Borlaug, Father of Green Revolution, Dies
FrontLines - October 2009
Norman Borlaug, an Iowa farmer who created high yielding
wheat varieties that saved hundreds of millions of people from starvation, died Sept. 12. He was 95.
Winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970 for his discoveries,
Borlaug worked well into the final months of his life seeking
to improve wheat as well as potato and other food crops.
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Norman Borlaug
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Supported by USAID and other donors, he conducted pioneering work beginning in the 1940s at a research center
outside Mexico City. The Rockefeller Foundation and the Mexican government also supported
his work.
Borlaug, who studied at the University of Minnesota and earned a PhD in plant disease, knew that adding fertilizer to wheat crops would vastly
.increase their yield, but that their stalks would bend and break under the weight of the grain.
So he crossed high yielding wheat with a short stem variety and found it could hold up the enormous heads of grain.
Research on rice later produced short-stemmed varieties with double
and triple the yield of grain.
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"Norman Borlaug was truly a citizen of the world, and the world has been his beneficiary." |
"USAID mourns the passing of one of the giants of international
development," USAID Acting Administrator Alonzo Fulgham said in a statement.
It was former USAID Administrator William Gaud who, in 1968, termed Borlaug’s breakthrough work the "Green Revolution."
"USAID is proud to have been one of the first foreign assistance agencies that provided
financial support…to advance the important work of Dr. Borlaug and his colleagues,"
Fulgham said.
"Few individuals have played such an important role for the benefit of so many millions
of people in the developing
world," he added. "Norman Borlaug was truly a citizen of the world, and the world has been his beneficiary."
Despite his numerous achievements, Borlaug did not live to see the goal he worked towards in the last two decades of his life—a Green Revolution for Africa based on higher yielding potato and other tuber crops that would be resistant to diseases. He also spoke of the need to build roads into the rural areas of Africa so that fertilizer could be delivered cheaply. He noted that the amount of fertilizer used on crops was lowest in Africa and so were the yields per acre.
In the early 1960s, however, Borlaug’s new wheat increased Mexico’s yields by 600 percent.
A short time later, in the mid-1960s, famine stalked the Indian subcontinent and Borlaug tried to persuade India to try his wheat. But Indian agriculture officials said India’s traditional farming methods were best suited for the country,
Borlaug said during an interview in the early 1990s. |
MEASURING WHEAT: At the wheat and corn research institute near Mexico City where Norman Borlaug created high-yielding miracle wheat in the 1960s, workers still cultivate new varieties of wheat to improve hardiness, yield, drought resistance, and other traits that could mean more food for millions around the world.
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So he went to Pakistan and persuaded the military ruler Ayub Khan to order a shipload of seed for widespread planting.
Only then did Indian agriculture officials decide to try the new seed, but they refused to build the necessary fertilizer factories.
"I walked into the minister’s office and told him that if he did not build those factories I would summon the Delhi press corps and tell them he was killing the Green Revolution," Borlaug recalled with a face reflecting glee as well as steely determination to stand up to the senior official.
"Next day the newspapers were slipped under my hotel door and they all said that the minister decided to build those fertilizer factories.
"You have to hold their feet to the fire," he said.
Borlaug constantly urged politicians to increase foreign assistance to poor countries, especially aid that helped poor farmers increase production.
At the Mexico agriculture center, Borlaug insisted on training agriculture researchers from developing countries so that a legacy of research would continue.
In 2004, Borlaug delivered the first George C. Marshall Lecture established by USAID to honor development pioneers. At that time he noted that 56 percent of countries with the highest levels of hunger were experiencing civil conflict.
A spokeswoman for Texas A&M University, where Borlaug had served on the faculty
since 1984, said he died from cancer
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