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

You're famous, of course, for the Green Revolution in agriculture. What is the Blue Revolution?

Norman Borlaug: Well, that's the name that the International Water Commission has added to it. They say the next revolution will be the "Blue Revolution" -- better use of water, more efficient and with better technology.

Every few years Congress renegotiates the Farm Bill, and the story is covered all over the world. Why is the U.S. Farm Bill so important to world agriculture?

Norman Borlaug: Well, this is of course a presidential election year, and so you've got to separate the facts from fiction and from politics, and that's pretty difficult. It's hard to separate all of those things. I think it's impossible during the presidential election campaigns.

Get the Flash Player to see this video. All you can hope is that the American people have still a little common sense in their back pocket and want to use it. But there are movements underway. For example, USAID, which used to be closely affiliated also with agriculture, is now affiliated closely with the State Department and Dr. Rice. Either she doesn't know much about agriculture or she doesn't want to know much about agriculture. The Department of Agriculture is likely to be cut very greatly this year. There are some people even in the organization that are speaking out, like (Andrew) Natsios, who was the former head of USAID. He still says, "Look, agriculture -- without food there's no political stability." But nobody hears him. And it's not the scientist in agriculture. They're complaining about the spending cuts, but they're powerless.

You've said there needs to be a balance between the dmeands of the expanding population and the pressure it puts on the planet. Why is that balance so important?

Norman Borlaug: Well first of all, we can't go on at the same rate we have gone on for during my lifetime. When I was born, the population was probably about 1.3 or 1.4 billion people, most of them in Asia and in India and Pakistan, China. Now we're six billion, and we're adding about 84 million more every year. The sad part of that is that the majority of those 84 million are being born in countries where there's already a shortage of food, and where political stability hinges on making food available.

So looking to the future, what do you see as the biggest threat to mankind?

Norman Borlaug: Well, I would say that unless we have a food system capable of producing the food that's needed, we will have been indirectly contributing to more and more social upheavals. And this is on an indirect worldwide scale.

The international agencies working for increased food production and the agencies working for population control seem to work independently of one another. Is it important that they work together?

Norman Borlaug: This is politics, but they should be working closely together; and they were for a period of time. But when the whole energy thing came into the picture, this energy thing is being blown all out of proportion now. You can't solve it with a single change in policy. It's got to be a basic change in the whole economy of countries that have this problem.

How did the Nobel Peace Prize affect the recognition of your work?

Norman Borlaug: Well, I suddenly realized that whether I wanted to or not, I had to be a spokesman for science, biological science especially, as it relates to food, but as that impinges on nutrition and many other aspects of human progress or lack of it.

What happened in your career that you didn't expect when you first began?

Norman Borlaug: Well, I was trained in forestry, but surprisingly, even though it came in several different steps, I went back to forestry because it was there that I saw the American chestnut and American elm dying from introduced diseases on my first assignment in Massachusetts in 1936.

So when you were seeing signs of plant disease in Massachusetts as a forester in the 1930s, you didn't know how much of your career would be spent in plant pathology.

Norman Borlaug: No, but I did recognize that genetics and plant breeding and plant diseases and the agronomic practices that permitted the varieties to express their true genetic yield potential were programs that had potential impact to modify food production in the world.

What surprised you most about the later course of your own career?

Norman Borlaug: When we first saw the broad adaptation of the Mexican varieties, at the end of the first year or two, I had no idea what an impact they could make on the world. But it wasn't just a variety, it was how you've tried to grow those plants, the date of planting, the fertilizer, the irrigation, control of weeds and economic policy to supply the imports that are needed for the variety to express its true potential.

You've been decorated by two U.S Presidents as well as foreign heads of state. You've met a remarkable number of historic figures. Was there one who made a particular impression?

Norman Borlaug: Well, there's a book here that was written depicting the life of Henry Wallace, and Henry Wallace, during the worst of the Depression, carried a disproportionate part of the changes that were being forced through Congress by President Roosevelt and Mrs. Roosevelt. He was a very important visionary -- and I knew him personally -- and when he was Vice President-Elect, he was given a special assignment by President Franklin Roosevelt to go to Mexico as spokesman for the U.S. government. President Roosevelt wanted him to go, as spokesman, to the installation of the new government in Mexico. That was also the time when the president who was stepping down from the presidency -- Lázaro Cárdenas, the great land reformer, and his Minister of Agriculture, Marte R. Gómez -- were changing everything in Mexico, bringing in the ejido system. Prior to that, if you looked behind the scenes, there was probably only somewhere between 300 and 400 families, and the Catholic Church, that controlled the great majority of the land in Mexico, and that was coming to an end. The ejido system had been established by Lázaro Cárdenas when he began his presidency in 1934 and was now terminating. And so it was a critical period. Now sadly, those people never got titles to the land. They could use it for their lifetime and hopefully pass it on to their children, but it was something that held up development in Mexico for 45 or 50 years.

Get the Flash Player to see this video. Norman Borlaug: I knew Henry Wallace personally very good. He was really involved in getting the U.S. and the Rockefeller Foundation involved in agriculture. And when he used to come to see our program, I'd take him out to show him the wheat and he'd always end up by saying, "Why does an Iowa farm boy waste his time working on this secondary crop of imported wheat? Why aren't you working out in the corn?" Of course, he was chiding me, but I knew him well. And he played a very important role in changing American agriculture.

What advice would you give to young people just starting out in their careers?

Get the Flash Player to see this video. Norman Borlaug: Study broadly. Don't specialize too early. Read history. Sooner or later, you're going to have to specialize, but within the limits that you have to take obligatory courses to get a degree, keep your general education as broad as you can, because you never know what doors are going to open to new opportunities -- ten, 15, 20 years down the road -- because of changes in science and technology.

What do you think will be the big challenges for the world in the next quarter century?

Norman Borlaug: We've got to do something about energy, because the way it's going now, energy and food got all tangled up together, probably worse than would've happened were this not a presidential campaign year, but it's miserable the way it is at present.

One last question. Of all your accomplishments, what would you most like to be remembered for?

Get the Flash Player to see this video. Norman Borlaug: I figure that one person is only a limited part of the team, and without a team behind you, you can't do very much. And it's not just a team of scientists, but learning to deal with political leaders that you're not agreeing on many of their policies, but pushing it towards an area where there's hope that in the future they will see the light.

Thank you, Dr. Borlaug, this has been amazing.

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