Cosmos contributing editor Elizabeth Finkel, pictured with Norman Borlaug earlier this year.
Credit: Elizabeth Finkel
SYDNEY: Since his death on Saturday, reports of Norman Borlaug's passing have graced the world's news headlines. But few of this generation will be familiar with his name or the many millions of lives he saved.
Borlaug was the father of the Green Revolution which ushered in a new era of highly productive agriculture. By freeing people from imminent starvation, it set countries like Mexico, China and India on the road to development.
His legacy of high-yielding crops brought in an era of unparalleled cheap food for the entire world. In 1970, Borlaug was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize and credited with having saved more lives than any other person in history.
Six times the yield
Borlaug's early years fated him for his life journey. He grew up in a small Norwegian immigrant community in rural Iowa. Agriculture was the backbone of a generally happy and comfortable existence. But he knew hunger from his university days during the Great Depression.
He originally qualified as a forester but early on became captivated by the diseases of plants particularly, a very shifty fungus known as rust.
It was as a rust expert that in 1944 he was recruited to a project aimed at helping Mexico improve its agricultural output. The project was a joint initiative of the philanthropic Rockefeller Foundation and the Mexican government.
It took over a decade but Borlaug bred a new generation of wheat that raised productivity by over 600%. Nothing like it has ever been seen before or since. Mexico went from being unable to feed itself to a net exporter of wheat.
Superwheat
Borlaug's superwheat rested on two breakthroughs. One was breeding dwarf wheat that put its resources into the grain rather than the stalk, and was sturdy enough not to topple over in the wind. Today the descendants of that dwarf wheat stretch across the world's fields from Australia to Azerbajan.
The other breakthrough was breeding rust-resistance into the wheat. Having helped Mexico take its first steps out of a subsistence economy, Borlaug turned his attention to Pakistan and India.
He had already laid the groundwork for these countries by training many of their young agronomists at a kind of United Nations of agriculture that he helped create in Sonora, Mexico. Still it was no easy matter to introduce the new varieties and get beyond the natural and political obstacles.
Borlaug's famous bull-headed tenacity ploughed through. His wheat varieties averted famines in Pakistan and India. Malthusian prophecies that India's population growth would outstrip its ability to feed itself, did not come to pass.
Notwithstanding his numerous prizes, including the U.S. Presidential Medal of Freedom, the U.S. National Medal of Science and the U.S. Congressional Gold Medal, Borlaug never rested on his laurels.
At age 90, he witnessed once again the rising of the rust monster threatening wheat across Africa and Asia. He galvanised the world community to fight it by establishing the Borlaug Global Rust Initiative (see Black harvest: the battle against wheat rust).
Pragmatic humanism
Borlaug also recognised that his wheat breeds had their limitations. Their superior yields were highly dependent on ample fertiliser and water - resources that that were more available in the 1950's than they are now. He urged the next generation of breeders to find sustainable solutions coining sayings like "more crop per drop."
Till his last days Borlaug's example of pragmatic humanism, inspired all around him. Thomas Lumpkin, the director General of CIMMYT (International Maize and Wheat Improvement Centre), in Mexico, where Borlaug worked, said he remembered Borlaug once saying: "I personally cannot live comfortably in the midst of abject hunger and poverty and human misery."
"Today we stand bereft of Borlaug's physical presence, but not of his spirit or ideals," said Lumpkin. "Millions of small-scale farmers in developing countries today still practice low-input, subsistence agriculture, condemning them and their families to lives of poverty."
"They typically spend at least 70% of their income on food, and most are at risk of being malnourished. The world cannot be at peace until these people are helped to feed themselves and escape poverty."
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