Before and after his senior year, Borlaug worked for
the United States Forestry Service at research stations in Massachusetts and
Idaho. He had planned on a career with the forestry service when he first heard
a lecture by the plant pathologist Elvin Stakman. Stakman proposed that
crossbreeding of wheat, and of other grains, could produce varieties that would
resist the parasitic fungus known as rust, a pest that devastated crops
throughout the United States and around the world. Borlaug was fascinated by
this research, and when an expected Forestry Service appointment fell through,
he decided to remain at the University of Minnesota and pursue graduate studies
in plant pathology with Dr. Stakman.
Norman and Margaret Borlaug married and settled in
Minneapolis while Borlaug pursued his studies, completing his doctorate in plant
pathology and genetics in 1942. He was immediately hired by the chemical firm Du
Pont de Nemours in Wilmington, Delaware. Although he attempted to enlist in the
Army during World War II, the government regarded his work at Du Pont as
essential to the war effort and he was refused for military service. At Du Pont,
Borlaug's war work included new developments in camouflage, disinfectants,
malaria prevention and insulation for electronic devices. His most significant
achievement at the time was the creation of a waterproof adhesive for sealing
seaborne supply packages. With the Marines pinned down on Guadalcanal, Borlaug
and his team developed the new adhesive in a matter of weeks, enabling the
Marines to hold out until the Japanese were driven from the island.
While Borlaug was engaged in war work, his Minnesota
mentor, Dr. Stakman, had taken on a different scientific challenge south of the
border. The outgoing President of Mexico, Lázaro Cárdenas, had carried out a
revolutionary land reform, breaking up the giant estates of the old ruling class
and dividing the land into small holdings, know as
ejidos. In the
following years, Mexican agriculture was devastated by rust, the parasitic
fungus Borlaug and Stakman had studied in Minnesota. Recurring crop failures
forced the country to import most of its wheat. The Vice President of the United
States, Henry Wallace, persuaded the U.S.-based Rockefeller Foundation to
collaborate with the Mexican government in introducing rust-resistant wheat to
Mexico. Ervin Stakman led the project; his project director, George Harrar,
invited Borlaug to join them. Despite a lucrative offer to remain at Du Pont,
Borlaug headed for Mexico in 1944 to lead the International Wheat Improvement
Program at El Batátan, Texcoco, outside of Mexico City.
Borlaug encountered many obstacles and setbacks in his first
years in Mexico. A lack of trained personnel, and the resistance of farmers and
local bureaucrats frustrated his early efforts, but Borlaug would not relent.
Tirelessly, he crossed one strain of wheat with another, trying thousands of
variations to find those that would flourish in Mexican soil and resist rust and
other parasites. In time, he hit on an unprecedented idea. The wheat-growing
season in the central highlands, where Borlaug was working, took place slightly
earlier than the season in the Yaqui Valley of Sonora, farther north. If he
planted the same seeds at the highland research station during the summer and in
the Yaqui Valley station immediately afterward, he could see his crops through
two growing seasons in a single year.
Borlaug's superior, Harrar, strenuously opposed the
idea, not only because of its expense, but because of a widely-held belief that
wheat seeds required a rest period after harvest before they could be planted.
Only Elvin Stakman's intervention prevented Borlaug from resigning over the
disagreement. Stakman gave Borlaug the go-ahead for this "shuttle breeding"
project. Planting the same seeds at different altitudes, where they were exposed
to different temperatures, sunlight and rainfall, yielded a wealth of
information and enabled Borlaug to create wheat varieties that flourished under
very different conditions.
Borlaug moved his family to Mexico City and made a long-term
commitment to Mexican agriculture. He became active in his local community as
well, coaching Mexico's first Little League team. As his breeding techniques
grew more and more sophisticated, he realized the tall thin stalks of wheat he
had been growing too frequently collapsed under the weight of their own grain.
In the early '50s, Borlaug acquired a variety of dwarf wheat from Japan and
cross-bred it with North American strains to produce a semi-dwarf strain with a
thicker, stronger stalk, capable of supporting a heavier load of grain. Crossing
these with his rust-resistant strains produced ideal wheat for Mexico's needs.
By 1963, more than 95 percent of the wheat harvested
in Mexico was grown from seed developed by Borlaug. The country was now
producing more than enough wheat for its needs and was exporting wheat to the
rest of the world, while Borlaug's techniques were being applied to other
grains. The project first proposed by Henry Wallace had grown into the
International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT), a training institute
funded jointly by the Rockefeller and Ford Foundations and the Mexican
government. Borlaug directed CIMMYT for over 30 years. The scientists he
trained, and the strains of wheat and corn he developed, spread around the
world, and other governments sought Borlaug's services to address their food
shortages.
In the 1960s, Pakistan and India were on the brink of war,
and the entire subcontinent of South Asia was beset with famine and starvation.
The United States was sending more than a fifth of its wheat crop to the
subcontinent as emergency aid, but uncounted thousands of men, women and
children were starving to death. Scientists in both countries, familiar with
Borlaug's work in Mexico, urged him to visit the region. Borlaug's first trip to
South Asia was unsuccessful, as agricultural communities in both India and
Pakistan resisted his proposals to increase their crop yield. By 1965, the
situation had grown so desperate that the governments of both countries insisted
he return and apply his expertise to the crisis.
In the West, popular books predicted catastrophic
famine in Asia and the rest of the world, with deaths in the hundreds of
millions. No improvements in food production could possibly keep pace with the
growth in population, they claimed, but Borlaug set to work with his
characteristic fervor, despite formidable obstacles. Seed shipments were delayed
and contaminated, bureaucrats and farmers resisted change to their accustomed
routines. With Pakistan and India at war, Borlaug's teams often operated within
sound of artillery fire, but he succeeded in importing and planting his Mexican
seeds, and within a single season was producing crops on a scale South Asia had
never seen before. As the threat of famine receded, war fever diminished and a
fragile peace returned to the region.
Pakistan became self-sufficient in wheat production by 1968;
India was self-sufficient in all cereal crops by 1974. Since then, grain
production in both countries has consistently outpaced population growth.
Borlaug's achievements in Mexico, India and Pakistan were hailed as a Green
Revolution. The scientists Borlaug had trained in Mexico and Asia spread his
techniques and grains to Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey and Indonesia, to continental
South America and to Africa. Around the world, infant mortality rates fell and
life expectancy rose. In many countries, the rising standard of living reduced
social tensions and political violence.
By 1970, Borlaug had returned to Mexico, and was busy
at work in the fields an hour's drive from his home when his wife brought word
that he had been awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace. He is the only
agriculturalist ever to have been so honored. A descendant of Norwegian
immigrants -- men and women who had come to America to escape a food shortage in
their homeland -- Borlaug traveled to his ancestral homeland to be honored for
securing the food supply for countless millions around the world. Shortly after
receiving the Nobel Prize, Borlaug established a World Food Prize, to honor
others who have made outstanding contributions to improving the world's food
supply. Every year, the World Food Prize helps focus the world's attention on
issues of food production.
In the 1980s, Borlaug's methods were criticized by some
environmentalists for their reliance on chemical pesticides and fertilizers, but
Borlaug was quick to point out that by increasing the productivity of existing
farmland, his followers removed the necessity for destroying standing forests to
clear additional farmland. In India alone, wooded areas the size of California
were spared because of his work. Lobbying by Western activists blocked Borlaug's
first efforts in Africa, but when a devastating famine struck Ethiopia in 1984,
the Japanese industrialist Roichi Sasakawa approached Borlaug about starting a
new program there. In his 70s, Borlaug agreed to head the Sasakawa Africa
Association, and was soon doubling grain production in half a dozen African
countries. Through a joint venture with the Carter Center, founded by former
U.S. President
Jimmy Carter, the program
trained over 8 million farmers in 15 countries. While much of the continent
lacks the roads and other infrastructure to modernize its agriculture, former
President Carter took up the cause, and agricultural progress in Africa
continues.
While crop failure and hunger persist in many parts of
the world, the mass starvation predicted by many experts in the '60s and '70s
were avoided by the efforts of Borlaug and his followers. As the years pass, it
has become apparent that roughly a billion of the earth's inhabitants owe their
lives to the Green Revolution. Although famine was averted by his past efforts,
Borlaug insists that a concerted campaign to build roads and infrastructure in
underdeveloped countries will be necessary to avoid mass starvation in the
decades ahead.
While Norman Borlaug's accomplishments are largely unknown to
much of the public in his own country, he has received numerous honors for his
achievement, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Congressional
Gold Medal. Streets and institutions are named for him in his native Iowa, in
Minnesota, in Mexico and in India. Margaret Borlaug, Norman's wife of 69 years,
died in 2007. The couple had two children, five grandchildren and four
great-grandchildren. In his tenth decade, Dr. Borlaug continued to consult with
CIMMYT in Mexico, to teach at Texas A&M University, and to travel, promoting
his ideas to end world hunger. He spent his last years in Dallas, Texas, where
he died at the age of 95.
Source:
http://www.achievement.org/autodoc/printmember/bor0bio-1
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