Norman Borlaug Interview (page: 4 / 9) Ending World Hunger	Print Interview

You were in Mexico in October 1970, and your wife came out to the fields to tell you that you'd been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

Get the Flash Player to see this video. Norman Borlaug: I said, "How did you receive this?" She said, "From the Aftenposten. What's the Aftenposten?" She didn't know anything about it. (I come from a) Norwegian background, and I said, "That's the morning paper from Oslo." And I said, "Well, how did he know about it because nobody has called from the Norwegian Embassy to advise us." "Well," she says, "I asked that question," and he said, 'We in the press have ways of learning some things before they are officially released.'" So she came with that story, and I didn't believe her. And she left, and about two or three hours later, a big group of Mexican newspapermen came out. But right before that, there was a writer -- his name is gone now. I'm sorry, I should be able to spit it out. He was a good writer and he had two films on our Mexican program, and he came out with The Christian Science Monitor, and they had just finished interviewing me when all of these Mexicans drove up. I should've pointed out that this particular day was the funeral of Lázaro Cárdenas. The President, together with his Minister of Agriculture, Marte R. Gómez, had broken up all of the big estates and distributed the land in ejidos. Ejidos were plots given to families. They didn't own it, but they owned the right to use it, and this gave lots of problems over the next 50 years that held back Mexico's development. But that was taking place, and so I said, "I'm behind in my harvest, because it's rained in Toluca. For me to go to that funeral, there'll be 500,000 people there. Why should I go?" So I went out to Toluca and that's where my wife -- she found out from the office where I was -- and she got a driver and the wife of Dr. Rosburn -- they came out to find me. They gave me that message.

Was it especially rewarding to go to Oslo to receive the award because of your Norwegian heritage?

Norman Borlaug: No. I was so shocked that those minor differences didn't enter into it.

You were also the only agricultural scientist to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in the 20th century.

Norman Borlaug: Because of that, I established the World Food Prize for agriculture.

You also received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Jimmy Carter in 1977.

Norman Borlaug: I think President Carter, coming from a rural background, he had a feel for the importance of food. He was a close collaborator from that period right up to the present time.

How did you go about establishing the World Food Prize in 1986?

Norman Borlaug: The original prize was financed by General Foods. The people most deeply involved were Robert Havener, he was then a Ford Foundation employee; the Vice President of General Foods, Al Clausi; and myself. We got this prize approved for food. Then we had spread it to different disciplines in the food system and it's a very prestigious prize at the present time.

Initially, you went to the Rockefeller Foundation, but they had no resources available for this. Was it a struggle to get it off the ground?

Norman Borlaug: Oh, it was a hell of a struggle at first, to convince the hierarchy of General Foods. The Senior Vice President, Al Clausi, he pulled for us and he was really responsible for getting General Foods on board.

Also in the 1980s, you began working with a Japanese investor named Sasakawa to bring your planting methods to Africa. How did that come about?

Norman Borlaug: Well, he called me. He doesn't speak any English -- or didn't, he's since passed away -- but his deputy had been a reporter in Vietnam, and I had met him in some of the meetings that we had had with the Japanese about this food situation. When he called, he said, "I want to get us involved through Sasakawa Japanese shipbuilding." And I said, "I'm 80 years old. Too old to start something new." And he said, "I'm 15 years older than you are. We should have started it yesterday, so let's start tomorrow."

Where did you begin planting in Africa?

Norman Borlaug: In Ghana. Sasakawa and myself and someone from USAID (United States Agency for International Development) visited five countries, and we thought that Ghana was more progressive than the others. So we started in two places: Ghana and Sudan. But Sudan was under a military government, and finally Sasakawa said, "I don't want to pay my money to rescue one of you guys from being kidnapped, so let's leave Sudan." And we did. We went to Tanzania and later to Nigeria.

What was the mission of the SAA?

Norman Borlaug: The Sasakawa African Association. This was getting Sasakawa involved in food problems in Africa.

What was different about planting in Ghana, as opposed to planting in India and Pakistan?

Norman Borlaug: Well, first of all...

Get the Flash Player to see this video. We had a good training program in Ghana. We had a young Ghanaian who had been trained in Japan. He was married to a Japanese wife and he, of course, was fluent in both the (native) language and English. And when we started that program, we realized that technical training would be important. This guy visited a lot of universities and all the big known name universities didn't want anything to do with it. But there was a little university in the south of Ghana where a young professor had just come back from a scholarship abroad, and he said, "I'd like to try this." And he started a training program for his own extension people, and it became very effective. It's still effective today.

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