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| Norman Borlaug Dies at 95 |
| 2009-09-13 |
| Norman Borlaug, the Iowa farm boy who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970 for his efforts to feed the world's hungry, died Saturday night at his home in Dallas, Texas. He was 95. Borlaug died just before 11 p.m. from complications of cancer, Kathleen Phillips, a Texas A&M University spokeswoman, told the Associated Press. Phillips said Borlaug's granddaughter told her about his death. Borlaug was a distinguished professor at the university in College Station. A self-described "corn-fed, country-bred Iowa boy," Borlaug was called "the Father of the Green Revolution" for his work developing high-yielding strains of wheat that were credited with staving off the starvation of millions of people in Pakistan and India in the 1960s. It has been said that Borlaug saved more lives than any other person in history, said Kenneth Quinn, president of the World Food Prize Foundation, which Borlaug founded in 1986. Borlaug, hailed by U.S. and world leaders over the past four decades, was one of five people to have won the Nobel Peace Prize, the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Congressional Gold Medal. The others: the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., Mother Teresa, Elie Wiesel and Nelson Mandela. "Thanks to Dr. Borlaug's pioneering work to develop varieties of high-yielding wheat, countless millions of men, women and children, who will never know his name, will never go to bed hungry," former U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell said in 2007 when Borlaug received the Congressional Gold Medal. "Dr. Borlaug's scientific breakthroughs have eased needless suffering and saved countless lives (and) have been an inspiration to new generations across the globe who have taken up the fight against hunger." Borlaug had suffered from lymphoma and other ailments that had caused him to be in and out of the hospital in recent years, Quinn said. Yet Borlaug maintained an ambitious travel schedule into his 90s, continuing to teach at Texas A&M and work for the International Center for the Improvement of Wheat and Maize, where he did his breeding work that led to the Nobel Peace Prize. When it was announced in 1970 that Borlaug had won the Nobel Peace Prize, he was working in experimental fields 50 miles from Mexico City. At first, Borlaug thought the report that he had won the Nobel was a joke, and he had to be persuaded to return to the city for a news conference. When he arrived, he was wearing his work clothes, with dust on his shoes and dirt on his hands. "I wanted to show the TV men what makes an agricultural scientist -- dirty hands," he said. "I washed them later." I guess my other local fishwrapper, the Iowa City Press-Citizen, is so busy high-fiving over UI's win yesterday that they can't give Dr. Borlaug his due. RIP, sir. |
| Posted by:Cornsilk Blondie |
| #9 Recalling the work of a great hunger-fighter CHENNAI: “He was a bright, affirming flame in the midst of a sea of despair then prevailing.” This was how M.S. Swaminathan described Norman Borlaug, the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970, who died in Dallas on Saturday night. “He was a man of extraordinary humanism, commitment to a hunger-free world and knew no nationality. He is the only person to have so far won a Nobel for agriculture.” Norman Borlaug’s association with India began in the late 1960s. India was then importing 10 million tonnes of wheat and “we lived a ship-to-mouth” existence. The introduction of the dwarf variety of wheat developed by him in Mexico was a turning point in India’s food production pattern. Professor Swaminathan, himself an institution-builder and a visionary figure who has carved a niche for himself in agriculture-related research in India, spoke to The Hindu from Virginia Tech University in the U.S. on Sunday. He was associated with Borlaug for five decades. He added: “I was working at the Indian Agricultural Research Institute, New Delhi. The problem at the time of India’s Independence was that the wheat and rice yield was less than one metric tonne per hectare. From 1947 to the early-1960s we increased the area under the crops.” But there was no significant increase in production. “It was at that time he came to India. My association with him started when we started to work on how to achieve a yield breakthrough in wheat. He is the greatest hunger-fighter for all time. His contribution was multi-dimensional – scientific, political and humanistic.” he said. At the M.S. Swaminathan Research Foundation in Taramani, Chennai, a hall has been named after him. Professor Borlaug’s efforts to introduce improvements in agriculture were peppered also with disappointments. He earned the displeasure of the American government after he said during a visit to India in 1966 that “India should be free of PL 480 assistance.” At that time India was importing wheat from the U.S. Professor Borlaug had been disappointed when his efforts to introduce the Green Revolution in Africa failed owing to the unfavourable political conditions there. “Unless there is peace and security there could be no increase in production. During his lectures in India in agriculture colleges he told students to go to the field and not sit in the laboratory,” Dr. Swaminathan recalled. Professor Borlaug felt that food scientists should be recognised with the Nobel Prize. When the Nobel Prize committee struck down his suggestion, he instituted the annual World Food Prize. Dr. Swaminathan was the first recipient, and Verghese Kurien, credited with the White Revolution in India, was honoured the next year. |
| Posted by: john frum 2009-09-13 15:51 |
| #8 Just wait. The Greens will decry him as a criminal for allowing the world population to explode. Then they will excoriate him for not decrying GM grains. Seems like a man who was deserving of what he received. |
| Posted by: Jame Retief 2009-09-13 14:44 |
| #7 In my opinion, Dr Borlaug was one of the few people (along with Mother Teresa) who truly deserved the Nobel Peace prize. Rest in peace, sir. |
| Posted by: Rambler in Virginia 2009-09-13 14:01 |
| #6 Norman Borlaug, India's 'annadaata', dies at 95 NEW DELHI: Long before Mr Bush and Dr Rice came by to leapfrog US-India ties to a new level, it was Prof. Wheat who jump-started and nourished the relationship. Norman Borlaug, the genial scientist-pacifist who died of cancer in Dallas on Saturday, was as much India's 'annadaata' as he was the Father of the Green Revolution. Around the time Dr Borlaug arrived on the scene in the mid-1960s, the specter of famine, shortages, and starvation hung over the sub-continent. India was importing huge quantities of food grains from the US - much of it dole - to feed its growing millions in a manner that was famously described as "ship-to-mouth" sustenance. Enter Norman Borlaug, a strapping, self-made, sun-burnt American from the farmland of Iowa, who had spent more a decade by then in Mexico after hard-earned doctorate in Depression-era US. What he had pulled off in experiments in Mexico was a miracle, that if successfully applied in India, would fill its granaries to overflow - as it eventually did. By cranking up a wheat strain containing an unusual gene, Borlaug created the so-called ''semi-dwarf'' plant variety -- a shorter, stubbier, compact stalk that supported an enormous head of grain without falling over from the weight. This curious principle of shrinking the plant to increase the output on the plant from the same acreage resulted in Indian farmers eventually quadrupling their wheat -- and later, rice -- production. It heralded the Green Revolution. A Bharat Ratna should have been his for the taking, but he was not one to ask. He disdained all awards and honours, even making light of the Nobel (Peace) Prize when his Swedish forbears, in 1970, recognized his enormous contribution to mankind (Pakistan, China, and eventually the whole world benefited from his work in Mexico). When his wife ran to the fields to tell him about the recognition, the story goes, he shooed her away saying someone was pulling her leg. ''More than any other person of this age,'' the Nobel citation read, ''he helped provide bread for a hungry world. We have made this choice in the hope that providing bread will also give the world peace.'' In several conversations and interviews with this correspondent in the past decade, the last one in 2008 at the height of the food vs fuel debate (he was against using food as vehicular fuel), Dr Borlaug recalled his days and association with India with delight. In one conversation in 2006 during Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s visit, he asked for good wishes to be conveyed to his friend. When the message was relayed through the PM”s then media advisor Sanjaya Baru, the Prime Minister gracefully recalled Dr Borlaug’s immense contribution to India’s security in his address to the joint session of US Congress the next day. A year later, the Bush administration awarded him the Congressional Medal of Honour, the highest US civilian award Borlaug has his critics for sure, most notably ''organic'' evangelists such as Dr Vandana Shiva. After initially dismissing them as elitist, he acknowledged they did have a point about the dangers of excessive use of pesticides and chemical fertilizers, although he never once gave up his fundamental thesis that the world’s exploding population could not be fed without scientific intervention -- for which reason he also supported GM and trangenic crops. Last week, as this correspondent drove through the lush grainfields of Punjab on a visit to the Golden Temple, it was another occasion to reflect on this titan’s contribution to India. Dr Borlaug was fond of saying he could hear the joyful hum of wheat heads swaying in the fields. Today, they would be playing a soulful dirge to the man who helped us, to a great degree, feed ourselves. |
| Posted by: john frum 2009-09-13 13:31 |
| #5 .5MT: It was amazing. Reagan got a ration of poop from both the left and the right for authorizing grain sales. The right (seriously) was asking if he was "soft on communism", which of course is hilarious in retrospect. The left just thought he was buying the farm vote. The key was that the Russians used a LOT of their grain to feed their working farm animals. They were too paranoid to eat US grain themselves, but they would feed their animals with it, and divert the animal grain to human consumption. But very soon, they became as addicted to US grain as junkies are to smack. They started by selling us most of their oil output. Then they gave us all their gold reserves. Then since gold mining didn't produce enough, they had to dredge their river deltas for gold. But still not enough. So all the foreign currency they got in exchange for Rubles, they had to give to the US as well. We sucked them freaking dry. And they were hurting, big time. And *then*, Reagan introduce the SDI, "Star Wars", throwing around billions of dollars like they were nothing. It about broke their back. Utterly demoralized them. And that's when Gorbachev, for the first time since Lenin, started getting accurate reports on the state of the Soviet Union. Which was a freak out in itself. |
| Posted by: Anonymoose 2009-09-13 12:52 |
| #4 Great article about his life and work here. He was, no doubt, waved through the pearly gates and greeted with feasting and song. |
| Posted by: Mike 2009-09-13 12:05 |
| #3 By selling them unlimited amounts of grain, it drained their resources like a vampire Awsome. + 11teen. Damn Poms shoulda figured this out in WWI instead of trying to starve the Chermans. |
| Posted by: .5MT 2009-09-13 11:22 |
| #2 He not only fed the world, but to a large part was responsible for making the US a superpower. American agribusiness is second only to our military industrial complex in size, scope, and complexity. Much of how Ronald Reagan defeated the Soviet Union was done with grain. By selling them unlimited amounts of grain, it drained their resources like a vampire. Money they could have otherwise spent on weapons and to sustain their empire. |
| Posted by: Anonymoose 2009-09-13 11:17 |
| #1 The most consequential American no one has ever heard of. They should name schools and sons after this guy. |
| Posted by: Mizzou Mafia 2009-09-13 11:00 |