Background
Norman Ernest Borlaug was born on March 25, 1914, near Cresco, Iowa, in the part of that state known as "little Norway. "
agronomist humanitarian scientist
Norman Ernest Borlaug was born on March 25, 1914, near Cresco, Iowa, in the part of that state known as "little Norway. "
Norman's Norwegian immigrant parents were farmers, but when he graduated from high school in 1932 he left to attend the University of Minnesota. He received a Bachelor of Science degree in 1937, majoring in forestry. His graduate work in plant pathology at Minnesota earned him a Master of Science degree in 1940 and a Ph. D. in 1941. In 1970, he was given an honorary doctorate by the Agricultural University of Norway.
Having received his doctorate, Borlaug became an assistant professor at Minnesota in 1942, but left the following year to work as a biochemist with the chemical firm of E. I. du Pont de Nemours. In 1944 he joined a new team of scientists sponsored by the Rockefeller Foundation to "export the United States agricultural revolution to Mexico. " Their work resulted in the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) whose goal was the development of varieties of cereal grains (wheat, rice, and corn) that would produce higher yields in the developing countries of the world.
The agricultural revolution in the United States was based largely on the massive introduction of new varieties of plants and animals, new machinery, and the use of chemical fertilizers, pesticides, and irrigation, all supported by a massive reorganization of agribusiness and rural life. In 1944, Borlaug and his colleagues found in Mexico exhausted fields, sometimes dating back to Aztec times. Their initial aim was to develop a variety of wheat which was adaptable to many different areas, resistant to a particular disease called rust, and responsive to the application of fertilizers.
The wheat used by Mexican farmers had long stems, naturally evolved over the ages in an effort to rise above the shade of surrounding weeds. When the yield of this wheat was increased, the heavy heads bent the thin stems over, a problem called "lodging" by farmers. Using two experimental plots, one in the north of Mexico and the other near Mexico City, Borlaug and the CIMMYT team drew upon Japanese short-stemmed wheat and developed a HYV (high yielding variety) that greatly increased production.
The success of the Rockefeller team with wheat and later rice led to the enthusiastic proclamation of a "Green Revolution, " the notion that world hunger could be solved, at least in the short run, by the adoption of these new varieties of grains and the cultivation methods that would allow them to work their miracles. Borlaug became much sought after as a consultant by India, Pakistan, Tunisia, Morocco, Afghanistan, and similar countries with large populations and small crop yields. In 1970 the work of CIMMYT was recognized when Borlaug was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo. He was the 15th American to win the prize, but it was noted at the time that it was significant that he was a scientist, rather than a politician or statesman.
Borlaug remained a researcher at the Mexican experiment station of CIMMYT until 1960 when he also became the associate director assigned to the Inter-American Food Crop Program of the Rockefeller Foundation. In 1964 he was made director of the wheat research and production program of CIMMYT and, that same year, associate director of the Rockefeller Foundation. He retired in 1983 but remained as a consultant. In 1984 he completed a tour of Latin America, Africa, and Asia, using his knowledge and prestige to press for adoption of CIMMYT's new hybrid corn. This variety, like the earlier ones of wheat and rice, was bred specifically to maximize the production of maize in those parts of the world where it remained the most important cereal crop.
Over his long career Borlaug saw his Green Revolution go through periods of vast praise and harsh criticism. Initially, when applied carefully to the most suitable lands (especially lands easily irrigated), crop increases were spectacular. By the mid-1970s about 90 percent of Mexico's wheat crop was made up of HYVs, and in Asia and North Africa 35 percent of the wheat and 20 percent of the rice was HYV. At first, crop yields were up to 400 percent larger than with traditional varieties, but within a few years yields had dipped by nearly half. In part this was caused by bad weather, but energy prices were driving up the cost of fertilizers (so that less was used), and pests were finding the new cultivation methods to their advantage. Because they were both energy and labor intensive, the new crop varieties crowded out small farmers who could not afford to raise them. It was even charged that crop innovations made social conflict more certain by widening the gap between the rich and the poor farmers of the world. During the 1980s environmentalists criticized Borlaug's high-yield dependence on inorganic fertilizers and effectively pressured donor countries and philanthropic organizations to back away from such programs in Africa. Borlaug responded by saying, "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."
Borlaug was lured out of retirement in 1984 by Japanese philanthropist Ryoichi Sasakawa who, along with former president Jimmy Carter, wanted to improve agricultural production in Africa. Borlaug's association with Sasakawa and Carter produced the Sasakawa-Global 2000 project. Although environmentalists still opposed his methods, yields of corn, wheat, cassava, sorghum, and cow peas were greatly increased in Ethiopia, Ghana, Nigeria, Tanzania, and Togo. During the 1995-96 season, Ethiopia recorded the greatest harvest in its history. Borlaug even made headway in Sudan, near the dry Sahel, until project efforts there were terminated in 1992 with the onset of civil war.
Borlaug continued to lead an active life by dividing his time between the CIMMYT where he advised young scientists, Texas A&M where he tought international agriculture, and the Sasakawa-Global 2000 projects that operated in 12 African nations.
Borlaug was often called "the father of the Green Revolution", and is credited with saving over a billion people worldwide from starvation.
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 1974, he was awarded a Peace Medal (in the form of a dove, carrying a wheat ear in its beak) by Haryana Agricultural University, Hisar, India. In 1980, he received the S. Roger Horchow Award for Greatest Public Service by a Private Citizen, an award given out annually by Jefferson Awards. In 1986, Borlaug was inducted into the Scandinavian-American Hall of Fame during Norsk Høstfest.
The Borlaug Dialogue (Norman E. Borlaug International Symposium) is named in his honour.
In 2012, a new elementary school in the Iowa City, IA school district opened, called "Norman Borlaug Elementary".
On 19 August 2013, his statue was unveiled inside the ICAR's NASC Complex at New Delhi, India.
On 25 March 2014, a statue of Borlaug at the United States Capitol was unveiled in a ceremony on the 100th anniversary of his birth. This statue replaces the statue of James Harlan as one of the two statues given to the National Statuary Hall Collection by the state of Iowa.
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Quotations:
"You can't build a peaceful world on empty stomachs and human misery. "
"There can be no permanent progress in the battle against hunger until the agencies that fight for increased food production and those that fight for population control unite in a common effort. "
"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 was elected a Foreign Member of the Royal Society (ForMemRS) in 1987. He was also a foreign fellow of the Bangladesh Academy of Sciences.
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 1937 Norman married Margaret G. Gibson.
