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Tuesday, 15 September 2009 14:39 |
Des Moines Register
September 14, 2009
Des Moines Register
BY PHILIP BRASHER • PBRASHER@DMREG.COM
September 14, 2009
www.desmoinesregister.com
Washington, D.C. — The challenge of feeding the world's poorest people consumed Norman Borlaug until his final moments.
On Friday, the day before the famous scientist, Iowa native and Nobel Peace Prize laureate died at his home in Dallas, Texas, he had a final conversation with his family.
"I have a problem," said Borlaug, 95, his granddaughter, Julie Borlaug, recounted Sunday. What was that, a family member asked?
"Africa."
Borlaug is known as the father of the Green Revolution for his success during the 1960s in breeding varieties of wheat credited with saving millions of people in Pakistan and India from starvation.
But he devoted his final decades to spreading the Green Revolution to Africa by encouraging scientists to follow in his footsteps and by cajoling public officials in the United States and abroad to support their work. More than a third of the population in many sub-Saharan countries is malnourished, according to the United Nations.
Borlaug was convinced the Green Revolution could spread to Africa and believed that biotechnology was part of the solution, said former Sen. George McGovern, who won the Borlaug-founded World Food Prize last year for his work in developing an international school-nutrition program. McGovern went to see Borlaug earlier this year for what turned out to be his final birthday. Borlaug, who was born on his grandparents' farm 11 miles southwest of Cresco, died of complications from cancer.
"He was always the optimist," McGovern said. "He always felt we could bring governments around, bring people around."
Borlaug "was simply one of the world's best," said Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, a former Iowa governor. "A determined, dedicated, but humble man, who believed we had the collective duty and knowledge to eradicate hunger worldwide."
The Rockefeller Foundation, a major contributor to the Green Revolution and agricultural research since then, issued a statement Sunday calling Borlaug "a force beyond measure."
"The world is more peaceful and humane as a consequence of his work," the foundation said.
Not all praise from Green Revolution
Borlaug has his share of critics — environmentalists who say the Green Revolution that Borlaug led with development of high-yielding varieties of wheat required high levels of chemical inputs that polluted rivers and streams. Borlaug also espoused the use of genetic engineering, which is controversial in Europe and with some U.S. environmentalists, to increase yields in Africa.
But Borlaug's idea that scientific research was a key to extending the Green Revolution to Africa won support from scientists and policymakers alike, including President Barack Obama.
In an exchange of letters with Borlaug during the 2008 campaign, Obama called for extending the Green Revolution "throughout the world" and pledged to bolster U.S. agricultural research.
Borlaug emphasized the importance of improving crop varieties through research, encouraging young people to go into plant science and getting governments to support agricultural development, said Mark Westgate, a plant physiologist at Iowa State University who leads an agricultural development project in Uganda.
"You can't say enough about Borlaug's influence from the whole idea of improving genetics and bringing it to people who need it," Westgate said.
In his later years, Borlaug worked with former President Jimmy Carter on a project called Sasakawa Global 2000 to increase food production in Africa and also continued an association with the Mexico-based International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center, which has a research arm in Kenya.
In a statement Sunday, Carter said, "Throughout his life, Dr. Borlaug was committed to alleviating hunger and improving food production technologies that have saved millions of lives. One day the advancements he shepherded may end our global hunger crisis."
Iowa Gov. Chet Culver on Sunday called Borlaug a "true visionary" who would rise from "humble beginnings on a northeast Iowa farm" to "change the world."
Norman Borlaug's legacy extended to his hometown of Cresco, which he visited periodically and where his sister still lives. Iowa's two U.S. senators introduced legislation this summer to declare his home a national historic site.
In addition to drawing scientists and other visitors to the town, "he's made all of us more aware of the importance of preservation and support of the people of the planet and the planet itself," said the town's mayor, Ronda Hughes.
Students carry on mentor's work
Borlaug's legacy includes many scientists he inspired, like Gebisa Ejeta. As a new college graduate in Ethiopia in the 1970s, Ejeta was struggling to figure what to do with his life. Then Ejeta's mentor, a plant breeder who had studied in America, told Ejeta he had been inspired by learning of Borlaug's work.
Ejeta decided to study plant genetics himself, earned a doctorate from Purdue University and later learned how to dramatically improve production of sorghum, a staple crop in his home country. Ejeta is this year's winner of the World Food Prize.
"I didn't quite fully understand the power of the work that Dr. Borlaug had done other than the fact that if a person could be given this kind of recognition for serving humanity, I thought this would be a field of study that would be worth looking into," Ejeta said Sunday.
Final words
Borlaug’s words to a scientist who visited him a few hours before he died on Saturday could be a fitting epitaph.
Bill Raun, an agonomist at Oklahoma State University whose father had been a colleague of Borlaug’s, was updating Borlaug about an inexpensive device that would help poor farmers measure their fertilizer needs.
As Raun recounted the conservation, Borlaug looked right at him and said, “To the farmer.”
Raun said Borlaug was telling him, “get this out to the farmer.”
http://www.desmoinesregister.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/200909140405/NEWS/909140322
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