The Hindu Business Line : When Ms Rice and Mr Wheat came calling

Dr Norman E. Borlaug, Nobel Laureate and father of the Green Revolution, turns 91 today. Never one to toe the establishment line, he has been particularly critical of the US' skewed priorities that make it spend $900 billion on defence every year, while investment in agricultural research is declining.

FOR news, journalists in the capital had a mixed diet of "Rice and Wheat" last week. Nobel laureate and renowned wheat scientist Dr Norman E. Borlaug and the US Secretary of State, Ms Condoleezza Rice, by strange coincidence, were in New Delhi on the same day.

While Ms Rice talked of peace and sale of arms to India and Pakistan, Mr Wheat, as Dr Borlaug is known for his Nobel Prize winning contribution in the field, condemned the scale of global arms trade, particularly contribution to it by the US.

Dr Borlaug, a pacifist, expressed regret that the world was spending $900 billion on defence every year, while the investment in agriculture research was declining.

"This is criminal, especially considering that a large population of the world does not have access to basic needs such as food, education or health facilities," the Wheat man fumed.

Significantly, Dr Borlaug was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace, and not for scientific research.

At 91 (his birthday falls today, March 25), Dr Borlaug looked fit as he delivered an hour-long lecture, "From green revolution to gene revolution", at the Indian Agriculture Research Institute (IARI), in New Delhi, on March 16.

Dr Borlaug interacted with architects of the Green Revolution, including Dr M. S. Swaminathan, and also farmers of Punjab and Haryana who had benefited from the revolution. He enthusiastically answered queries from journalists.

Laughing good-naturedly to a scribe's proposal of organic farming as an alternative to "harmful fertilisers", Dr Borlaug said: "Use organic farming wherever feasible, but it is nonsense to think you could feed the world without the use of chemical fertilisers. Despite the tremendous rise in food production, aided by fertiliser and irrigation-based technology, millions around the world still go to bed hungry. You need to double the food output by 2050 to feed them."

He defended the use of genetically modified organisms and transgenic crops, maintaining that these could offer new possibilities in the future. His memorable quotes included: "My bio-technology dreams involve transfer of resistance of rice plants to the dreaded rust diseases, to wheat and other cereals, and transfer of proteins in wheat to rice and maize. "

"You will be able to eat rice sandwiches 50 years from now."

Dr Borlaug last visited India in 1995, by coincidence again, the then US Agriculture Secretary, Mr Dan Glickman, was visiting. Mr Glickman in his meeting with ministers, had talked tough on the approaching WTO, and how Indian farmers should learn to live without huge subsidies.

When this was conveyed to Dr Borlaug by a scribe for his comments, with his ill-concealed contempt for politicians, he said: "What does he (Glickman) know about poor farmers?"

He held forth on how the US was encouraging arms sale around the globe worth billions of dollars that could well have been used to feed the hungry.

The next meeting with Borlaug was at the World Food Summit in Rome, in 1996.

Annoyed by this scribe's India-specific questions the Nobel Laureate shot back, "Why don't you journalists have a global focus? After all, this is the World Food Summit."

He went on to give details of how Ethiopia was then gradually overcoming food shortage and famine, aided by modern methods of farming.

On the present visit, Dr Borlaug participated in the centenary celebrations of IARI, and delivered the Coromandel Lecture at the ceremony for the Borlaug Awards for Excellence in Agricultural Research.

The awards, instituted by the Murugappa Group's Coromandel Fertilisers, were presented to Dr S. Nagarajan, Director of IARI, and Dr Rattan Lal, soil scientist from Ohio State University and alumnus of IARI.

Dr Borlaug was born on March 25, 1914, in a small farming community in the northeastern part of Iowa. He saved money by working for 50 cents a day during the Great Depression.

He saved enough money to attend the University of Minnesota where he earned a Ph.D in plant pathology. In 1944 he worked on a small rural agricultural research project, in Mexico, that years later became the famed International Centre for the Improvement of Wheat and Maize.

The next 20 years Dr Borlaug worked closely with poor Mexican farmers to develop a hybrid variety of wheat that could resist disease and double its yields.

The day of reckoning came in the early 1960s, with the development of a new strain that could do just, greatly increasing the wheat harvest and lifting Mexican farmers out of subsistence agriculture and poverty.

At the behest of the United Nations, he went to South Asia where India and Pakistan were on the verge of a massive famine.

Working closely with bright young Indian and Pakistani scientists, Dr Borlaug and his team convinced the leadership of both countries to radically alter their approach to agriculture.

The result was that both nations went from food deficit to surpluses in a matter of few years, saving hundreds of millions of people from starvation and death.

For these achievements, Dr Borlaug was called the "Father of the Green Revolution" and was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1970 for providing bread for the hungry .

A generous Borlaug created a new honour — the World Food Prize — with support from the General Food Corporation, New York, in 1986. One year later, the first World Food Prize was awarded to Dr M. S. Swaminathan for his contribution to the Green Revolution in India.

(The author is a former deputy editor, Press Trust of India. Feedback may be sent to rajamani_rc@yahoo.co.uk)

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