Norman Borlaug, who died at the age of 95 in his Texas home on Saturday, would have been quite impatient with the encomiums that are being showered on his death as they were during his lifetime. Not that he disrespected those who praised him and honoured him with awards. But he wasn't enamoured of being awarded personally.
Nor did he very much like the phrase, 'green revolution'. He thought it was a miserable description. The reason for his impatience was that he felt that not many people, especially political leaders, understood the critical importance of agricultural production. He was not the stereotypical scientist, who was satisfied to do his little bit. Borlaug was always aware of the big picture.
More than that, he was keenly conscious of the hungry people and the poor farmers in the developing world and the stark contrast with the affluent, developed part. He worked for the sake of the hungry and the poor and he remained dissatisfied because the much heralded 'greenrevolution' did not wipe out hunger or poverty.
Even as policymakers are speaking out aloud and ostentatiously about food security, Borlaug in his Nobel Peace prize acceptance speech in December, 1970 stated without political flourish: "Almost certainly, however, the first essential component of social justice is adequate food for all mankind. Food is the moral right of all who are born into this world. Yet today 50 per cent of the world population goes hungry."
Nearly 40 years later, the situation is not too different. Hunger still stalks many parts of the world. We are particularly grateful in India that his successful methods of pest- and drought-resistant wheat seeds have changed the face of Punjab and of the country, and it is this green revolution that made famine a distant memory.
It is interesting to remember that Borlaug's methods were adopted with the same success and around the same time in Pakistan as well. He believed that hunger and poverty caused much strife among nations, and he reached out to many countries in Asia and Latin America.
Though the green revolution has been under attack from the environmentalists who argue that it has contributed to the looming ecological doomsday, Borlaug will be remembered as one man who contributed most in weeding out hunger. His death comes at a time when the spectre of drought haunts the country. It is a good time to remember his legacy of working for the prosperity of all humans, especially the weaker sections.
Readers' comments:
Norman Borlaug was debatably the greatest change-master in the 'green' revolution, but where Norman would have been the first to have said that this is only just one of the pieces in the jigsaw of human survival. For the realisation of a world without starvation, great wars et al, we have to look elsewhere and fast, as time is simply running out. In this respect the pace of economic recovery throughout the world should not be the prime consideration of industrialists (World Economic Forum, Dalian, China - 12th September 2009) or governments, but what the future holds for all who live and breathe on this planet. For the way that our politicians are working and addressing mounting global problems is like Nero fiddling whilst Rome burns. They are oblivious to the strains on humankind's constant growth and are impotent in preventing global Agamemnon coming in this present century with their present thinking and mindsets. Whilst they try and fix the financial system through the people's wealth, they impoverish tens of millions yearly. The system is a destructive force and where they are the conductors, forever adding fuel to the burning mass that goes on underneath. Over the next 20 years the world will increasingly witness a far more destabilised world, where emerging wars become a common event. By then there will be over 8 billion humans living on planet earth (and that will be 2 billion less than peak population by 2075 at 10 billion humans according to the latest UN predictions), a significant number unable to sustain themselves. Indeed, the vast dwindling resources problem will create the base and start-line for global conflict, of a size and ferocity never seen before. Therefore as Rome did indeed burn, so will humankind eventually with the present political mindsets. This is not pie-in-the-sky scare mongering, but sheer fact and is conditioned by common sense and what will eventually come to pass. That is why armaments throughout the world are increasing every year and where by 2030 through this vast expenditure by governments worldwide, could very well become the largest industry in the world turning over in excess of $5 trillion annually. Indeed in the case of the USA alone, the Friends Committee on National Legislation calculates for Fiscal Year 2009 that the majority of US taxpayers' money goes towards war - some 44.4% of all taxes. Therefore whilst our politicians continue to place their faith in that the strongest will prevail, they lose sight of any possibility of a peaceful future world. Indeed again, they fuel the whole process of human destruction and where their combined interests of relying upon weapons of mass destruction to protect themselves and the preservation of the capitalist system that supports such an unholy mechanism, is absolutely flawed. In time and when things are too late, politicians (and industrialists) will realise the folly of their mismanagement of the world order, for by then all that they once held so dear will have disappeared completely - and the rest of humankind with it. For having the insight gained from the thinking of many of the world's foremost scientists and engineers, technology will not come to the rescue this time, as there are not any significant breakthroughs on the horizon in science today. Indeed, if a scientific miracle were discovered tomorrow to solve just one of humankind's huge problems, it would take around 4 decades for this to have any significant global effect, as all other revolutionary technologies have shown us in the past - R&D, technological prototypes, final technology product, mass manufacture, global distribution logistics etc, etc. Therefore any solution would come too late according to the dictates of common sense and where the resources necessary to support 8-10 billion humans, would not be there. And where all the above future problems are determined by a vastly overpopulated world, unimaginable depletion of natural resources over the next 25-years that will not be able to support all human life (it only takes 15% of the global population to be affected to cause an irreversible situation), lack of energy and food, the destruction of arable land by continual erosion (both the hot climate effect and rise in sea levels) and the decimation of the oceans through industrial pollution and energy resources extraction on a momentous scale.
Dr David Hill, DSc (Hon), World Innovation Foundation Charity
Bern, Switzerland
Tuesday, September 15, 2009 1:03 IST
Dr David Hill, Bern
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