel and not getting paid. Today the price is $2.40 per bushel. This same year we (a large family) had no money to buy coal for cooking and heating-so as a nine year old little boy, I would go and get two buckets of corn from the corn crib for Mother to cook and heat with.
Then by about 1936-1937, hybrid seed was coming on the market. Yields started climbing from 24.5 bushel per acre in 1931 to 62 bushel per acre by 1961; 100 bushel by 1980 and 160 bushel per acre reported by the USDA this week for Iowa. The total US production in 1931 was 2.2 billion bushel. In 2002 it is 9.08 billion bushel.

Today this country utilizes over 9 billion bushel per year. Just suppose if next year we would have a large drought area like the mid 30's, we would all be quite hungry. Corn is used in hundreds of food products.

In 1938 U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Henry A. Wallace got Congress to create his "several normal granary". His ideas of storing surplus crops for lean years came from Joseph's advice to the Egyptians in the Bible. This week I went to one of our old ear corncribs. I thought we possibly had one of the labels still attached, but didn't find one.

The quality of farm family life has certainly changed for me-from handpicking corn with horses and wagon to today, using 12 row harvesters, Global Positioning Systems, and yielding large volumes of grain.

The past six to eight weeks I operated the harvester several times. This printout of three days harvesting of 153 acres shows on this graph that 21% of the yield was 250 bushel per acre; 42% yielded 260 bushel per acre, etc. The field average was 228 bushel per acre.

Henry Wallace had a great vision for agriculture and if he could only see what and how we are using corn in so many ways:

-Feed for livestock 5 billion bushel
-Food, seed, industrial 2 billion bushel
-Corn syrup 548 million bushel
-Corn sweetener 220 million bushel
-Ethanol 650 million bushel
-Starch 250 million bushel

The newest use of corn is for the textile industry-polyester made from cornstarch. The necktie I am wearing is made from this and this t-shirt is made of 46% corn and 64% cotton. This is the textile of the 21st century.

I have personally appreciated Henry Wallace's development of hybrid seed and the formation of Pioneer Hi-Bred Seed Company. I was an area sales representative for Pioneer for over 20 years. During that time we hosted about 7,000 visitors from around the world at our farm. These visitors came from approximately 85% of the countries of the world. This has certainly broadened my view of the world.

 

 

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