The Prairie Star: Montana Ag Newspaper

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The world's agricultural industry suffered a great loss on Sept. 12 with the death of Norman Ernest Borlaug at the age of 95. Known as the “Father of the Green Revolution,” Borlaug is often credited with saving over a billion people from starvation because of his research work in many facets of agriculture.

Born in Cresco, Iowa, he received his Ph.D. degree in plant pathology and genetics from the University of Minnesota in 1942. Two years later he was leading a wheat research program in Mexico, the International Agricultural Research's International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (Centro Internactional de Mejoramiento de Maiz y Trigo) or CIMMYT. This research organization remains very active today and is one of the lead organizations seeking to breed wheat varieties that will show resistance to the Ug-99 wheat rust. Borlaug continued to be involved in plant research at CIMMYT until his death.

Anyone who has grown wheat or eaten food products containing wheat, which is probably the entire world's population, owes a debt of gratitude to Borlaug, since he was responsible for the introduction of semi-dwarf wheat.

As an example of the importance of this genetic work, by 1963, 95 percent of Mexico's wheat fields were planted to semi-dwarf wheat varieties. That year, the wheat harvest was six times larger than in 1944, the year Borlaug arrived in Mexico. During that time, Mexico had become self-sufficient in wheat production and had become a net exporter of that commodity.

Over time, his genetic process was applied to rice, resulting in higher-yielding varieties that were grown throughout Asia. For this contribution to the world supply, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970. During his lecture at the time of receiving the award he said, “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.”

His theory behind the “green revolution” basically centered on the fact that increasing the productivity of agriculture on the best farmland can help control deforestation by reducing the demand for new farm land, but also increasing the food supply of the world. But his methods weren't without critics, especially in those camps that felt that genetic crossbreeding was unnatural and had negative effects, which included large-scale, monoculture farming operations that required input-intensive farming techniques.

Borlaug refuted those claims by saying the green revolution was a change in the right direction. Referring to the environmental lobbyists he once remarked, “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 50 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.”

Instead, he worried about the world's growing need for food. In March 2005, he stated, “We will have to double the world food supply by 2050.” He estimated that 85 percent of that needed increase would need to come from lands already in production, and urged a multidisciplinary research focus to increase yields that would come mainly from increased crop immunity to large-scale diseases.

“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,” he warned.

For his work in agriculture, Borlaug was one of only five people to have won the Nobel Peace Prize, the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Congressional Gold Medal.

No doubt, Norman Borlaug served not only agriculture, but the world population in general, well. As we discuss the merits of bio-technology, concerns over global warming, and the still expanding world population, which is growing by over 4 people at each tick of the clock, we need to keep a focus on the work Borlaug accomplished during his long career.

Comments »

Paul Johnson wrote on Sep 26, 2009 12:35 PM:

" Bravo! Borlaug proved that methodically working to solve problems IS the way we will avoid the problems that will be unavoidable if don't try to increase yields on our best-performing farmland. "

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