Iowa farmers have kept our top notch status in the Corn Belt for generations.

Our state’s rise to top corn crop producer can be traced back 100 years – thanks in large part to the scientific curiosity of an Iowan from Adair County named Henry A. Wallace.

A century ago, he founded the iconic seed company Pioneer Hi-Bred Corn Co. that today serves farmers in more than 90 countries. In 2019, Pioneer became the flagship seed brand owned by Corteva Agriscience. Later this year, Corteva will spin off its seed business under the name Vylor. I’m rooting to bring its seed headquarters home to Iowa where it first took root 100 years ago.

Wallace was the third generation of a prominent farm family. Soil, seeds and science ran through his veins. At an early age, he was fascinated with plants. While his father taught dairy science at Iowa State College, Wallace became acquainted with George Washington Carver, whom he credits for inspiring his interest in plant breeding.

As a teenager, Wallace’s interest in corn blossomed under agronomist Perry G. Holden, who conducted the “corn gospel train” along Iowa’s railways to evangelize to farmers about how to select the best corn for seed. Back then, farmers planted seeds they saved from the previous year, called open-pollinated corn. Yields were about 20 bushels an acre, from the 1860s into the mid-1930s.

Wallace revolutionized corn breeding by crossing open-pollinated corn varieties. He dismantled conventional thinking that seed corn’s appearance would determine its yield the following year. His new method won him the Iowa Corn Yield Test in 1924.

Wallace commercialized his seed business by cultivating trust with farmers, adopting a farmer-to-farmer sales model. Hybrid seeds boosted corn yields from 20 bushels an acre to more than 200 bushels an acre today. Iowa became known as the Tall Corn State.

Wallace was more than a scientist; he was also a farm journalist and a public servant. After graduating from Iowa State College, he wrote about ways to improve farming in his family’s farm journal, Wallaces’ Farmer. He authored a corn-hog ratio chart that calculated the cost to fatten a market-ready pig. Eventually, he took over as the journal’s editor before following his father’s footsteps into public service.

For eight years, he served as secretary of agriculture and helped carry out President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s (FDR) New Deal programs. From this Cabinet post, he administered the first-ever Farm Bill, including his priorities to address soil conservation, the grain surplus and rural electrification. He also initiated the USDA’s annual Agricultural Outlook Report that continues today. Wallace served as the 33rd vice president during FDR’s third term and traveled around the world representing America’s foreign affairs. Next, he led the Commerce Department until 1946, before attempting a presidential run.

The last two decades of his life were spent tending a 100-acre farm and continuing his unquenchable quest for scientific innovation, including breeding chickens to lay more eggs on less feed and experimenting with plant genetics to improve corn and strawberries.

The Wallace family made an outsized footprint in history and public life that shaped farming, the ag economy and rural America. Wallace’s passion for farming and food production was rooted in humanitarianism, a guiding principle of two other native Iowans who helped ease hunger around the world – Herbert Hoover and Norman Borlaug.

Today, Iowa’s corn crop produces homegrown renewable fuel and enriches the American diet with high-quality protein. Just one bushel of corn produces 17 pounds of dried distillers’ grain to grow beef, pork and poultry. More than 60 percent of harvested corn in Iowa is processed by ethanol plants, making our state the number one renewable fuel producer in the country.

As a lifelong family farmer and U.S. senator for Iowa, I share Wallace’s conviction that prosperity on the farm is in the national interest, paving the way for a strong economy and boosting energy security, food security and national security.

U.S. Sen. Charles Grassley, a Republican, represents Iowa.