Norman Borlaug Interview (page: 8 / 9) Ending World Hunger	Print Interview

Can you tell us about your relationship with Dr. Stakman, and how that relationship changed your course of study from forestry to plant pathology?

Get the Flash Player to see this video. Norman Borlaug: Well, Dr. Stakman -- the kind of person he was -- he was old school. He may have been a plant pathologist, but he was a biologist in the broadest sense, and he wove into his lectures the story of going back to the first -- to the Bible -- to the rust epidemics. And so when I was asked to delay my arrival to the Idaho National to the first of June rather than the first of January, I said, "What am I going to do here?" And so I talked to Margaret also, and she said, "You were so impressed by Dr. Stakman, why don't you go and see him and see if you can register for graduate training for these six months?" And so I went to see him, told him my background, and he asked a lot of questions. I told him, "Well, this is kind of just to fill up six months." He said, "That's a pretty poor reason to go to graduate school." But he kept asking questions. And finally he said, "Okay, I'll accept you." And so, that's when everything started to change. At the end of that period, he got me an assistantship which paid a small amount so that the University job and the coffee shop had long since disappeared. But there were these other programs that Eleanor Roosevelt and the CCC (came up with) and so I worked on many of these things and was able to put together enough to live on.

[ Key to Success ] Perseverance

We had fully decided to get married right before I went to Idaho, but then when all of these delays and complications came, we decided, no. By then, she was hungry just like I was, and she became a proofreader. This was before the time of all of these gadgets that read your proof today.

You decided not only to get your Master's but to go on for your Ph.D. When you completed your Ph.D. you were offered a job at Du Pont. Can you tell us about that move to Du Pont?

Norman Borlaug: I was not only offered, I'd accepted it. And I've forgotten exactly how long I was in Du Pont. It must've been about a year-and-a-half or two years when I saw that the Rockefeller Foundation was opening this program in Mexico -- the first attempt to help a developing nation with their agriculture. So I applied. I went to see the director of the program who was George Harrar. I didn't know him, but he was Stakman's student also. He had finished his Ph.D. a couple of years before I started, so I didn't know him. But he said, "I think you should apply for this position," and so I did.

Did you also try to join the military while you were working at Du Pont?

Norman Borlaug: When I was working at Du Pont my work was classified as essential for the war effort. And I think three times I took my physical exam, because the Categories of Necessity changed constantly in this terrible mess we were in. The thing that kept me going was one of the things I was involved in. There were several. Drinking water safety for canteens. And if we had used the criteria now, those would never have been released. But this was for soldiers who hadn't had any water -- dipping it out of little puddles -- and so these things were approved. But the one that carried the most weight was what we did to help keep the Marines alive in Guadalcanal. At that time, all the boxes -- where you put either tins of fruit or vegetables or SPAM, which was the meat product of that period -- the bonding agent for the cartons before World War II was sodium silicate, which is water soluble. And the reason that our Navy was interested in doing something about this was that the Japanese controlled the air and the water during the Battle of Guadalcanal.

Get the Flash Player to see this video. The only way we had in supporting our Marines on Guadalcanal and some of those other places where we were trapped was at night pitching these cartons, or these boxes of canned fruit into the surf. But the bonding agent for all of those boxes before World War II was sodium silicate which is water soluble. And so after 20 minutes, the bonding came open and the cans fell out in the bottom of the ocean. And I remember vividly when two top officials and a Marine came in and said, "Here's our problem." They explained what I just explained. And they said, "Do something about it yesterday, not tomorrow." And I and my associates worked with various new bonding agencies and it was just when the new plastics were coming into being. And we had a big test room full of molds of bacteria and fungi where we subjected all of our tests. And one of these, which was one of the new plastics, survived very well, and we began using it. And so those things were getting washed into the surf.

You were faced with a difficult decision while you were at Du Pont. You were personally asked by George Harrar to head the Cooperative Wheat Research and Production Program in Mexico, which meant leaving a stable position at Du Pont as the war was coming to an end. Du Pont offered to double your salary, you had a small child at home and your wife was expecting. Why did you want to go to Mexico? Was it your passion for the science or was it something else?

Norman Borlaug: Well, I guess it was because I had seen the impact that the CCC -- Civilian Conservation Corps -- had made on a lot of the young people that I'd been involved with first in Idaho and later in that Timber Salvage Operation in Massachusetts and all of New England after the hurricane. I read that the Rockefeller Foundation was doing this for the well-being of mankind and that made me curious. Of course, behind the scenes there was Harrar and especially Stakman. Stakman knew the background I came from and I'm sure he told Harrar when I made application that, "You'd better try to convince this guy to join." So it happened. There was a lot of pressure for me to stay in Du Pont. I think that was a time when Du Pont was becoming a general chemical company. It was buying out a lot of small chemical companies to make what is today Du Pont de Nemours. And I realized that it was an unusually good place to be because I was one of two or three people with a microbiological background. As a matter of fact, if you look in my bio-data, I think Du Pont classified me as microbiologist.

They did, but you and your wife decided to go to Mexico anyway. What was the state of the program when you first crossed the Rio Grande?

Norman Borlaug: Well, of course, I was lost. I didn't speak a word of Spanish. And at that time, there were very few Mexican scientists who spoke any English, because this was to be part of the program, to train young hordes of Mexican scientists in all of the disciplines that affected food production, and eventually to turn the responsibilities over to them, to work ourselves out of a job. My first disillusionment was the data that were coming out of the experiment stations -- not only Mexico, but when they started to work a little in Ecuador and Peru and even Argentina I saw the same thing. The data that came out of the experiment station were not reliable because who was in charge? They were biometricians -- mathematicians.

At that time, the new thing that was highlighted to save the world was biometry. In Mexico first, and then I found it to be the case in those other countries I've mentioned. The variety that became one of my most useful parents was the lowest yielding variety in all of those tests. And why? Because it was the earliest maturing. And since they didn't harvest when the crop got mature for each variety, the birds had eaten most of the early maturing variety. And the government top scientists at that time were biometricians. They send out the plans of how these young agronomists were to plant the exact numbers of rows and the length of the rows, and we had to cut the whole damn plot. We didn't have attrition machines. We had traded out with animals. It was a mess. I had tried to convince people that we should take samples out of each big plot, but they were set in their ways. I have found since then that this is the way bureaucracies are formed.

Why was it important to train young Mexican scientists and break cultural barriers in the fields?

Norman Borlaug: Because I saw only errors that had been made, and the best variety that became one of my best parents -- Marquis -- was at the bottom of the list, never used. I didn't have any faith in the experiment station because the biometricians never went out to check. They'd send out detailed plans, these young agronomists, and planted them. They harvested only one date -- the whole plot -- and the early varieties had been largely eaten by the birds. That's the way bureaucracies are formed. The ones that got the most modern equipment are farthest removed from the real fields that are needed.

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