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Norman Ernest Borlaug (March 25, 1914 – September 12, 2009) was an American agronomist, humanitarian, and Nobel laureate who has been called "the father of the Green Revolution". Borlaug was one of only six people to have won the Nobel Peace Prize, the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Congressional Gold Medal. He was also a recipient of the Padma Vibhushan, India's second highest civilian honor. Borlaug
received his Ph.D. in plant pathology and genetics from the University of
Minnesota in
1942. He took up an agricultural research position in Mexico, where he
developed semi-dwarf, high-yield, disease-resistant wheat varieties.
During
the mid-20th century, Borlaug led the introduction of these high-yielding
varieties combined
with
modern agricultural production techniques to Mexico, Pakistan,
and India.
As a result, Mexico became a net exporter of wheat by 1963. Between
1965 and 1970, wheat yields nearly doubled in Pakistan and India,
greatly improving the food security in those nations. These collective increases in
yield have been labeled the Green Revolution,
and
Borlaug is often credited with saving over a billion people
worldwide from starvation. He was awarded the Nobel Peace
Prize in 1970 in
recognition of his contributions to world peace through increasing food
supply. Later in his life, he helped
apply these methods of increasing food production to Asia and Africa. Borlaug
was
the great-grandchild of Norwegian immigrants to the United
States. Ole Olson Dybevig and Solveig Thomasdotter Rinde, from Leikanger,
Norway,
emigrated to Dane, Wisconsin,
in
1854. The family eventually moved to
the small Norwegian-American community of Saude,
near Cresco, Iowa.
There they were members of the Saude Lutheran Church, where Norman was
both baptized and confirmed. The
eldest of four children — his three younger sisters were Palma
Lillian (Behrens; 1916 – 2004), Charlotte (Culbert; b. 1919) and Helen
(1921 – 1921) — Borlaug was born to Henry Oliver (1889 – 1971) and
Clara (Vaala) Borlaug (1888 – 1972) on his grandparents' farm in Saude
in
1914. From age seven to nineteen, he worked on the 106 acre (43 hectare) family farm
west of Protivin, Iowa,
fishing, hunting, and raising corn, oats, timothy-grass,
cattle,
pigs and chickens. He attended the one-teacher, one-room New Oregon #8 rural school
in Howard County through
eighth grade. Today, the school building, built in 1865, is owned by
the Norman Borlaug Heritage Foundation as part of "Project Borlaug
Legacy". At
Cresco High School, Borlaug played on the football, baseball and
wrestling teams, on the latter of which his coach, Dave Barthelma,
continually encouraged him to "give 105%". He
attributed
his
decision to leave the farm and pursue further education
to his grandfather, Nels Olson Borlaug (1859 - 1935), who strongly
encouraged Borlaug's learning, once saying, "You're wiser to fill your
head now if you want to fill your belly later on." Through
a Depression-era
program
known as the National Youth
Administration, he was able to enroll at the University of
Minnesota in
1933. Borlaug failed the entrance exam, but was accepted to the
school's newly created two-year General College. After two quarters, he
transferred to the College of Agriculture's forestry program. While at the
University of Minnesota, he was a member of the varsity wrestling team,
reaching the Big Ten semifinals, and helped
introduce the sport to Minnesota high schools by putting on exhibition
matches around
the state. Wrestling
taught
me
some valuable lessons ... I always figured I could hold
my own against the best in the world. It made me tough. Many times, I
drew on that strength. It's an inappropriate crutch perhaps, but that's
the way I'm made". Borlaug
was
inducted into the National
Wrestling Hall of Fame in Stillwater, Oklahoma,
in
1992. To
finance
his
studies, Borlaug had to periodically put his education on
hold and take a job. One of these jobs, in 1935, was as a leader in the Civilian
Conservation Corps, working with the unemployed on U.S. federal projects.
Many of the people who worked for him were starving. He later recalled,
"I saw how food changed them ... All of this left scars on me". From 1935 to 1938, before and
after receiving his Bachelor of
Science in forestry
in 1937, Borlaug worked for the United States
Forestry Service at
stations
in Massachusetts and Idaho.
He spent one summer in the middle fork of Idaho's Salmon River,
the
most isolated piece of wilderness in the lower 48 states at the time. In
the
last months of his undergraduate education, Borlaug attended a Sigma Xi lecture by Elvin Charles
Stakman, a professor and soon-to-be head of the plant pathology group
at the University of Minnesota. The event was pivotal for Borlaug's
future. Stakman, in his speech titled "These Shifty Little Enemies that
Destroy our Food Crops", discussed the manifestation of the plant
disease rust, aparasitic fungus that feeds on phytonutrients,
in
wheat, oat, and barley crops across the U.S. He had discovered that
special plant breeding methods
created plants resistant to rust. His research greatly interested
Borlaug, and when Borlaug's job at the Forest Service was eliminated
because of budget cuts, he asked Stakman if
he should go into forest pathology. Stakman advised him to focus on
plant pathology instead, and Borlaug subsequently
enrolled at the University to study plant pathology under Stakman,
receiving a Master of
Science degree
in 1940 and Ph.D. in plant pathology and genetics in 1942. Borlaug was a member of Alpha
Gamma
Rho fraternity. He met his wife, Margaret
Gibson, while in college, as he waited tables at a university Dinkytown coffee shop where they both worked. They
had three children, Norma Jean "Jeanie" Laube, Scotty (who died soon
after birth from spina
bifida),
and William Borlaug, five grandchildren, and six great-grandchildren.
On March 8, 2007, Margaret Borlaug died at the age of 95, following a
fall. They had been married for 69 years.
Borlaug spent the last years of his life in northern Dallas although, as a result of his global
humanitarian efforts, he actually resided there only a few weeks of the
year. From
1942
to 1944, Borlaug was employed as a microbiologist at DuPont in Wilmington, Delaware.
It
was planned that he would lead research on industrial and
agricultural bacteriocides, fungicides,
and preservatives.
However,
following the December 7, 1941 attack on Pearl
Harbor,
Borlaug tried to enlist in the military, but was rejected under wartime
labor regulations; his lab was converted to conduct research for the United States
armed forces. One of his first projects was to develop glue that could withstand the
warm saltwater of the South Pacific.
The Imperial
Japanese Navy had
gained
control of the island of Guadalcanal,
and
patrolled
the sky and sea by day. The only way that U.S. forces
could supply the troops stranded on the island was by approaching at
night by speedboat, and jettisoning boxes of canned food and other
supplies into the surf to wash ashore. The problem was that the glue
holding these containers together disintegrated in saltwater. Within
weeks, Borlaug and his colleagues had developed an adhesive that
resisted corrosion,
allowing
food and supplies to reach the stranded Marines. Other tasks
included work with camouflage, canteen disinfectants,
DDT
to control malaria, and insulation for small electronics. In
1940,
the Avila Camacho administration
took office in Mexico. The administration's primary goal for Mexican
agriculture was augmenting the nation's industrialization and economic
growth. U.S. Vice President-Elect Henry Wallace,
who
was instrumental in persuading the Rockefeller
Foundation to
work with the Mexican government in agricultural development, saw Avila
Camacho's ambitions as beneficial to U.S. economic and military
interests. The
Rockefeller Foundation contacted E.C. Stakman and two other leading
agronomists. They developed a proposal for a new organization, the
Office of Special Studies, as part of the Mexican Government, but
directed by the Rockefeller Foundation. It was to be staffed with both
U.S. and Mexican scientists, focusing on soil development, maize and
wheat production, and plant pathology. Stakman chose Dr. J. George
"Dutch" Harrar as
project
leader.
Harrar immediately set out to hire Borlaug as head of
the newly established Cooperative Wheat Research and Production Program
in Mexico; Borlaug declined, choosing to finish his war service at
DuPont. In July 1944, after
rejecting DuPont's offer to double his salary, and temporarily leaving
behind his pregnant wife and 14-month old
daughter, he flew to Mexico City to head the new program as a geneticist and plant
pathologist. In
1964,
he was made the director of the International Wheat Improvement
Program at El
Batán, Texcoco,
on the eastern fringes of Mexico City, as part of the newly established Consultative
Group on International Agricultural Research's International
Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (Centro Internacional de
Mejoramiento de Maíz y Trigo, or
CIMMYT), an autonomous international research training institute
developed from the Cooperative Wheat Research Production Program, with
funding jointly undertaken by the Ford and Rockefeller Foundations and the Mexican
government. Borlaug officially retired from the position in
1979. But he remained a senior consultant at the CIMMYT and continued
to be involved in plant research at CIMMYT with wheat, triticale, barley, maize,
and high-altitude sorghum,
in addition to taking up charitable and educational roles. Borlaug taught and researched at Texas
A&M
University from
1984 till his death. He was the Distinguished Professor of
International Agriculture at the university and the holder of the
Eugene Butler Endowed Chair in Agricultural Biotechnology. The
Cooperative
Wheat Research Production Program, a joint venture by the Rockefeller
Foundation and
the Mexican Ministry of Agriculture, involved research in genetics, plant breeding,
plant
pathology, entomology, agronomy, soil science,
and cereal technology.
The goal of the project was to boost wheat production in Mexico, which
at the time was importing a large portion of its grain. George Harrar,
a plant pathologist, recruited and assembled the wheat research team in
late 1944. The four other members were Edward
Wellhausen, maize breeder, John
Niederhauser, potato breeder, William Colwell, and Norman
Borlaug, all from the United States. Borlaug
would remain with the project for sixteen years. During this time, he
bred a series of remarkably successful high-yield, disease-resistant,
semi-dwarf wheat.
Borlaug
said that his first couple of years in Mexico were difficult. He lacked
trained scientists and equipment. Native farmers were hostile toward
the wheat program because of serious crop losses from 1939 to 1941 due
to stem rust.
"It
often
appeared to me that I had made a dreadful mistake in
accepting the position in Mexico," he wrote in the epilogue to his book, Norman Borlaug on World
Hunger. He spent the first 10 years
breeding wheat cultivars resistant to disease, including rust. In
that time, his group made 6,000 individual crossings of wheat. Initially,
his
work had been concentrated in the central highlands, in the village
of Chapingo near Texcoco,
where the problems with rust and poor soil were most prevalent. But he
realized that he could speed up breeding by taking advantage of the
country's two growing seasons. In the summer he would breed wheat in
the central highlands as usual, then immediately take the seeds north
to the Yaqui Valley research station near Ciudad
Obregón, Sonora.
The difference in altitudes and temperatures would allow more crops to
be grown each year. His
boss, George Harrar, was against this expansion. Besides the extra
costs of doubling the work, Borlaug's plan went against a then-held
principle of agronomy that has since been disproved. It was
believed that seeds needed a rest
period after harvesting, in order to store energy for germination
before being planted. Harrar vetoed his plan, causing Borlaug to
resign. Elvin Stakman, who was visiting the project, calmed the
situation, talking Borlaug into withdrawing his resignation and Harrar
into allowing the double wheat season. As of 1945, wheat would then be
bred at locations 700 miles (1000 km) apart, 10 degrees apart
in latitude, and 8500 feet (2600 m) apart in altitude. This
was called "shuttle breeding". As
an
unexpected benefit of the double wheat season, the new breeds did
not have problems with photoperiodism.
Normally,
wheat
varieties cannot adapt to new environments, due to the
changing periods of sunlight. Borlaug later recalled, "As it worked
out, in the north, we were planting when the days were getting shorter,
at low elevation and high temperature. Then we'd take the seed from the
best plants south and plant it at high elevation, when days were
getting longer and there was lots of rain. Soon we had varieties that
fit the whole range of conditions. That wasn't supposed to happen by
the books". This meant that
the project wouldn't need to start separate breeding programs for each
geographic region of the planet. Because
pureline
(genotypically identical) plant varieties
often only have one or a few major genes for disease resistance,
and plant diseases such as rust are continuously producing new races
that can overcome a pureline's resistance, multiline varieties were
developed. Multiline varieties are mixtures of several phenotypically similar
purelines which each have different genes for disease resistance. By
having similar heights, flowering and maturity dates, seed colors, and
agronomic characteristics, they remain compatible with each other, and
do not reduce yields when grown together on the field. In
1953, Borlaug extended this technique by suggesting that several
purelines with different resistance genes should be developed through
backcross methods using one recurrent parent. Backcrossing
involves crossing a hybrid and subsequent generations with a recurrent
parent. As a result, the genotype of the backcrossed progeny becomes
increasingly similar to that of the recurrent parent. Borlaug's method
would allow the various different disease-resistant genes from several
donor parents to be transferred into a single recurrent parent. To make
sure each line has different resistant genes, each donor parent is used
in a separate backcross program. Between five and ten of these lines
may then be mixed depending upon the races of pathogen present in the
region. As this process is repeated, some lines will become susceptible
to the pathogen. These lines can easily be replaced with
new resistant lines. As new
sources of resistance become available, new lines are developed. In
this way, the loss of crops is kept to a minimum, because only one or a
few lines become susceptible to a pathogen within a given season, and
all other crops are unaffected by the disease. Because the disease
would spread more slowly than if the entire population were
susceptible, this also reduces the damage to susceptible lines. There
is still the possibility that a new race of pathogen will develop to
which all lines are susceptible, however. Dwarfing
is an important agronomic quality for wheat; dwarf plants produce thick
stems. The cultivars Borlaug
worked with had tall, thin stalks. Taller wheat grasses better compete
for sunlight, but tend to collapse under the weight of the extra
grain — a trait called lodging — from the rapid growth spurts induced by nitrogen fertilizer Borlaug
used in the poor soil. To prevent this, he bred wheat to favor shorter,
stronger stalks that could better support larger seed heads. In 1953,
he acquired a Japanese dwarf variety of wheat called Norin 10 developed by Orville Vogel,
that
had been crossed with a high-yielding American cultivar called
Brevor 14. Norin
10/Brevor is semi-dwarf (one-half to two-thirds the height of standard
varieties) and produces more stalks and thus more heads of grain per
plant. Also, larger amounts of assimilate were
partitioned into the actual grains, further increasing the yield.
Borlaug crossbred the semi-dwarf Norin 10/Brevor cultivar with his
disease-resistant cultivars to produce wheat varieties that were
adapted to tropical and sub-tropical climates. Borlaug's
new semi-dwarf, disease-resistant varieties, called Pitic 62 and
Penjamo 62, changed the potential yield of spring wheat dramatically.
By 1963, 95% of Mexico's wheat crops used the semi-dwarf varieties
developed by Borlaug. That year, the harvest was six times larger than
in 1944, the year Borlaug arrived in Mexico. Mexico had become fully
self-sufficient in wheat production, and a net exporter of wheat. Four other high yield varieties were also
released, in 1964: Lerma Rojo 64, Siete Cerros, Sonora 64, and Super X. In
1961
to
1962, Borlaug's dwarf spring wheat strains were sent for
multilocation testing in the International Wheat Rust Nursery,
organized by the U.S. Department
of Agriculture. In March 1962, a few of these strains were grown
in the fields of the Indian
Agricultural Research Institute in Pusa, New Delhi, India.
In May 1962, M.S. Swaminathan,
a
member
of IARI's wheat program, requested of Dr. B.P. Pal, Director
of IARI, to arrange for the visit of Borlaug to India and to obtain a
wide range of dwarf wheat seed possessing the Norin 10 dwarfing genes. The
letter was forwarded to the Indian Ministry of Agriculture, which
arranged with the Rockefeller Foundation for Borlaug's visit. In March
1963, the Rockefeller Foundation and the Mexican government sent
Borlaug and Dr. Robert Glenn Anderson to India to continue his work. He
supplied 100 kg (220 lb) of seed from each of the four most
promising strains and 630 promising selections in advanced generations
to the IARI in October 1963, and test plots were subsequently planted at Delhi, Ludhiana, Pant Nagar, Kanpur, Pune and Indore. Anderson stayed as head of the
Rockefeller Foundation Wheat Program in New Delhi until 1975. During
the
mid-1960s, the Indian
subcontinent was
at war, and experiencing widespread famine and starvation, even though
the U.S. was making emergency shipments of millions of tons of grain,
including over one fifth of its total wheat, to the region. The Indian and Pakistani bureaucracies and the region's
cultural opposition to new agricultural techniques
initially prevented Borlaug from fulfilling his desire to immediately
plant the new wheat strains there. By the summer of 1965, the famine
became so acute that the governments stepped in and allowed his
projects to go forward. Biologist Paul R. Ehrlich wrote in his 1968 bestseller The Population
Bomb,
"The battle to feed all of humanity is over ... In the 1970s and
1980s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of
any crash programs embarked upon now." Ehrlich said, "I have yet to
meet anyone familiar with the situation who thinks India will be
self-sufficient in food by 1971," and "India couldn't possibly feed two
hundred million more people by 1980." In
1965,
after
extensive testing, Borlaug's team, under Anderson, began
its effort by importing about 450 tons of Lerma Rojo and Sonora 64
semi-dwarf seed varieties: 250 tons went to Pakistan and 200 to
India. They encountered many obstacles. Their first shipment of wheat
was held up in Mexican customs and so could not be shipped from the
port at Guaymas in time for proper planting. Instead, it was sent via a
30-truck convoy from Mexico to the U.S. port in Los Angeles,
encountering delays at the Mexico - United
States border. Once the convoy entered the U.S., it had to take
a detour, as the U.S. National
Guard had closed
the freeway due to Watts riots in Los Angeles. When the
seeds reached Los Angeles, a Mexican bank refused to honor Pakistan
treasury's payment of US$100,000,
because
the check contained three misspelled words. Still, the seed was
loaded onto a freighter destined for Bombay,
India, and Karachi, Pakistan.
Twelve
hours into the freighter's voyage, war broke out between India
and Pakistan over the Kashmir region. Borlaug received a telegraph from the Pakistani minister
of agriculture, Malik Khuda
Bakhsh Bucha:
"I'm sorry to hear you are having trouble with my check, but I've got
troubles, too. Bombs are falling on my front lawn. Be patient, the
money is in the bank ..."
These
delays prevented Borlaug's group from conducting the germination tests
needed to determine seed quality and proper seeding levels. They
started planting immediately, and often worked in sight of artillery flashes. A week later,
Borlaug discovered that his seeds were germinating at less than half
the normal rate. It
later turned out that the seeds had been damaged in a Mexican warehouse
by over-fumigation with a pesticide. He immediately ordered all
locations to double their seeding rates. The initial yields of Borlaug's crops
were higher than any ever harvested in South
Asia.
The countries subsequently committed to importing large quantities of
both the Lerma Rojo 64 and Sonora 64 varieties. In 1966, India imported
18,000 tons — the largest purchase and import of any seed in the
world at that time. In 1967, Pakistan imported 42,000 tons, and
Turkey 21,000 tons. Pakistan's import, planted on 1.5 million
acres (6,100 km²), produced enough wheat to seed the entire
nation's wheatland the following year. By 1968, when Ehrlich's book was
released, William Gaud of the United
States
Agency for International Development was
calling Borlaug's work a "Green Revolution". High yields led to a
shortage of various utilities — labor to harvest the crops,
bullock carts to haul it to the threshing floor, jute bags,
trucks, rail cars, and grain storage facilities. Some local governments
were forced to close school buildings temporarily to use them for grain
storage. In
Pakistan,
wheat yields nearly doubled, from 4.6 million tons in 1965 to 7.3 million tons
in 1970; Pakistan was self-sufficient in wheat production by 1968. Yields
were over 21 million tons by 2000. In India, yields increased from 12.3
million tons in 1965 to 20.1 million tons in 1970. By 1974, India was
self-sufficient in the production of all cereals. By 2000, India was
harvesting a record 76.4 million tons (2.81 billion bushels)
of wheat. Since the 1960s, food production in both nations has
increased faster than the rate of population growth. Paul Waggoner, of the Connecticut
Agricultural Experiment Station,
calculates that India's use of high-yield farming has prevented 100
million acres (400,000 km²) of virgin land from being
converted into farmland — an area about the size of California,
or
13.6% of the total area of India. The
use of these wheat varieties has also had a
substantial effect on production in six Latin American countries, six countries in
the Near and Middle East, and
several others in Africa. Borlaug's work with wheat led to the
development of high-yield semi-dwarf indica and japonica rice cultivars at the International
Rice
Research Institute, started
by the Ford and Rockefeller Foundations, and at China's Hunan
Rice
Research Institute.
Borlaug's colleagues at the Consultative
Group on International Agricultural Research also
developed and introduced a high-yield variety of rice throughout most
of Asia. Land devoted to the semi-dwarf wheat and rice varieties in
Asia expanded from 200 acres (0.8 km²) in 1965 to over
40 million acres (160,000 km²) in 1970. In 1970, this land
accounted for over 10% of the more productive cereal land in Asia.
For
his
contributions to the world food supply, Borlaug was awarded the Nobel Peace
Prize in
1970. Norwegian officials notified his wife in Mexico City at
4:00 am, but Borlaug had already left for the test fields in the Toluca valley,
about 40 miles (65 km) west of Mexico City. A chauffeur took
her to the fields to inform her husband. According to his daughter,
Jeanie Laube, "My mom said, 'You won the Nobel Peace Prize,' and he
said, 'No, I haven't', ... It took some convincing ... He
thought the whole thing was a hoax". He
was awarded the prize on December 10. In his Nobel Lecture the
following day, he speculated on his award: "When the Nobel Peace Prize
Committee designated me the recipient of the 1970 award for my
contribution to the 'green revolution', they were in effect, I believe,
selecting an individual to symbolize the vital role of agriculture and
food production in a world that is hungry, both for bread and for
peace".
Borlaug
continually advocated increasing crop yields as a means to curb
deforestation. The large role he played in both increasing crop yields
and promoting this view has led to this methodology being called by
agricultural economists the "Borlaug hypothesis", namely that increasing
the productivity of agriculture on the best farmland can help control
deforestation by reducing the demand for new farmland. According to
this view, assuming that global food demand is on the rise, restricting
crop usage to traditional low-yield methods would also require at least
one of the following: the world population to decrease, either
voluntarily or as a result of mass starvations; or the conversion of
forest land into crop land. It is thus argued that high-yield
techniques are ultimately saving ecosystems from destruction. On a
global scale, this view holds strictly true ceteris paribus,
if
deforestation
only occurs in order to increase land for agriculture.
But other land uses exist, such as urban areas, pasture, or fallow, so
further research is necessary to ascertain what land has been converted
for what purposes, in order to determine how true this view remains.
Increased profits from high-yield production may also induce cropland
expansion in any case, although as world food needs decrease, this
expansion may decrease as well. Borlaug's
name
is nearly synonymous with the Green Revolution,
against
which many criticisms have
been mounted over the decades by environmentalists, nutritionists,
progressives, and economists. Throughout his years of research,
Borlaug's programs often faced opposition by people who consider
genetic crossbreeding to be unnatural or to have negative effects. Borlaug's work has been
criticized for bringing large scale
monoculture, input intensive
farming techniques
to
countries that had previously relied on subsistence
farming. These farming techniques
reap large profits for U.S. agribusiness and agrochemical corporations such as Monsanto Company and
have been criticized for widening social inequality in the countries
owing to uneven food distribution while forcing a capitalist agenda of
U.S. corporations onto countries that had undergone land reform.
Other
concerns of his critics and critics of biotechnology in
general include: that the construction of roads in populated
third-world areas could lead to the destruction of wilderness; the
crossing of genetic barriers; the inability of crops to fulfill all
nutritional requirements; the decreased biodiversity from planting a
small number of varieties; the environmental and economic effects of
inorganic fertilizer and pesticides; the amount of herbicide sprayed on
fields of herbicide-resistant crops. Borlaug
dismissed most claims of critics, but did take certain concerns
seriously. He stated that his work has been "a change in the right
direction, but it has not transformed the world into a Utopia". Of environmental lobbyists he stated,
"some of the environmental lobbyists of the Western nations are the salt of the earth, but
many of them are elitists. They've never experienced the physical
sensation of hunger. They do their lobbying from comfortable office
suites in Washington or Brussels.
If they lived just one month amid the misery of the developing world,
as I have for fifty years, they'd be crying out for tractors and
fertilizer and irrigation canals and be outraged that fashionable
elitists back home were trying to deny them these things".
Following
his
retirement,
Borlaug had continued to participate actively in
teaching, research and activism. He spent much of the year based at
CIMMYT in Mexico, conducting research, and four months of the year
serving at Texas A&M
University,
where he had been a distinguished professor of international
agriculture since 1984. In 1999, the university's Board of Regents
named its US$16 million Center for Southern Crop Improvement in honor
of Borlaug. He worked in the building's Heep Center, and taught one
semester each year. In
the
early
1980s, environmental groups that were opposed to Borlaug's
methods campaigned against his planned expansion of efforts into
Africa. They prompted the Rockefeller and Ford Foundations and the World Bank to
stop funding most of his African agriculture projects. Western European
governments were persuaded to stop supplying fertilizer to Africa.
According to David Seckler, former Director General of the International
Water Management Institute,
"the environmental community in the 1980s went crazy pressuring the
donor countries and the big foundations not to support ideas like
inorganic fertilizers for Africa." In 1984, during the Ethiopian famine, Ryoichi
Sasakawa, the chairman of the
Japan Shipbuilding Industry Foundation (now the Nippon
Foundation), contacted the
semi-retired Borlaug, wondering why the methods used in
Asia were not extended to Africa, and hoping Borlaug could help. He
managed to convince Borlaug to help with this new effort, and subsequently founded the Sasakawa
Africa
Association (SAA) to coordinate the project.
The
SAA is a research and extension organization
that aims to increase food production in African countries that are
struggling with food shortages. "I assumed we'd do a few years of
research first," Borlaug later recalled, "but after I saw the terrible
circumstances there, I said, 'Let's just start growing'." Soon, Borlaug and the SAA
had projects in seven countries. Yields of maize and sorghum in developed African
countries doubled between 1983 and 1985. Yields of wheat, cassava,
and cowpeas also increased in these
countries. At present, program
activities are under way in Benin, Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Ghana, Guinea, Mali, Malawi, Mozambique, Nigeria,
Tanzania,
and Uganda.
From
1986 to 2009, Borlaug was the President of the SAA. That year, a joint
venture between The Carter
Center and SAA
was launched called Sasakawa-Global 2000 (SG 2000). The program focuses on
food, population and agricultural policy. Since
then, more than 8 million African, small scale farmers in 15 countries
have been trained in SAA farming techniques, which have helped them to
double or triple grain production. Those
elements
that allowed Borlaug's projects to succeed in India and
Pakistan, such as well-organized economies and transportation and
irrigation systems, are severely lacking throughout Africa, posing
additional obstacles to increasing yields. Because of this, Borlaug's
initial projects were restricted to developed regions of the continent. Despite these setbacks, Borlaug found
encouragement. Visiting Ethiopia in 1994, Jimmy
Carter won Prime Minister Meles
Zenawi's support for a
campaign seeking to aid farmers, using the fertilizer diammonium
phosphate and
Borlaug's methods. The following season, Ethiopia recorded the largest
harvests of major crops in history, with a 32% increase in production,
and a 15% increase in average yield over the previous season. For
Borlaug, the rapid increase in yields suggests that there is still hope
for higher food production throughout sub-Saharan Africa.
The World Food Prize is
an international award recognizing the achievements of individuals who
have advanced human development by improving the quality, quantity or
availability of food in the world. The prize was created in 1986 by
Norman Borlaug, as a way to recognize personal accomplishments, and as
a means of education by using the Prize to establish role models for
others. The first prize was given to Borlaug's former colleague, M.S.
Swaminathan, in 1987, for his work in India. The next year,
Swaminathan used the US$250,000 prize to start the MS Swaminathan
Research Foundation for
research
on sustainable
development. At
the DuPont Agriculture
& Nutrition Media Day held in Des Moines, Iowa,
on September 25, 2000, Borlaug announced the launch of Norman Borlaug
University, an Internet-based learning company for the agriculture and
food industry personnel. The University was unable to expand the
necessary content or customer base, and since late 2001 has been
defunct. The
limited
potential
for land expansion for cultivation worried Borlaug,
who, in March 2005, stated that, "we will have to double the world food
supply by 2050." With 85% of future growth in food production having to
come from lands already in use, he recommends a multidisciplinary
research focus to further increase yields, mainly through increased
crop immunity to large scale diseases, such as the rust fungus, which
affects all cereals but rice. His dream was to "transfer rice immunity
to cereals such as wheat, maize, sorghum and barley, and transfer
bread-wheat proteins (gliadin and glutenin)
to
other cereals, especially rice and maize". Borlaug
believed
that genetic
manipulation of organisms (GMO)
was
the only way to increase food production as the world runs out of
unused arable land.
GMOs
were
not inherently dangerous "because we've been genetically
modifying plants and animals for a long time. Long before we called it
science, people were selecting the best breeds."
According
to Borlaug, "Africa, the former Soviet republics, and the cerrado are
the last frontiers. After they are in use, the world will have no
additional sizable blocks of arable land left to put into production,
unless you are willing to level whole forests, which you should not do.
So, future food production increases will have to come from higher
yields. And though I have no doubt yields will keep going up, whether
they can go up enough to feed the population monster is another matter.
Unless progress with agricultural yields remains very strong, the next
century will experience sheer human misery that, on a numerical scale,
will exceed the worst of everything that has come before". Besides increasing the worldwide food
supply, early in his career Borlaug stated that taking steps to
decrease the rate of population
growth will
also be necessary to prevent food shortages. In his Nobel Lecture of
1970, Borlaug stated, "Most people still fail to comprehend the
magnitude and menace of the 'Population Monster' ... If it
continues to increase at the estimated present rate of two percent a
year, the world population will reach 6.5 billion by the year 2000.
Currently, with each second, or tick of the clock, about 2.2 additional
people are added to the world population. The rhythm of increase will
accelerate to 2.7, 3.3, and 4.0 for each tick of the clock by 1980,
1990, and 2000, respectively, unless man becomes more realistic and
preoccupied about this impending doom. The tick-tock of the clock will
continually grow louder and more menacing each decade. Where will it
all end?" However,
by the 1990s Borlaug had changed his position on population control,
believing it was not necessary. In 2000 he stated: "I now say that the
world has the technology — either available or well advanced in the
research pipeline — to feed on a sustainable basis a population of 10
billion people. The more pertinent question today is whether farmers
and ranchers will be permitted to use this new technology? While the
affluent nations can certainly afford to adopt ultra low-risk
positions, and pay more for food produced by the so-called 'organic'
methods, the one billion chronically undernourished people of the low
income, food-deficit nations cannot." Borlaug
died at the age of 95, on September 12, 2009, in his Dallas home. He died of lymphoma. Borlaug's children released
a statement saying, Prime Minister
of India Manmohan Singh and President of
India Pratibha Patil paid tribute to Borlaug
saying, United
Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) described Borlaug as Kofi Annan,
former Secretary-General
of
the United Nations said, In
1968,
Borlaug received what he considered an especially satisfying
tribute when the people of Ciudad
Obregón,
where some of his earliest experiments were undertaken, named a street
after him. Also in that year, he became a member of the U.S. National
Academy of Sciences. In
1970, he was given an honorary
doctorate by the Agricultural
University of Norway.
In
1970, he was awarded the Nobel Peace
Prize by the Norwegian Nobel
Committee "for
his contributions to the "green revolution" that was having such an
impact on food production particularly in Asia and in Latin America."
In
1975, he was named a Distinguished Fellow of the Iowa Academy of
Science.
In
1980, he was elected honorary member of the Hungarian
Academy of Sciences. In
1984, his name was placed in the National Agricultural Hall of Fame at
the national center in Bonner Springs, Kansas.
Also that year, he was recognized for sustained service to humanity
through outstanding contributions in plant breeding from the Governors
Conference on Agriculture Innovations in Little Rock, Arkansas.
Also
in 1984, he received the Henry G. Bennet Distinguished Service
Award at commencement ceremonies at Oklahoma State
University. He recently received the Charles A.
Black Award for
his contributions to public policy and the public
understanding of science. In
1985, the University of Minnesota named a wing of the new science
building in Borlaug's honor, calling it "Borlaug Hall." In
addition to the Nobel Prize, Borlaug received the 1977 U.S. Presidential
Medal of Freedom, the 2002 Public Welfare Medal from the U.S. National
Academy of Sciences, the 2002 Rotary
International Award
for
World Understanding and Peace, and the 2004 National Medal
of Science. As of January 2004, Borlaug had received 49 honorary
degrees from as
many universities, in 18 countries, the most recent from Dartmouth
College on June 12, 2005, and
was a foreign or
honorary member of 22 international Academies of Sciences. In Iowa and Minnesota, "World Food Day",
October
16,
is referred to as "Norman Borlaug World Food Prize Day".
Throughout the United States, it is referred to as "World Food Prize
Day". The Government of
India, where he is known as the Father of India's Green
Revolution, conferred the Padma Vibhushan,
its second highest civilian award on him in 2006.
Dr.
Borlaug also received the National Medal
of Science, the United States' highest scientific honor, from
U.S. President George W. Bush on February 13, 2006. He
was awarded the Danforth Award for Plant Science by the Donald Danforth
Plant Science Center,
St Louis, Missouri in recognition of his life-long commitment to
increasing global agricultural production through plant science.
On
September
27, 2006, the United States
Senate by
unanimous consent passed the Congressional Tribute to Dr. Norman E.
Borlaug Act of 2006. The act authorizes that Borlaug be awarded
America's highest civilian award, the Congressional
Gold Medal.
On December 6, 2006, the House of Representatives passed the measure by
voice vote. President George Bush signed the bill into law on December
14, 2006, and it became Public Law Number 109–395.
According
to
the act, "the number of lives Dr. Borlaug has saved [is]
more than a billion people". The act authorizes the Secretary of the
Treasury to strike and sell duplicates of the medal in bronze. He was
presented with the medal on July 17, 2007. Borlaug was a foreign fellow of the Bangladesh
Academy
of Sciences. |