Word: borlaug
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...Norman E. Borlaug is a onetime Iowa farm boy who probably knows as much about growing food as anyone else in the world. He won the 1970 Nobel Peace Prize for his contribution to the development of "miracle" high-yield strains of wheat, which produced up to four bushels where only one bushel had grown before, and which have helped make India, West Pakistan and Mexico nearly self-sufficient for their cereal supply...
Last week Dr. Borlaug gave the keynote speech at a meeting of the U.N.'s Food and Agricultural Organization in Rome. To the bemusement of the assembled notables, he violently attacked "the current vicious, hysterical campaign against the use of agricultural chemicals being promoted today by fear-provoking, irresponsible environmentalists." Today's greatest danger, Borlaug pointed out. is the pressure put on food supplies by the world's rapidly growing population. Fully 50% of mankind is undernourished, perhaps another 15% is malnourished. To make matters worse, the soil in many developing nations is worn out, and crops...
...stark contrast, he continued, "the so-called environmentalist movement" is endemic to rich nations, where the most rabid crusaders tend to be well-fed urbanites who sample the delights of nature on weekend outings. Borlaug feels that campaigns to ban agricultural chemicals-starting with DDT-reveal a callous misordering of social priorities. If such bans become law, he warned, "then the world will be doomed not by chemical poisoning but by starvation...
Visit to India. The experimental plants were, in fact, descendants of the original strains that Borlaug had bred for his crusade against famine. Undisturbed by any scientific breeding techniques, wheat in tropical countries had evolved over the centuries into tall, thin-stemmed strains able to survive flooding and compete successfully with weeds for sunlight. But they are highly vulnerable to modern fertilizers, which cause them to become top-heavy with grain and topple over. To overcome that problem, Borlaug collected samples of a Japanese dwarf strain that had already been improved by a U.S. Agriculture Department scientist named Orville Vogel...
...could be planted there as well. As a result, India is now on the verge of producing enough wheat to meet its own needs. Neighboring West Pakistan, also a recipient of the miracle wheat, has already achieved that goal. Indeed, the Rockefeller and Ford foundations were so elated by Borlaug's work that they joined forces in establishing a similar international program for rice improvement headquartered in the Philippines...