Borlaug, Norman E., and others, A Green Revolution Yields a Golden Harvest, Columbia Journal of World Business, 4 (September-October, 1969) 9-19. Today, the school building, built in 1865, is owned by the Norman Borlaug Heritage Foundation as part of "Project Borlaug Legacy". Many times, I drew on that strength. 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. Norman Borlaug's Acceptance Speech, on the occasion of the award of the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo, December 10, 1970. It was later edited and republished in Nobel Lectures. [3][1] During the mid-20th century, Borlaug led the introduction of these high-yielding varieties combined with modern agricultural production techniques to Mexico, Pakistan, and India. countincognito writes "Norman Borlaug, a genuinely remarkable man and the father of the Green Revolution in agriculture, has died of cancer at his Dallas home aged 95. Norman Borlaug, who was the originator of what was a dwarf wheat variety in Mexico, is considered the godfather of the Green Revolution. Stakman, in his speech entitled "These Shifty Little Enemies that Destroy our Food Crops", discussed the manifestation of the plant disease rust, a parasitic fungus that feeds on phytonutrients in wheat, oats, and barley crops. In May 1962, M. S. Swaminathan, a member of IARI's wheat program, requested of Dr B. P. Pal, director of IARI, to arrange for the visit of Borlaug to India and to obtain a wide range of dwarf wheat seed possessing the Norin 10 dwarfing genes. His numerous other honours include the Presidential Medal of Freedom (1977), the National Medal of Science (2004), the Congressional Gold Medal (2006), and the United Nations FAO Agricola Medal (2010). [citation needed] India's use of high-yield farming has prevented an estimated 100 million acres (400,000km2) of virgin land from being converted into farmlandan area about the size of California, or 13.6% of the total area of India. Hardin, Clifford M., ed., Overcoming World Hunger. Borlaug, Norman E., Wheat Breeding and Its Impact on World Food Supply. Other tasks included work with camouflage; canteen disinfectants; DDT to control malaria; and insulation for small electronics.[17]. As new sources of resistance become available, new lines are developed. He supplied 100kg (220lb) of seed from each of the four most promising strains and 630 promising selections in advanced generations to the IARI in October 1963, and test plots were subsequently planted at Delhi, Ludhiana, Pant Nagar, Kanpur, Pune and Indore. [67], 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.[68]. [49] Since then, more than 8 million small-scale farmers in 15 African countries have been trained in SAA farming techniques, which have helped them to double or triple grain production. Immediately before and immediately after receiving his Bachelor of Science degree in 1937, he worked for the U.S. Forestry Service at stations in Massachusetts and Idaho. Borlaug's new semi-dwarf, disease-resistant varieties, called Pitic 62 and Penjamo 62, changed the potential yield of spring wheat dramatically. Paarlberg, Don, Norman Borlaug: Hunger Fighter. The U.S. president replies by providing Borlaug's name. Borlaug's method would allow the various different disease-resistant genes from several donor parents to be transferred into a single recurrent parent. Today, on the 9 th anniversary of his passing, our first Hero of Progress is Norman Borlaug, the man commonly dubbed the "Father of the Green Revolution.". Tamil Nadu Agricultural University. If they lived just one month amid the misery of the developing world, as I have for fifty 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". Contains a bibliography. Ladejinsky, Wolf, Ironies of Indias Green Revolution, Foreign Affairs, 48 (July, 1970) 758-768. An eclectic, pragmatic, goal-oriented scientist, he accepts and discards methods or results in a constant search for more fruitful and effective ones, while at the same time avoiding the pursuit of what he calls academic butterflies. Also in 1984, he received the Henry G. Bennet Distinguished Service Award at commencement ceremonies at Oklahoma State University. With India and Pakistan facing food shortages due to rapid population growth, the importation of Borlaugs dwarf wheat in the mid-1960s was responsible for a 60 percent increase in harvests there, helping both countries to become agriculturally self-sufficient. [33] Four other high-yield varieties were also released, in 1964: Lerma Rojo 64, Siete Cerros, Sonora 64, and Super X. Borlaug is also the subject of the documentary film The Man Who Tried to Feed the World which first aired on American Experience on April 21, 2020. They've never experienced the physical sensation of hunger. Nobel Prize Outreach AB 2023. Borlaug received his B.S. It's an inappropriate crutch perhaps, but that's the way I'm made. ], Other concerns of his critics and critics of biotechnology include the crossing of genetic barriers; the inability of a single crop to fulfill all nutritional requirements; the decreased biodiversity from planting a small number of varieties; the environmental and economic effects of inorganic fertilizer and pesticides; the side effects of large amounts of herbicides sprayed on fields of herbicide-resistant crops; and the destruction of wilderness caused by the construction of roads in populated third-world areas. "The Role of Agricultural Technologies in Tropical Deforestation". This was called "shuttle breeding".[28]. Penn gets Norman Borlaug, and proceeds to bet all his chips, his house, his rings, his watch, and essentially everything he's ever owned. To his scientific goal he soon added that of the practical humanitarian: arranging to put the new cereal strains into extensive production in order to feed the hungry people of the world and thus providing, as he says, a temporary success in mans war against hunger and deprivation, a breathing space in which to deal with the Population Monster and the subsequent environmental and social ills that too often lead to conflict between men and between nations. They point to a quote from the year 2000 in which he stated: "I now say that the world has the technologyeither available or well advanced in the research pipelineto feed on a sustainable basis a population of 10 billion people. 12 June 2019 Getty Images Norman Borlaug is credited with saving millions of people from starvation By Tim Harford Presenter, 50 Things That Made the Modern Economy Norman Borlaug - Nobel Lecture: The Green Revolution, Peace, and Humanity. President George Bush signed the bill into law on December 14, 2006, and it became Public Law Number 109395. He had discovered that special plant breeding methods produced plants resistant to rust. [37] His speech repeatedly presented improvements in food production within a sober understanding of the context of population. [26] By 1968, when Ehrlich's book was released, William Gaud of the United States Agency for International Development was calling Borlaug's work a "Green Revolution". In 2012, a new elementary school in the Iowa City, IA school district opened, called "Norman Borlaug Elementary". Unless progress with agricultural yields remains very strong, the next century will experience sheer human misery that, on a numerical scale, will exceed the worst of everything that has come before". Get a Britannica Premium subscription and gain access to exclusive content. The more pertinent question today is whether farmers and ranchers will be permitted to use this new technology? The first prize was given to Borlaug's former colleague, M. S. Swaminathan, in 1987, for his work in India. To cite this document, always state the source as shown above. The act authorizes that Borlaug be awarded America's highest civilian award, the Congressional Gold Medal. He took up an agricultural research position with CIMMYT in Mexico, where he developed semi-dwarf, high-yield, disease-resistant wheat varieties. "[36] Soon, Borlaug and the SAA had projects in seven countries. There they were members of Saude Lutheran Church, where Norman was both baptized and confirmed. However, following the December 7, 1941, attack on Pearl Harbor Borlaug tried to enlist in the military, but was rejected under wartime labor regulations; his lab was converted to conduct research for the United States armed forces. Corrections? Norman Borlaug was born outside Cresco, Iowa in 1914 on his grandparent's farm. Norman Borlaug was truly a peaceful revolutionary. On December 6, 2006, the House of Representatives passed the measure by voice vote. He realized that he could speed up breeding by taking advantage of the country's two growing seasons. ", In 1986, Borlaug was inducted into the Scandinavian-American Hall of Fame during Norsk Hstfest. They started planting immediately and often worked in sight of artillery flashes. The increased yields resulting from Borlaugs new strains empowered many developing countries, though their use required large amounts of chemical fertilizers and pesticides. On March 25, 2014, a statue of Borlaug at the United States Capitol was unveiled in a ceremony on the 100th anniversary of his birth. He passed away on September 12 from cancer. In March 1963, the Rockefeller Foundation and the Mexican government sent Borlaug and Dr Robert Glenn Anderson to India to continue his work. In 1965, as a response to food shortages, Borlaug imported 550 tons of seeds for the government. Father of Green Revolution, Norman Borlaug, Dies at 95 227 Posted by timothy on Sunday September 13, 2009 @03:04PM from the a-billion-here-a-billion-there dept. It made me tough. Throughout his years of research, Borlaug's programs often faced opposition by nonscientists who consider genetic crossbreeding to be unnatural or to have negative effects. After they are in use, the world will have no additional sizable blocks of arable land left to put into production, unless you are willing to level whole forests, which you should not do. [citation needed], Borlaug's boss, George Harrar, was against this expansion. New York, The Rockefeller Foundation, October 21, 1970. This program, a joint undertaking by the Mexican government and the Rockefeller Foundation, involved scientific research in genetics, plant breeding, plant pathology, entomology, agronomy, soil science, and cereal technology. As an unexpected benefit of the double wheat season, the new breeds did not have problems with photoperiodism. [29] Backcrossing involves crossing a hybrid and subsequent generations with a recurrent parent. Borlaug studied plant biology and forestry at the University of Minnesota and earned a Ph.D. in plant pathology there in 1942. Ole Olson Dybevig and Solveig Thomasdatter Rinde, of Feios, a small village in Vik kommune, Sogn og Fjordane, Norway, emigrated to Dane County, Wisconsin, in 1854. Freeman, Orville, World without Hunger. But what about natural, traditional means of growing crops, in harmony with the land and all that? Also that year, he was recognized for sustained service to humanity through outstanding contributions in plant breeding from the Governors Conference on Agriculture Innovations in Little Rock, Arkansas. Success in Mexico made Borlaug a much sought-after adviser to countries whose food production was not keeping pace with their population growth. His dream was to "transfer rice immunity to cereals such as wheat, maize, sorghum and barley, and transfer bread-wheat proteins (gliadin and glutenin) to other cereals, especially rice and maize". [36] The use of these wheat varieties has also had a substantial effect on production in six Latin American countries, six countries in the Near and Middle East, and several others in Africa. For more than a century, these academic institutions have worked independently to select Nobel Prize laureates. Borlaug was credited with saving hundreds of millions of lives and averting a major famine. Borlaug was also featured in an episode of Penn & Teller: Bullshit!, where he was referred to as the "Greatest Human Being That Ever Lived". At a research station at Campo Atizapan, he developed a short-stemmed (dwarf) strain of wheat that dramatically increased crop yields. These collective increases in yield have been labeled the Green Revolution, and Borlaug is often credited with saving over a billion people worldwide from starvation (Wiki's reference: The phrase "over a billion lives saved" is often cited by others in reference to Norman Borlaug's work (e.g., [1]).According to Jan Douglas here, Executive Assistant to . A vigorous man who can perform prodigies of manual labor in the fields, he brings to his work the body and competitive spirit of the trained athlete, which indeed he was in his high school and college days. In the 1970s and 1980s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now." Multiline varieties are mixtures of several phenotypically similar pure lines which each have different genes for disease resistance. The Promise of Biotechnology and the Threat of Antiscience Zealotry", "Norman Borlaug: The Genius Behind The Green Revolution", "Norman E. Borlaug, Ph.D. To make sure each line has different resistant genes, each donor parent is used in a separate backcross program. In the last seven years some 1940 young scientists from sixteen or so countries (the figures constantly move upward) have studied and worked at the Center. [81] He was presented with the medal on July 17, 2007. Many Mexican farmers at the time struggled with . Plant pathologist George Harrar recruited and assembled the wheat research team in late 1944. [35], The initial yields of Borlaug's crops were higher than any ever harvested in South Asia. Brown, L. R. 1970. A central figure in the green revolution, Norman Ernest Borlaug (born March 25, 1914) was born on a farm near Cresco, Iowa, to Henry and Clara Borlaug. Englewood Cliffs, N.J., Prentice-Hall, 1969. In 1984, his name was placed in the National Agricultural Hall of Fame at the national center in Bonner Springs, Kansas. In a review of Borlaug's 2000 publication entitled Ending world hunger: the promise of biotechnology and the threat of antiscience zealotry,[55] the authors argued that Borlaug's warnings were still true in 2010,[56]. [69], Borlaug was elected a Foreign Member of the Royal Society (ForMemRS) in 1987.[1][70]. In 1944 he accepted an appointment as geneticist and plant pathologist assigned the task of organizing and directing the Cooperative Wheat Research and Production Program in Mexico. - Alliance for Science Norman Borlaug saved millions of lives, would his critics prefer he hadn't? Borlaug attributed his decision to leave the farm and pursue further education to his grandfather's urgent encouragement to learn: Nels Olson Borlaug (18591935) once told him, "you're wiser to fill your head now if you want to fill your belly later on. [80] According to the act, "the number of lives Dr. Borlaug has saved [is] more than a billion people" The act authorizes the Secretary of the Treasury to strike and sell duplicates of the medal in bronze. To prevent this, he bred wheat to favor shorter, stronger stalks that could better support larger seed heads. From Nobel Lectures, Peace 1951-1970, Editor Frederick W. Haberman, Elsevier Publishing Company, Amsterdam, 1972. Soon we had varieties that fit the whole range of conditions. [40], Borlaug's name is nearly synonymous with the Green Revolution, against which many criticisms have been mounted over the decades by environmentalists and some nutritionists[who?]. In 1953, he acquired a Japanese dwarf variety of wheat called Norin 10 developed by the agronomist Gonjiro Inazuka in Iwate Prefecture, including ones which had been crossed with a high-yielding American cultivar called Brevor 14 by Orville Vogel. In March 1962, a few of these strains were grown in the fields of the Indian Agricultural Research Institute in Pusa, New Delhi, India. In addition to taking up charitable and educational roles, he continued to be involved in plant research at CIMMYT with wheat, triticale, barley, maize, and high-altitude sorghum. The Borlaug Dialogue (Norman E. Borlaug International Symposium) is named in his honour. They write new content and verify and edit content received from contributors. "[61], The United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) described Borlaug as "a towering scientist whose work rivals that of the 20th century's other great scientific benefactors of humankind"[62] and Kofi Annan, former Secretary-General of the United Nations said, "As we celebrate Dr. Borlaug's long and remarkable life, we also celebrate the long and productive lives that his achievements have made possible for so many millions of people around the world we will continue to be inspired by his enduring devotion to the poor, needy and vulnerable of our world."[63].
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