He batted for a hunger-free world

We cannot talk about India’s Green Revolution without mentioning Nobel laureate Norman Borlaug, the globally renowned wheat scientist.

He was a great friend of India and the Indian farmer in particular. Indeed, when he died in September 2009 aged 95, there was great sorrow in the Green Revolution belt in Punjab and Haryana.

As we commemorate his birth centenary today (March 25), there are calls to bestow the Bharat Ratna on the American who, in fact, belongs to the world.

Borlaug’s work had a far-reaching impact on the lives of millions of people in developing countries. His breeding of high-yielding crop varieties helped avert mass famines that had been widely predicted in the 1960s, thus altering the course of history.

Largely because of his work, countries that had been food deficient, such as Mexico and India, became self-sufficient in producing cereal grains.

Borlaug was a frequent visitor to India since the 1960s; his last visit was in March 2005. It coincided with the visit of the then US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice.

Borlaug was dubbed ‘Mr Wheat’ because of his Nobel Prize-winning research on the cereal. So, news-hungry journalists in the national capital had a mixed diet of “Rice and Wheat” as it were. The two came calling together, but for different reasons.

Rice talked peace as well as US arms sale to both India and Pakistan, while the ‘Wheat Man’ condemned the global arms trade budget, particularly that of the US, which he believed could be better used to feed the entire hungry population worldwide.

Borlaug was a pacifist. He regretted that the world was spending $900 billion on defence every year while investments in agriculture research were declining. “This is criminal, especially considering that a large global population does not have access to basic needs like food, education or health facilities,” he fumed.

Then 92, Borlaug looked absolutely fit as he gave an hour-long lecture on the theme, “From Green Revolution to Gene Revolution”, at the Indian Agriculture Research Institute in New Delhi.

Shaking hands and joking with Green Revolution associates such as MS Swaminathan and journalists on the farm beat, Borlaug readily recognised many an ordinary Green Revolution farmer who had come from Punjab and Haryana to meet him. Borlaug enthusiastically answered queries from journalists. He joked and even poked fun at innocent questions.

He laughed good-naturedly at a scribe who passionately spoke about organic farming as an alternative to “harmful fertilisers”.

“Do 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, using fertilisers 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 said.

An earlier visit by Borlaug in 1995 had coincided with the visit of US agriculture secretary Dan Glickman. In meetings with Indian ministers, Glickman had engaged in tough talking on the approaching WTO and Indian agriculture, and had said Indian farmers should learn to live without huge subsidies.

This was conveyed to Borlaug by a scribe for his comments during a meeting with the press. The response was typical Borlaug, the consummate technocrat with ill-concealed contempt for politicians. “What does he (Glickman) know about poor farmers,” Borlaug exclaimed and held forth on how America was encouraging arms sales worth billions of dollars around the world, money that could well have been used to feed the hungry.

Once, when I was interviewing him during the World Food Summit in Rome in 1996, I received a friendly reprimand for asking mostly India-specific questions. “Why don’t you journalists have a global focus?” Borlaug said. “After all, this is the World Food Summit.” Then he gave me details of how Ethiopia was gradually emerging from the clutches of food shortage and famine by using modern methods of farming.

Borlaug was indeed God’s gift to the world at a time when it was faced with the challenge to produce enough food for an ever increasing population. He burst on the scene at the appropriate time.

In the words of MS Swaminathan: “He (Borlaug) was a bright, affirming flame in the midst of a sea of despair then prevailing. He was a man of extraordinary humanism, commitment to a hunger-free world and knew no nationality.”

A former deputy editor with PTI, the writer is a New Delhi-based freelance journalist

COMMENT NOW