Wallaces Farmer: History of the Wallace Family Paper, Farm Progress Today and Editors
Profile updated November 2026
Wallaces Farmer is the Iowa farm magazine that carries the name of America's best-known farm-editor family. Three generations of Wallaces wrote and edited it, and one of them, Henry A. Wallace, went on to become Secretary of Agriculture and Vice President. Today it is the Iowa brand of Farm Progress, part of Informa, with the largest audited audience of the company's state titles.
| Roots | Iowa farm papers of the 1850s; Wallace name added in 1895, title Wallaces' Farmer from 1898 |
|---|---|
| Founding family | Henry Wallace, Henry Cantwell Wallace and Henry A. Wallace |
| Base | Des Moines, Iowa |
| Publisher | Farm Progress, part of Informa's Markets Division |
| Audience | 44.8K AAM audited subscribers; about 6,600 morning newsletter subscribers |
| Editor | Gil Gullickson, since 2024 |
| Official website | Wallaces Farmer editor on FarmProgress.com |
History of Wallaces Farmer
The magazine's lineage reaches back to two Iowa farm papers of the 1850s, the Northwestern Farmer and Horticultural Journal and the Iowa Farmer and Horticulturist, which merged in 1861 as The Iowa Homestead and Northwestern Farmer. Henry Wallace, a minister turned farm writer, edited The Iowa Homestead from 1883, but disagreements with owner James M. Pierce over the paper's direction pushed him out.
In 1893 Wallace's sons began publishing The Farm and Dairy. Henry Wallace joined them, the family name went on the masthead in 1895, and the title became Wallaces' Farmer in 1898. Henry Cantwell Wallace later edited the paper and became U.S. Secretary of Agriculture, and his son Henry A. Wallace edited it before serving as Secretary of Agriculture and then Vice President under Franklin D. Roosevelt.
In 1929 the Wallaces bought their old rival, and the combined Wallaces Farmer and Iowa Homestead printed its first issue just as the stock market crashed. Dante Pierce became receiver in 1932 and bought the paper at a sheriff's sale in 1935. After his death in 1955 it was sold to the publishers of Prairie Farmer, renamed Wallaces Farmer, and has been part of the Farm Progress group ever since, through owners including Rural Press, Penton Media and, since 2016, Informa.
Wallaces Farmer Today
Farm Progress lists Wallaces Farmer as one of its 14 state and regional brands and reports 44.8K AAM audited subscribers, the strongest of its local titles, plus a weekday morning newsletter with about 6,600 subscribers. Every other August the Farm Progress Show comes to its permanent site near Boone, Iowa, giving Wallaces Farmer a home-state showcase.
In 2024 veteran farm journalist Gil Gullickson became editor. He had led Successful Farming as editor-in-chief from July 2022 and is a past president of the North American Agricultural Journalists and the Agricultural Communicators Network.
What Wallaces Farmer Is Publishing Now
Crops and conservation
Corn and soybean production, weed and pest management, cover crops and soil health reporting for Iowa conditions.
Livestock and farm business
Hog and cattle coverage, land values, farm finance and policy news that affects Iowa operations.
Iowa people
Profiles of Iowa farm families, award programs and editor commentary, including tributes to longtime contributors to the magazine.
Wallaces Farmer Editors and Staff
Farm Progress author pages and announcements name the current Wallaces Farmer editor:
- Gil Gullickson - Editor, Wallaces Farmer (since 2024)
- Henry A. Wallace - Former editor; later U.S. Vice President
- Henry Cantwell Wallace - Former editor; later U.S. Secretary of Agriculture
- Henry Wallace - Founding family editor (died 1916)
Gullickson is a multiple Agricultural Communicators Network Writer of the Year and Story of the Year winner and won an International Federation of Agricultural Journalists award for ag tech reporting in 2020.
Who Reads Wallaces Farmer
Readers are commercial farmers in Iowa. Iowa Farm Bureau figures put the state first in the nation for corn, pigs, eggs, ethanol and biodiesel, with 86,911 farms, more than 96 percent of them family farms, and nearly 3.9 million acres of cover crops planted in 2024. Those numbers explain why the magazine mixes hog coverage, grain marketing and conservation in the same issue.
Iowa farmers have lived with the Wallace name for well over a century and still talk about it at the coffee shop in Boone during show week. When the conversation turns lighter, farm.FM offers farm satire and farm humor tailored to corn-and-hog country, plus ranch humor for the cattle feeders in the west of the state. Its farm jokes travel well from the machine shed to the 4-H barn.
If the name is new to you, farm.FM is the nation's first satirical farm site, with Tractor Tunes country music for farmers on the side. One of its regular writers keeps a whole archive of stories like that.
Wallaces Farmer Sources and Agriculture Authority Links
- Wikipedia: Wallaces Farmer - lineage from The Iowa Homestead and the Wallace family editors.
- Wallace Centers of Iowa: America's first family of agriculture - the Wallace family story.
- Farm Progress: Meet the new Wallaces editor - Gil Gullickson's appointment.
- Iowa Farm Bureau: Top 10 farm and agriculture facts - Iowa production rankings and farm numbers.
- USDA NASS: 2022 Census of Agriculture - national farm counts and sales.
Wallaces Farmer FAQ
Is Wallaces Farmer named after Henry Wallace?
Yes. The Wallace family put its name on the paper in 1895, and Henry A. Wallace, later Vice President, was one of its editors.
Who owns Wallaces Farmer?
Farm Progress, part of Informa. The Prairie Farmer publishers bought it after 1955.
Who is the editor of Wallaces Farmer?
Gil Gullickson, former Successful Farming editor-in-chief, became editor in 2024.
How many subscribers does Wallaces Farmer have?
Farm Progress reports 44.8K AAM audited subscribers in Iowa.
Three Henry Wallaces, a crash-year merger and a century of Iowa harvests later, Wallaces Farmer is still the farm paper Iowa calls its own.