Norman Borlaug, usually credited with starting the “Green Revolution,” which meant in its day the creation of new crop plants that were hardier in extreme weather conditions and resistant to fungal and insect pests, and often more nourishing than their predecessors, was decorated with the Congressional Gold Medal yesterday in Washington, D.C.
I did not realize he was still alive — he is 93 years old.
The Dallas Morning News reported:
Past Congressional Gold Medals had gone to the likes of George Washington, Thomas Edison, Martin Luther King Jr. and Mother Teresa.
Tuesday’s honoree, Texas A&M University professor Norman Borlaug, is credited with ushering in the “Green Revolution” in the 1960s and saving more than a billion lives by developing higher-yielding, disease-resistant varieties of wheat.
Borlaug’s brief remarks suggest it would be interesting to see a longer interview with him, especially about world food and nutrition issues, today. Is he still living in College Station? Are there any historians at Texas A&M or a local high school, or one of Texas’ newspapers, who can do the interview?
Dr. Borlaug urged scientists and public officials to continue his efforts to grow food rather than radical ideologies, especially in Africa. “Hunger, poverty and misery are very fertile soil for planting all kinds of ‘isms’ including terrorism,” he said.
Dr. Borlaug won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1963 and was awarded a Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1977.
Millard Fillmore's Bathtub 
[…] applied to serious matters such as increasing crop yields and the “green revolution” of Norman Borlaug, in order to feed humanity (a task we still have yet to achieve), or to figuring out the […]
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[…] I urged local newspapers to track down Norman Borlaug — oops! Turns out he’s in my town. The Dallas Morning News features a story on […]
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I accidentally discovered that I still had a link to Shiva’s lecture. There is both the audio and the transcript.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/reith2000/lecture5.shtml
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Since you’re so keen to hear from Borlaug, here’s what he had to say in 1972 about the coming DDT ban:
“Dr. Norman E. Borlaug, the U.S. scientist who won the 1970 Nobel Peace Prize for his “green revolution” work in Mexico, said a U.S. ban on DDT would make his life’s work a mockery.
“’I have spent my life working with the nations of the world to help feed themselves,’ Borlaug said. ‘I know how they will react if we terminate uses of DDT in this country and, in effect, label it poison.’”
“’If it is not good enough for your purposes, they will reason, then it shouldn’t be used in our countries.’”
http://www.newspaperarchive.com/PdfViewer.aspx?img=17461182
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And wouldn’t you love to hear Borlaug’s views on those programs now? And his views of critics?
Somebody oughtta line him up for an interview on exactly those issues. I’d also love to hear Borlaug’s view of Texas’s penchant for short-shrifting evolution in public school classrooms, whether his views have changed on population growth and how, his views on genetically modified crops, European farm policies, and big agriculture in America.
And I’ll bet he’s got other ideas that would be worth listening to.
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I have posted on this in another blog. Not everyone agrees on the “benefits” of Borlaug’s “Green Revolution”. Vandana Shiva for example.
http://livingheritage.org/green-revolution.htm
“In 1970, Norman Borlaug was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his work in developing high-yielding varieties (HYVs) of wheat. The “Green Revolution”, launched by Borlaug’s “miracle seeds”, is often credited with having transformed India from “a begging bowl to a bread basket.”, and the Punjab is frequently cited as the Green Revolution’s most celebrated success story.’ Yet, far from bringing prosperity, two decades of the Green Revolution have left the Punjab riddled with discontent and violence. Instead of abundance, the Punjab is beset with diseased soils, pest-infested crops, waterlogged deserts and indebted and discontented farmers. Instead of peace, the Punjab has inherited conflict and violence.
It has often been argued that the Green Revolution provided the only way in which India (and, indeed, the rest of the Third World) could have increased food availability. Yet, until the 1960s, India was successfully pursuing an agricultural development policy based on strengthening the ecological base of agriculture and the self-reliance of peasants. Land reform was viewed as a political necessity and, following independence, most states initiated measures to secure tenure for tenant cultivators, to fix reasonable rents and to abolish the zamindari (landlord) system. Ceilings on land holdings were also introduced. In 1951, at a seminar organized by the Ministry of Agriculture, a detailed farming strategy—the “land transformation” programme — was put forward. The strategy recognized the need to plan from the bottom, to consider every individual village and sometimes every individual field. The programme achieved major successes. Indeed, the rate of growth of total crop production was higher during this period than in the years following the introduction of the Green Revolution.
However, while Indian scientists and policy makers were working out self-reliant and ecologically sound alternatives for the regeneration of agriculture in India, another vision of agricultural development was taking shape within the international aid agencies and large US foundations. Alarmed by growing peasant unrest in the newly independent countries of Asia, agencies like the World Bank, the Rockefeller and Ford Foundations, the US Agency for International Development and others looked towards the intensification of agriculture as a means of “stabilizing” the countryside – and in particular of defusing the call for a wider redistribution of land and other resources. Above all, the US wished to avoid other Asian countries’ following in the revolutionary footsteps of China. In 1961, the Ford Foundation thus launched its Intensive Agricultural Development Programme in India, intended to “release” Indian agriculture from “the shackles of the past” through the introduction of modern intensive chemical farming.”
A few years ago she gave a wonderful lecture on the BBC’s Reith Lectures series. I don’t know if it is still available, but worth looking up if it is. Also, I highly recommend those Reith Lectures, which cover myriad subjects.
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