Norman Borlaug, The Man Who Saved a Billion Lives, is the greatest human who ever lived.
As a biologist, humanitarian, and activist, Borlaug dedicated his life to agricultural advances that could effectively end world hunger.
Today, propaganda and ignorance threaten to destroy his legacy. Worse, they have the future potential to destroy society as we know it.
THE BEGINNING
Norman Borlaug was born in 1914 on his grandparents’ farm in the Norwegian-American community of Saude. As soon as he was physically able, he worked on the property, while attaining his early education in a one-room rural school house.
He was a keen athlete, especially in wrestling.
“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.”
His talent allowed him access to the National Youth Administration program, designed during the Great Depression to give younger Americans access to jobs and education. Borlaug enrolled at the University of Minnesota aged 19, and though he failed the entrance exam, he was accepted into the newly established General College. After only half a year, he transferred to the Culture of Agriculture’s forestry program.
Later, he suspended his education to take a range of jobs. One of these saw him working with the unemployed, many of whom were starving. Seeing how these people completely changed after receiving food “…left scars on me,” Borlaug would later observe.
Graduating with a Bachelor of Science in forestry in 1937, but not before he attended a lecture by Sigma Xi plant pathologist Elvin C. Stakman. Stakman’s research into breeding methods that made plants resistant to a certain parasite intrigued Borlaug, inspiring his later pursuits.
He worked for the U.S. Forestry Service for a year before budget cuts made him redundant. Borlaug reached out to Stakman, who suggested he study plant pathology. Borlaug returned to the University of Minnesota, completing a master of science degree in 1940 and a PhD in plant pathology and genetics by 1942.
MEXICAN YIELD
Over the next two years, Borlaug worked as a microbiologist researching fungicides, but the attack on Pearl Harbor in late-1941 saw the lab converted to support the US armed forces. He worked to create salt water-resistant adhesives, camouflage, and DDT, the noxious chemical that was designed to combat malaria, but resulted in massive environmental damage when it was later used as an insecticide on American crops.
Following his wartime service, Borlaug travelled to Mexico to head the newly-implemented Cooperative Wheat Research and Production Program (CWRPP), designed to augment industrial and economic growth in cooperation with the Mexican government and Rockefeller Foundation.
The first few years were difficult. Internally, Borlaug’s team was untrained, and the equipment outdated. Externally, the project was met with hostility from farmers who had lost whole crops due to stem rust fungus.
“It often appeared to me that I had made a dreadful mistake in accepting the position in Mexico,” Borlaug noted in his book, Norman Borlaug on World Hunger.
He spent the next decade breeding disease-resistant wheat, creating 6000 unique strains of crop. Borlaug’s methods went against industry principles, and he clashed with his boss. He resigned, but Stakman came to his aid, and saw that Borlaug’s ‘shuttle breeding’ concept was put into place.
It was a spectacular success. The crop seeds were transferred 1000km across the country twice a year to make use of Mexico’s two growing seasons, resulting in wheat that could grow in a range of conditions. Before shuttle breeding, biological theory considered this an impossibility.
By the end of Borlaug’s 16-year role in the program, he had developed two semi-dwarf, disease-resistant crops that was used by 95% of farmers by 1963. That same year, yields were six times larger than those harvested when Borlaug first joined CWRPP. The country had become, for the first time, completely self-sufficient in its wheat production, and a net exporter of the crop.
During this period, Borlaug developed humanitarian goals.
“Food is the moral right of all who are born in this world.”
He developed a strain of wheat for cereal that would be produced for distribution in countries plagued by starvation.
Borlaug shifted his focus to combat the ‘Population Monster’, the environmental and social issues stemming from the lack of viable agricultural land, especially in the developing world.
THE GREEN REVOLUTION
In 1963, Borlaug was invited to India. He brought with him 100kg of seed, and set up six test plots across the country. This was expanded to 550 tonnes in 1965, in response to food shortages amidst subcontinental crises.
That decade, renowned biologist Paul R. Ehrlich painted a grim portrait of the country’s future.
“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. I have yet to meet anyone familiar with the situation who thinks India will be self-sufficient in food by 1971.”
“India couldn’t possibly feed two hundred million more people by 1980.”
It certainly seemed to be the case. Borlaug faced as many problems in India as he had in Mexico: the first shipment of seeds was held up in Mexican customs, took a detour via truck through the US during the Watts riots in LA, was held up once again by a few spelling errors on the shipment cheque, and was finally boarded onto a boat just as war broke out between India and Pakistan – the two countries for which the seeds were destined.
Borlaug and his team hurried to plant the seeds in time, watching artillery drop not so far from the fields in which they worked. A week later, Borlaug realised the seeds had been damaged in transit, and were germinating at half the expected rate. He didn’t give up; his work ethic was far too resolute to even consider it. He called for the doubling of planting rates.
The initial yield was unprecedented in the South Asian region. The following year, 1966, India agreed to import the largest purchase of seed in history: 18,000 tonnes. It was nothing compared to figures in 1967, when Pakistan imported 42,000 tonnes, and Turkey 21,000 tonnes. Pakistan’s 1.5 million acre plantation was enough to support the entire nation.
It was the start of the ‘Green Revolution’, and it was all thanks to Norman Borlaug. There were unprecedented employment opportunities, and so much harvested wheat that the government was forced to close some schools in order to store it.
By 1970, Pakistan’s wheat yield had doubled. India’s rose by 66%. By the mid-70s, both countries were self-sufficient in wheat production, and production has increased faster than population growth. 100 million acres of virgin land were saved from being converted to farmland thanks to the rate at which Borlaug’s crops grew.
He had saved South Asia from ruin.
ELITIST REACTION
Borlaug received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970. Officials informed his wife, who took a chauffeur to where he was working in a remote valley outside of Mexico City.
“You won the Nobel Peace Prize,” she told him.
“No, I haven’t.”
“He thought the whole thing was a hoax,” recalled his daughter in 2002.
In his speech, Borlaug said “The green revolution has won a temporary success in man’s war against hunger and deprivation; it has given man a breathing space. If fully implemented, the revolution can provide sufficient food for sustenance during the next three decades. But the frightening power of human reproduction must also be curbed; otherwise the success of the green revolution will be ephemeral only. Most people still fail to comprehend the magnitude and menace of the “Population Monster”…Since man is potentially a rational being, however, I am confident that within the next two decades he will recognize the self-destructive course he steers along the road of irresponsible population growth…”
Little could he have predicted the reaction to his project’s expansion into Africa. It wasn’t the continent that revolted against the concept, but environmental groups around Europe and the US. Their campaigns saw funding and materials revoked, including these provided by the Rockefeller Centre, which Borlaug had first worked with nearly 40 years ago.
During the Ethiopian famine of 1984, the chairman of the Japan Shipbuilding Industry Foundation formed the Sasakawa African Association in order to allow Borlaug to continue his work.
Borlaug was shocked by what he saw upon entering the nation. Instead of spending a few years researching, he decided to start plating seeds immediately.
The poor conditions meant the association could only implement the project in developed countries, but he forged ahead.
FOR FUTURE’S SAKE
In 1986, Borlaug established the World Food Prize to recognise agricultural accomplishments, and to establish role models in the industry. The first prize was given to M. S. Swaminathan, the man who had originally campaigned for Borlaug to tour India.
Nearly a decade later, Ethiopia recorded the highest harvest of a major crop ever, with a 32% increase in production and 15% increase in average yield.
Still, Borlaug’s work was barraged by criticism from those who feared – with no actual proof – that genetically modified food was a genuine threat to the world’s food supply. Borlaug responded in a 2000 publication (written when he was 96) entitled Ending World Hunger: The Promise of Biotechnology and the Threat of Antiscience Zealtory.
“GM crops are as natural and safe as today’s bread wheat, opined Dr. Borlaug, who also reminded agricultural scientists of their moral obligation to stand up to the antiscience crowd and warn policy makers that global food insecurity will not disappear without this new technology and ignoring this reality global food insecurity would make future solutions all the more difficult to achieve,” wrote authors Kevin Rozwadowski and Sateesh Kagale in a 2010 review of the report.
Norman Borlaug died in 2009, at the age of 95. He never stopped fighting against world hunger and the threat of continuing population growth.
“Man can and must prevent the tragedy of famine in the future instead of merely trying with pious regret to salvage the human wreckage of the famine, as he has so often done in the past.”
Borlaug’s call to action is more important now than ever. The naysayers continue to threaten his great work, which is estimated to have saved a billion lives worldwide.
It is time for every one of us to stand up and ensure his legacy lives on.