Borlaug -- a shining example
Thursday, 17 September 2009
Avik Sengupta
THE world lost one of the 20th century's true heroes last Saturday with the death, at 95, of agricultural visionary Norman Borlaug - a seed scientist who forcefully closed the gap between theory and practice. Borlaug is widely and justly known as "the father of the Green Revolution." His work increased crop yields in Asia and elsewhere at a time when population growth was outstripping world food production.
Nobody denies that Borlaug's work saved hundreds of millions of lives.
Borlaug was more than a white-coated ivory-tower theorist. A farm boy from Iowa, he realized early that the improved grain varieties he had developed would make subsistence farmers wary. So he and others hand-delivered his seeds to small farmers in India and elsewhere. Aided by the Indian government - the farm minister dug up his personal cricket pitch to be a demonstration site - Borlaug got the word out across India by the mid-1960s. Yields began to rise, farmers became enthusiastic, and India's wheat crop grew by 41 per cent in two years. In 1970, Borlaug was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
But even such a blessing as more abundant food has its nay-sayers. Critics complain that the green revolution uses too much water and fertilizers, has encouraged monocultures, and has helped some farmers more than others. To such criticism, the common sense can reply only, "What part of 'saved hundreds of millions of lives' do you not understand?" The same question can be put to those who object to new agricultural advances, notably the genetic modification of foodstuffs, an innovation Borlaug supported.
In an era when technology has solved so many basic problems, but created so many new ones, Borlaug stands as a shining example of what science and technology can accomplish. Tragically, however, the innovations Borlaug pioneered did not take hold very effectively in Africa. The problem there was not with the seeds or the science, he concluded, but with politics. Corrupt, unresponsive, and even failed governments proved unable in many places across Africa to provide irrigation, or even farm roads. It's a sadly familiar story: The tools to make progress are at hand, but the political will is not. But in South Asia, and elsewhere, conditions were right for Norman Borlaug to solve a problem for humanity, and he did so with spectacular success. We need more like him.
(The writer is at McGill University, Montreal, Canada. E-mail: avik.sengupta@mail.mcgill.ca)
THE world lost one of the 20th century's true heroes last Saturday with the death, at 95, of agricultural visionary Norman Borlaug - a seed scientist who forcefully closed the gap between theory and practice. Borlaug is widely and justly known as "the father of the Green Revolution." His work increased crop yields in Asia and elsewhere at a time when population growth was outstripping world food production.
Nobody denies that Borlaug's work saved hundreds of millions of lives.
Borlaug was more than a white-coated ivory-tower theorist. A farm boy from Iowa, he realized early that the improved grain varieties he had developed would make subsistence farmers wary. So he and others hand-delivered his seeds to small farmers in India and elsewhere. Aided by the Indian government - the farm minister dug up his personal cricket pitch to be a demonstration site - Borlaug got the word out across India by the mid-1960s. Yields began to rise, farmers became enthusiastic, and India's wheat crop grew by 41 per cent in two years. In 1970, Borlaug was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
But even such a blessing as more abundant food has its nay-sayers. Critics complain that the green revolution uses too much water and fertilizers, has encouraged monocultures, and has helped some farmers more than others. To such criticism, the common sense can reply only, "What part of 'saved hundreds of millions of lives' do you not understand?" The same question can be put to those who object to new agricultural advances, notably the genetic modification of foodstuffs, an innovation Borlaug supported.
In an era when technology has solved so many basic problems, but created so many new ones, Borlaug stands as a shining example of what science and technology can accomplish. Tragically, however, the innovations Borlaug pioneered did not take hold very effectively in Africa. The problem there was not with the seeds or the science, he concluded, but with politics. Corrupt, unresponsive, and even failed governments proved unable in many places across Africa to provide irrigation, or even farm roads. It's a sadly familiar story: The tools to make progress are at hand, but the political will is not. But in South Asia, and elsewhere, conditions were right for Norman Borlaug to solve a problem for humanity, and he did so with spectacular success. We need more like him.
(The writer is at McGill University, Montreal, Canada. E-mail: avik.sengupta@mail.mcgill.ca)