An agrarian progressive: Henry A. Wallace.

• Author: Ruiz-Marrero, Carmelo
• Position: Biodevastation

In November 1940 an American drove from Washington DC to Mexico City. His road trip would turn out to be of great historical importance for the development of agriculture worldwide. In the course of this grand tour, he established the foundations and fundamentals of the green revolution, an agricultural revolution that in the following decades would transform food and agriculture all over the world. The green revolution was one of the single largest non-military undertakings of the twentieth century. Whether this global agricultural transformation was for better or for worse remains a matter of controversy.

The driver of that car in the Mexico countryside was Henry Wallace, former US secretary of agriculture and at that moment, the country's vice president elect. The life of Henry A. Wallace, one of the most important forefathers of modern industrial agriculture, is an outstanding example of the idealism, contradictions and conflicting agendas behind the green revolution. Born in 1888 to a family of Irish immigrants, Wallace was the scion of a powerful Iowa agribusiness dynasty. His father, Henry C. Wallace, was agriculture secretary under presidents Harding and Coolidge.

As a child, Henry A. became friends with the great African American scientist George Washington Carver, whose trailblazing research into soils and crop rotation, and development of value-added products from peanuts, soy and sweet potato, earned him great esteem and honor in the United States and abroad.

George Washington Carver was a major influence in the life of Young Henry. He met Carver when he was six years old. Carver was a student and colleague of Henry's father at Iowa State College. His father invited the young Carver to the family home. Carver provided a scientific direction to Wallace's interest and love of plants. Carver would take the young boy on walks collecting specimens in fields around Ames. He helped the boy identify species of plants and plant parts. In the greenhouse, he taught young Henry about plant breeding. They would experiment with sick plants and crop breeding. (1) Hybrid seed and the transformation of agriculture

While studying at Iowa State in the first decade of the 20th century, Henry A. became fascinated with the new science of genetics, and in order to give it practical use in crop science, he taught himself statistics. During the 1920's he became one of the first private sector entrepreneurs to see the potential in hybrid corn seed. Hybrid corn was a formidable scientific achievement of the public sector, an undertaking sometimes referred to as the Manhattan Project of agriculture because of its massive scope.

Wallace developed his own variety of hybrid corn, Copper Cross, and in 1926 founded the Hi-Bred Corn Company, which specialized in the sale of hybrid seed. This corporation, which in 1936 changed its name to Pioneer Hi-Bred, would go on to become one of the world's premiere seed companies and an undisputed world leader in corn breeding and genetics. In 1999, the gigantic Dupont Corporation bought Pioneer through what was then the largest initial public offering of shares in history. With this purchase, Dupont became the world's largest seed company until it was surpassed by Monsanto in 2005. Both Monsanto and Dupont belong to a small handful of companies that today control much of the world's seed business.

Wallace promoted hybrid seed with evangelical zeal, and so helped transform the country's corn production. In 1933, around 1% of Iowa's corn came from hybrid seed, by 1943 the figure was almost 100%. By 1965, over 95% of the country's corn was from hybrid seed, to Pioneer's great profit.

Supporters of industrial agriculture point to hybrid seed as an indisputably good development. Yields certainly increased; between 1950 and 1980, US corn exports were multiplied times twenty. Today, the US produces 44% of the world's corn, more than China, the European Union, Brazil and Mexico combined, according to the US Grains Council. Iowa produces 1/6 of US corn, more than all of...