Wade Dooley

At 10 years old, Wade Dooley had cattle that he cared for, and at 14, he tended field of row crops on his own. After attending ISU and moving to Florida to grow watermelons commercially, Wade returned to Albion in 2008 to become the sixth generation to farm family land. At the time that he returned, he operated 800 acres of row crops and had a 120 cow herd.

Around 2019, however, Wade experienced a reckoning in which he realized that his operation wasn’t sustainable both ecologically and financially. Part of the equation that “didn’t pencil out” involved the Iowa River which borders his property, which had 100-year floods almost every year during the early 2000s.

He changed everything, dropping hundreds of acres and reducing his herd, in order to rebuild diverse and resilient systems, including CRP along the river. In place of corn and soy, his primary crop is now rye, which he grows and sells to his neighbors for custom cover crop seeding.

Building a Culture of Conservation: 

“If you treat life as a factory, you’re going to degrade it. I want Iowa to continue to be fertile. I want it to be a good place for life. I don’t care what kind of ag is here: I simply don’t want this ground to get any more degraded than it already is.”

Contact Information

Wade Dooley
2162 Stanley Mill Rd,
Albion, IA 50005
641-328-9262
glenwoodfarm@gmail.com