They don鈥檛 make 鈥檈m like Norm Borlaug anymore. The father of the green revolution his long battle with cancer over the weekend at the age of 95. I wasn鈥檛 surprised: he was looking frail when I saw him last year in Ciudad Obreg贸n, Mexico, where he had launched the revolution.
That afternoon he managed a spirited speech, in fluent Mexican Spanish, to local farmers. But later, when I was allowed to ask him questions, he was flagging. He complained that using crops for biofuel was pushing up world food prices and hurting the poor. 鈥淲e had other kinds of alternative energy but we stopped developing it,鈥� he fumed. 鈥淏ut now I don鈥檛 have enough energy to keep talking.鈥�
He was a giant of the scientific and technological revolution of the 20th century. He probably saved more lives than the more famous names behind polio vaccines or DNA: Norm Borlaug ended famine in much of the world.
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What an epitaph. 鈥淚 personally cannot live comfortably in the midst of abject hunger and poverty and human misery,鈥� Borlaug famously said. Some people go into science thinking they might help save the world. Norm鈥檚 your proof that it鈥檚 possible.
Global shortages
Of course, there was more scope in his day. In the 1930s, people starved in the US. In the mid-20th century the world鈥檚 human population soared, and there were widespread food shortages.
The answer was to apply science to increase crop yields. Many people helped do that, but Borlaug was unique. In 1944 the US government sent him to Mexico to fight the age-old enemy of wheat, stem rust fungus, after Mexican outbreaks had rampaged into the US breadbasket.
Borlaug devised an ingenious system to accelerate the breeding of disease-resistant wheat and beat stem rust 鈥� but he didn鈥檛 stop in Mexico. His plants went on to vastly boost food production elsewhere, notably India and its neighbours, as famine-wracked then as Africa is now. Hard to imagine? That鈥檚 why.
Then Borlaug helped convince the big donors of his day that if one scientific advance in crop science could make that much difference, surely we needed more. The donors listened, and the defeat of wheat rust was followed by the green revolution 鈥� similar leaps in rice and other crops, with a systematic introduction of irrigation, fertiliser and high-yielding varieties to farms worldwide. Borlaug鈥檚 lab in Mexico is now , the world centre for wheat and maize research, and part of a worldwide that continue the revolution.
Price of revolution
That鈥檚 why some think ill of Borlaug. The green revolution was social as well as technological, as changing farming technology meant changing land ownership and social relationships, and inevitably winners and losers. A faction of economists has long charged that the because of these ills.
The ills surely need sorting, especially the fact that modern crops鈥� thirst for water and land is not infinitely sustainable. But I have no patience for arguments that the green revolution was a selfish capitalist plot. Famine used to stalk the Indian subcontinent regularly: in 1943 starved to death in Bengal. The stopped that.
Would continuing starvation have been better? The green revolution wasn鈥檛 the final answer to our problems, but it was the start of the answer. All solutions engender more problems, but it鈥檚 scary to imagine what our world would have been without what Borlaug鈥檚 science started. When he got his Nobel in 1970 鈥� he was out in the field when he got a frantic message from his wife, which he thought was a joke 鈥� it was the peace prize.
Continuing struggle
But the revolution isn鈥檛 over. In 2007, Borlaug was battling cancer, but not yet frail 鈥� and he was angry. A stem rust called Ug99 had evolved to evade the rust resistance he discovered, but in the intervening years of plenty, the system for applying science to food production had become underfunded and atrophied, and was slow to respond.
鈥淲e have been too complacent,鈥� he thundered over the phone. 鈥淲e don鈥檛 train people to keep monitoring and improving the crop anymore, and the system broke down.鈥� In 2002 when Ug99 hit Kenya, Borlaug started to agitate. 鈥淧eople were paying no attention, and I got nervous. Even though I was retired I couldn鈥檛 hold my tongue.鈥�
The agitation helped launch work on the problem, and now progress is being made 鈥� but Ug99 is already in Iran and poised to strike beleaguered Afghanistan and, worse, the breadbaskets of India.
鈥淲e started three years too late,鈥� said Borlaug. 鈥淲e鈥檒l need some luck as well. This thing could cause major human and social destruction.鈥�
Norm Borlaug never stopped fighting that spectre. 鈥淲e can do another green revolution, by doing what we did before, with common sense,鈥� he said the last time we spoke. He lamented the replacement of much field research by lab science, but still hoped genetic engineering will provide new disease resistance to rescue wheat and other staples.
Borlaug had harangued me before about the need for science journalists, 鈥渂ecause most scientists are miserable communicators鈥�, so just before I left him to his carers in Ciudad Obreg贸n, I said, 鈥淲e鈥檒l keep telling the story.鈥� He looked me in the eye and replied, 鈥淭hank you.鈥�
So we will.
