Dr Norman Borlaug (1914-2009) Requiescat In Pace

Preamble
Today, I am going to talk about a revolutionary in Agriculture. He took on the hungry world, waved hand magic wand, and saved over a billion lives. He is known as the father of the Green Revolution and won the Presidential Medal of Freedom, Congressional Gold Medal and also a recipient of the Padma Vibhushan, India's second-highest civilian honor. And yes, he was also awarded the Nobel Prize - in Peace! He left us untimely with millions still to be fed on 12 September 2009 at an age of 95 years.

Prologue
India. 1960s. The last vestiges of the British Empire have left and all political power are transferred to the common man of India making India into a Republic. But the Republic needs to be fed. It just cannot live on borrowed food. The Republic was on a "ship to mouth subsistence" and this was unsustainable. What could it do? Invest in mechanized farming, fertilizers or other capital intensive practices. The Republic was poor. It could not proceed on these costly lines. It needed a revolutionary. Someone who could think out of the box, wave a magic wand to feed its teeming millions....

Today, I would share with you the story of this extraordinary revolutionary agriculturist who is reported to have saved a billion lives and his fundamental philosophical position - - Dr Norman Borlaug.

Early Life
Dr Norman Borlaug was born on 25 March 1914 at Soude near Cresco, Iowa. At a young age, he was influenced my his grand-father who told him to "You're wiser to fill your head now if you want to fill your belly later on." Armed with a depression era program he joined the University of Minnesota where he transferred to College of Agriculture's forestry program.

During his young days, two incidents changed his life.

First, working to pay for his school, he was a leader in Civilian Conservation Corps, working with the unemployed on U.S. federal projects. Here he saw hunger. The men under his charge, many 17 and 18 years old, were starving. "At the camps they were able to recover some semblance of health and self-confidence,". He said in a later interview, "I saw how food changed them...All of this left scars on me."

His second incident was at a talk by E. Charles Stakman, a renowned plant pathologist from the University of Minnesota. It was titled "These Shifty Little Enemies that Destroy our Food Crops". Stakman studied the movement of rust spores - a parasite - that had devastated wheat, oat and barley production across the United States. He had discovered that special plant breeding methods created plants resistant to rust. When Borlaug got laid off from the Forest Service due to budget cuts, he went to do Ph.D in plant pathology & genetics under the same Stakman. He was awarded Ph.D in 1942.

There are two very key observations to make here. His empathy towards the problems of hunger. And, his understanding that plants can be bred to develop strains that fights the parasites. Or to extend - special plant breeds that solves the problem.

Miracle in Mexico
In 1940, then US Vice President Henry Wallace received a request by Mexican government officials. The Mexicans needed help with agrarian reforms. They had low yields and they felt that their agro-industry is left behind. The Cooperative Mexican Agricultural Program was inaugurated in 1943 and its charter was to increase the yield in corn, wheat and beans. Dr Borlaug arrived in 1944 with his family.

Mexico then had tall wheat plants. While tall and thin plants were good as the reached out to sunlight more, it had the problem that the wheat grains pulled down the weak stalkings . Furthermore, a new seed introduced by the scientists led to disastrous crops. No farmer in the right mind would consider any scientific experimentation after three years of disastrous crops. It is at this theater Dr Borlaug entered the scene!

He came to an abandoned research station in Northern Mexico, convinced the area farmers in broken Spanish and rented a tractor to plant some experimental crop. More out of amusement than pity they lent him a small tractor. That is how he started his work. The first thing he introduced was "shuttle breeding system" where the crop for summer in the central highlands would be taken north to plant in the winter in the Yaqui valley. This way he, at least on the experimental basis, created two back to back crop cycles per year.

A dramatic progress came when he introduced and crossbred the Japanese short stalk wheat plant. When the existing long stalk wheat were given more fertilizers it became taller, made more wheat grains and the weight pulled it down. The new dwarf varieties were bred for shorter and stronger stalks that could support more seed heads. The yields tripled.

We see another application of the basic philosophy of his work. Here he implemented special breeding techniques to produce a plant breed that could generate more yield and could "take care of itself" by short thick stalk. In 1944 when he arrived, Mexico were importing 60% of its food. In 1956 it was self-sufficient.

This leads to what we know as Borlaug's hypothesis - "Increasing the productivity of agriculture on the best farmland can help control deforestation by reducing the demand for new farmland.

Indian "Green" Revolution
In the 1960s situation in the Indian Subcontinent was grim. The specter of famine loom large. The memories of the 1943 famine loom large. Enter Dr Norman Borlaug self-made, sun-burnt American from the farmland of Iowa. What he had pulled off in experiments in Mexico was a miracle, that if successfully applied in India, would fill its granaries to overflow. Such was the hope when then Agriculture Minister Dr. Swaminathan invited him over in 1965. Punjab was selected as the testing ground and after the initial success, India imported 18 thousand metric tons of seed. The result. The harvest in 1968 - merely three years after the introduction the boom was so great that the underlying infrastructure - to carts, trucks, railway wagons and graineries could not handle the output.

Looking at the success of short-stalk wheat plant. It went forward with the short-stalk rice plant - known in India as IR8. In 1968, an Indian agronomist S.K. De Datta noted that IR8 produced 5 tons per hectare with no fertilizers and 10 under optimal conditions. Compare this to 2tonnes/hectare which was the yield earlier.

Some numbers would make this clearer. In 1961 India's population was 451million producing 87 million tons of grain. In 2001 it had 1 billion people producing 231million tonnes. Population increased 2.2 times but grains increased 2.7 times. In the 1970s, rice cost about $550 a ton; in 2001, it cost under $200 a ton. India became one of the world's most successful rice producers, and is now a major rice exporter, shipping nearly 4.5 million tons in 2006. All this with only an increase of 6% of farmland. It was truly a Green Revolution!

There is an economic angle to it. Dr Borlaug convinced the Indian govt. (a) to provide easy credit to farmers before harvest; (b) fertilizers and (c) fair price to farmers for their produce.

The agricultural philosophy - that short stalk high yield disease resistant plants is the way to go - fully nurtured here. What started at the lecture of Stakman - breeding plants resistant to disease evolved to breeding plants with high yields.

The Nobel Peace Prize
The Nobel committee had a problem. Such a person must be felicitated. But how? His work does not match the pure sciences. So the answer was Peace. He did work on a topic that solved hunger - a major concern for a restive population. When his wife got the message at 4am she rushed to the field in Mexico where he was working. He did not believe the news. He thought that the whole thing is a hoax! He was presented with the Nobel Prize in Peace. His acceptance speech on December 10, 1970 is here. His Nobel lecture was on "The Green Revolution, Peace and Humanity".

Criticism
There were many criticism raised on the Green revolution.! The notable being the problem of Nitrogen waste. The overall answer to that is the fact that while there was a problem at that end the overall solution of food for the world and its increasing population outweighs the negatives. Try feeding 6.2 billion people, was his reply.

Epilogue
He left us on 12 September 2009 at an age of 95 years on a loosing battle with cancer. His obituary was published in The New York Times, The Times of India and El Sol de Mexico (English)

One last point, his grandfather once said, "You're wiser to fill your head now if you want to fill your belly later on." As per the belly to fill, his grandfather was a bit off - by one billion.