R.I.P. Norman E. Borlaug
In late 1944 a guy named George Harrar collected a bunch of agriculture nerds and led them to Mexico. The U.S. didn't consider agriculture a critical strategic resource (we were self-sufficient) and the Mexicans needed help pretty badly (they were not sufficient - self or otherwise). Despite massive amounts of sunshine, they were still importing massive quantities of cereals. One of the agri-nerds was a guy named Norman E. Borlaug.
Another agri-nerd named Cecil Salmon (really, that's his name) was stationed in occupied Japan after WW II. He collected a bunch of wheat samples and sent them to his buddy Orville Vogel (I swear, I'm not making these names up!). In Japan, everything is smaller: DVD players, cars, even wheat.
Orville crossed "Norin 10," one of Cecil's wheat plants from Japan, with "Brevor 14," a big, tough, high-yield American wheat strain. The result was short, squat, tough, and high-yield. This is good because it wouldn't fall over -- a serious problem with wheat. He sent this "Norin 10/Brevor" down to Norman Borlaug in Mexico.
For years, Norman moved around in Mexico, planting wheat in different places in the fall, harvesting it, then planting it someplace new in the spring. Doing this eliminates "photoperiodism" -- a tendency for a plant to only grow well in one particular place because of the exact conditions of day length, shade, humidity, seasons, etc. Moving from place to place produced a wheat that would grow in many different places.
In the 1960's - not that long ago - Mexico became self-sufficient in cereal production. Because of the wheat that Norman Borlaug developed. India and Pakistan were at war, and didn't notice until too late that their cereal crops were failing. Oops. So they called up the Americans, and asked us to send them a couple of million tons of wheat above and beyond what we were already sending them (at the time, the U.S. was exporting 20% of our wheat to Asia).
My buddy George is from Greece. He owns a pizza shop. But in the late 60's/early 70's, he was a young man working on a freighter. One of the trips he took was to ship grain to from the U.S. to India. At the U.S. terminal, they left the ship, went off on "shore leave," and got called back early because it only took 12 hours to fill the entire ship with grain. Railroad car after railroad car dumped grain into a hopper, which fed a system of conveyors which dumped the grain into the ship. The crew didn't even have time to get drunk before it was time to leave.
When they reached India, they opened the hatches, set up walkways to the shore, and literally hundreds of men came on board. They had to lock everything down because there were so many people on the ship. Each man would come on board, walk to the dispatch point, and would pick up a cloth sack. There was a crew of men filling the cloth sacks with grain, using shovels. The bearers would carry the sack on their backs down the walkway to the warehouse, drop off a load of grain, and head back to the ship. It took 30 days to unload.
That is how countries like India and Pakistan (and Turkey and Mexico and Uruguay and so on) were trying to feed their people. They couldn't grow enough cereals. The U.S. could. A ship fills up in Chicago, or Seattle, or L.A. in less than a day. It sails to someplace, and then an army of small, sweating men scrambles day after day for weeks to unload it.
In 1963, Norman Borlaug went to India. The Indian government didn't want him there. They wouldn't let him plant his "monster" wheat. In 1965, children were starving to death. In 1965, Norman got to grow some wheat. He had imported about 500 tons of the stuff to India and Pakistan. The 1965 crop yields (amount of crops per acre of land) were higher than any wheat crop measured in Asia. Ever.
Pakistan was self-sufficient in wheat production by 1968. Indian yields were up 66% from 1965 to 1970. By 1974, India was self-sufficient in production of all cereals (wheat, corn, rice, everything).
At 1965 productivity levels, India would have needed to plant an additional amount of crops roughly the same size as the entire state of California to feed their population. Or let them die of starvation.
Since the 1960's, and the "Green Revolution" led by Dr. Borlaug, countries like India, Pakistan, Mexico, Turkey, and most of Latin America have become self-sufficient, or locally sufficient, in cereal production. Countries like Georgia, Ukraine, Mexico, Turkey, and Australia have become significant exporters of wheat or other cereals. India now exports food. China isn't an exporter, but they're close to self-sufficient.
According to the Bible, Jesus Christ performed the "Miracle of the Loaves and the Fishes" and fed about 4,000 people. One time. Norman Borlaug developed wheat and took it to Mexico and India, and directly saved the lives of about 245 million people. Try it this way: Jesus = 4,000. Norman = 245,000,000.
(By "directly saved," I don't mean "Here's dinner." I mean "You'll die without food? Starting today, here's enough food each year for your and your family for the rest of your life. You're saved.")
What's more, that was in the 1960's. Those people have had children. In many places, they've had a lot of children. With a 20 year generation (mom has kids at 20, has grand-kids when she's 40) we're at the grand-kid point for those 245 million people. How many lives were "made possible by" Norman Borlaug? I think a billion (that's 1,000,000,000, or 1/6th of the population of the entire world.) is a conservative estimate.
Norman Ernest Borlaug died Saturday, September 12, 2009.
I had the pleasure of attending the Iowa State Fair in 2008. (Norman was from Iowa.) Each year they make a "butter cow" - a life-sized statue of a cow made from butter and some steel reinforcing rods. They also make some other stuff. That year, they had a "butter Borlaug."
You don't see Greenpeace or the Sierra Club or PETA praising Norman Borlaug. But you'd think they would appreciate a guy who prevented India from tearing up "natural wilderness" as big as California to plant crops.
You don't see the Send-Money-for-the-Children TV folks running ads about Dr. Borlaug, despite the fact that he fed about a billion children, give or take. And you don't see the Reverend Billy-Bob quoting the gospel of ol' Norman, despite the fact that for every single person that Jesus fed dinner once at a meeting, Norman fed 60,000 people. For the rest of their lives.
Strangely, you don't see the news channels talking about Norman, even now that he's dead. There's an actor, and a musician, and a student in the "U.S" news. Norman got a paragraph in the "World" news, probably because the people with the most to say about him were from places like India and Mexico and Pakistan. Go figure.
It seems like there ought to be more said about the man.
I wonder if Time magazine has ever done a "Greatest American, Ever" issue.
I can't even count to 245,000,000.
Another agri-nerd named Cecil Salmon (really, that's his name) was stationed in occupied Japan after WW II. He collected a bunch of wheat samples and sent them to his buddy Orville Vogel (I swear, I'm not making these names up!). In Japan, everything is smaller: DVD players, cars, even wheat.
Orville crossed "Norin 10," one of Cecil's wheat plants from Japan, with "Brevor 14," a big, tough, high-yield American wheat strain. The result was short, squat, tough, and high-yield. This is good because it wouldn't fall over -- a serious problem with wheat. He sent this "Norin 10/Brevor" down to Norman Borlaug in Mexico.
For years, Norman moved around in Mexico, planting wheat in different places in the fall, harvesting it, then planting it someplace new in the spring. Doing this eliminates "photoperiodism" -- a tendency for a plant to only grow well in one particular place because of the exact conditions of day length, shade, humidity, seasons, etc. Moving from place to place produced a wheat that would grow in many different places.
In the 1960's - not that long ago - Mexico became self-sufficient in cereal production. Because of the wheat that Norman Borlaug developed. India and Pakistan were at war, and didn't notice until too late that their cereal crops were failing. Oops. So they called up the Americans, and asked us to send them a couple of million tons of wheat above and beyond what we were already sending them (at the time, the U.S. was exporting 20% of our wheat to Asia).
My buddy George is from Greece. He owns a pizza shop. But in the late 60's/early 70's, he was a young man working on a freighter. One of the trips he took was to ship grain to from the U.S. to India. At the U.S. terminal, they left the ship, went off on "shore leave," and got called back early because it only took 12 hours to fill the entire ship with grain. Railroad car after railroad car dumped grain into a hopper, which fed a system of conveyors which dumped the grain into the ship. The crew didn't even have time to get drunk before it was time to leave.
When they reached India, they opened the hatches, set up walkways to the shore, and literally hundreds of men came on board. They had to lock everything down because there were so many people on the ship. Each man would come on board, walk to the dispatch point, and would pick up a cloth sack. There was a crew of men filling the cloth sacks with grain, using shovels. The bearers would carry the sack on their backs down the walkway to the warehouse, drop off a load of grain, and head back to the ship. It took 30 days to unload.
That is how countries like India and Pakistan (and Turkey and Mexico and Uruguay and so on) were trying to feed their people. They couldn't grow enough cereals. The U.S. could. A ship fills up in Chicago, or Seattle, or L.A. in less than a day. It sails to someplace, and then an army of small, sweating men scrambles day after day for weeks to unload it.
In 1963, Norman Borlaug went to India. The Indian government didn't want him there. They wouldn't let him plant his "monster" wheat. In 1965, children were starving to death. In 1965, Norman got to grow some wheat. He had imported about 500 tons of the stuff to India and Pakistan. The 1965 crop yields (amount of crops per acre of land) were higher than any wheat crop measured in Asia. Ever.
Pakistan was self-sufficient in wheat production by 1968. Indian yields were up 66% from 1965 to 1970. By 1974, India was self-sufficient in production of all cereals (wheat, corn, rice, everything).
At 1965 productivity levels, India would have needed to plant an additional amount of crops roughly the same size as the entire state of California to feed their population. Or let them die of starvation.
Since the 1960's, and the "Green Revolution" led by Dr. Borlaug, countries like India, Pakistan, Mexico, Turkey, and most of Latin America have become self-sufficient, or locally sufficient, in cereal production. Countries like Georgia, Ukraine, Mexico, Turkey, and Australia have become significant exporters of wheat or other cereals. India now exports food. China isn't an exporter, but they're close to self-sufficient.
According to the Bible, Jesus Christ performed the "Miracle of the Loaves and the Fishes" and fed about 4,000 people. One time. Norman Borlaug developed wheat and took it to Mexico and India, and directly saved the lives of about 245 million people. Try it this way: Jesus = 4,000. Norman = 245,000,000.
(By "directly saved," I don't mean "Here's dinner." I mean "You'll die without food? Starting today, here's enough food each year for your and your family for the rest of your life. You're saved.")
What's more, that was in the 1960's. Those people have had children. In many places, they've had a lot of children. With a 20 year generation (mom has kids at 20, has grand-kids when she's 40) we're at the grand-kid point for those 245 million people. How many lives were "made possible by" Norman Borlaug? I think a billion (that's 1,000,000,000, or 1/6th of the population of the entire world.) is a conservative estimate.
Norman Ernest Borlaug died Saturday, September 12, 2009.
I had the pleasure of attending the Iowa State Fair in 2008. (Norman was from Iowa.) Each year they make a "butter cow" - a life-sized statue of a cow made from butter and some steel reinforcing rods. They also make some other stuff. That year, they had a "butter Borlaug."
You don't see Greenpeace or the Sierra Club or PETA praising Norman Borlaug. But you'd think they would appreciate a guy who prevented India from tearing up "natural wilderness" as big as California to plant crops.
You don't see the Send-Money-for-the-Children TV folks running ads about Dr. Borlaug, despite the fact that he fed about a billion children, give or take. And you don't see the Reverend Billy-Bob quoting the gospel of ol' Norman, despite the fact that for every single person that Jesus fed dinner once at a meeting, Norman fed 60,000 people. For the rest of their lives.
Strangely, you don't see the news channels talking about Norman, even now that he's dead. There's an actor, and a musician, and a student in the "U.S" news. Norman got a paragraph in the "World" news, probably because the people with the most to say about him were from places like India and Mexico and Pakistan. Go figure.
It seems like there ought to be more said about the man.
I wonder if Time magazine has ever done a "Greatest American, Ever" issue.
I can't even count to 245,000,000.
posted by Austin | 9:52 PM
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