Capítulo 4
From Mexican Success to Global Impact
By 1956, Mexico had achieved self-sufficiency in cereals-a remarkable transformation that caught the attention of agricultural experts worldwide. The Rockefeller Foundation began extending its successful model internationally, and in 1960, Borlaug joined an FAO-Rockefeller delegation studying wheat production problems across North Africa and Middle Eastern countries. Seeing potential for Mexican wheat varieties to address widespread hunger, he proposed a hands-on training program in Mexico for young scientists from these regions.
This training program, which began in January 1961, became a model for knowledge transfer in international agriculture. Trainees worked twelve-hour days across two wheat-crop cycles, learning all aspects of wheat production. Borlaug also established International Spring Wheat Yield Nurseries, initially sending fifty varieties to twenty-five locations worldwide, eventually expanding to one hundred fifty locations. Within three years, data clearly showed the broad adaptation and rust resistance of Mexican semi-dwarf varieties, providing crucial information for launching aggressive crop production campaigns in Pakistan and India in 1965-66.
In 1963, the Rockefeller and Ford Foundations established CIMMYT (International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center) as an autonomous international training institute with an international board of trustees and staff, making Borlaug director of its International Wheat Improvement Program. This position allowed him to realize his objective of training young scientists in research and production methods. The trustees mandated that all CIMMYT data and materials be available worldwide free of charge-a policy that would prove crucial in spreading the Green Revolution globally.
Borlaug's teaching approach was practical and memorable. During a February 1967 visit to India, rather than focusing on impressive wheat plots at Pantnagar University, Borlaug deliberately sought out a disease-infested plot of disreputable appearance. Using this as a teaching moment, he launched into a warning about the dangers of pride and complacency, emphasizing how the "shifty, changing, constantly evolving enemy, wheat rust" could devastate entire regions. He stressed that wheat scientists must remain vigilant, anticipate threats, and maintain breeding lines with alternative sources of resistance ready for multiplication if disaster threatened.
By mid-1960s, the semi-dwarf Mexican wheats had gained such popularity among plant scientists and progressive farmers in India and Pakistan that "guards with shotguns had to be stationed at the plots" to prevent theft of the improved seed. Black markets for Mexican wheat seed emerged in both countries by 1964-65-a clear indication of farmer demand that would help drive the coming agricultural transformation.
Capítulo 5
Averting Famine in South Asia
By the mid-1960s, a perfect storm of population growth and agricultural stagnation had created dire conditions in South Asia. India was receiving five million tons of emergency wheat grain aid yearly from the United States under the Food for Peace program, plus additional grain from Canada and Australia-the largest food rescue operation in history. Yet the famine was worsening.
Malthusian thinking resurged among experts. The Paddock brothers published "Famine 1975!" writing off India as beyond hope, while Paul Ehrlich's "The Population Bomb" predicted food production could never keep pace with population growth. Even George Harrar, Rockefeller Foundation president, identified "explosive population increase" as the greatest threat to mankind after world conflict.
It was in this climate of pessimism that Borlaug's high-yielding Mexican wheats began appearing in the Asian subcontinent. Borlaug arranged for wheat experts Glenn Anderson and Ignacio Narvaez to help implement projects in India and Pakistan respectively. In 1964, with help from Mexican-trained participants, Borlaug's wheats were planted experimentally in both countries. By 1965, 250 tons of Mexican dwarf wheat seed were imported into Pakistan and 200 tons into India for wide-scale farm testing. The trials yielded exceptionally well, especially where Borlaug's cultural practices were followed.
India's Minister of Food and Agriculture, Shri C. Subramaniam, recognized the wheat's superior quality and potential. Against conventional wisdom that agricultural progress in developing countries would be slow, Borlaug knew that even small-scale peasant farmers would adopt the new technology if given proper support-seeds, planting instructions, fertilization guidance, and pest control methods. His "Kick-Off Approach" rejected the hypothesis that agricultural development necessarily had to be gradual.
Despite mixed results from initial trials during India's 1966 drought, Minister Subramaniam made a courageous decision to import eighteen thousand tons of high-yielding seed. By March 1967, "euphoric wheat fever" had spread throughout the wheat-growing region. This enthusiasm was crucial because India hadn't yet committed to policies supporting small farmers' adoption of new technology as Pakistan had done.
At a strategic luncheon with press present, Borlaug seized the opportunity to advocate for policy changes. He boldly stated India needed "fertilizer, fertilizer, fertilizer, credit, credit, credit, and fair prices, fair prices, fair prices!" Later, in a heated exchange with Deputy Prime Minister Mehta, Borlaug bluntly warned that without policy changes to support fertilizer imports, credit for farmers, and fair grain prices, social and political disorder would follow. Despite Mehta's initial resistance about foreign exchange limitations, the meeting proved extraordinarily effective-within two weeks, India announced dramatic policy changes regarding fertilizer imports and domestic production.
Meanwhile, Pakistan was making similar bold moves. When they learned of India's 18,000-ton Mexican wheat import in 1966, they sent their Minister of Agriculture to Mexico to purchase seed. Through tense negotiations with Mexican farmer cooperatives, Pakistan secured 1,700 tons of the coveted white "MexiPak" wheat and 40,000 tons of red-grained Lerma Rojo 64-an unprecedented agricultural import.
President Ayub Khan made bold economic policy changes to support the wheat campaign, committing to fertilizer imports, providing farmer credit, and guaranteeing market prices equivalent to international rates. With Dr. Ignacio Narvaez as advisor and strong government support, Pakistan launched a national wheat production campaign in 1966. By 1968, the results were remarkable-fields planted with Mexican seed showed excellent yields across the country. The April 1968 harvest brought Pakistan to self-sufficiency in wheat production.
By 1974, despite Paul Ehrlich's 1968 prediction that India would "never" feed itself, the country had become self-sufficient in all cereals. William S. Gaud, USAID Administrator, coined the term "Green Revolution" in March 1968, distinguishing it from the "Red Revolution" of the Soviets or the "White Revolution" of Iran. The name stuck, and Borlaug's agricultural transformation spread rapidly across the developing world.
Capítulo 6
The Nobel Peace Prize and Global Recognition
On October 20, 1970, Margaret Borlaug received unexpected calls from Oslo informing her that Norman had won the Nobel Peace Prize. Initially skeptical and thinking it might be a hoax, Margaret eventually became convinced and traveled to the Toluca Agricultural Experiment Station where Norman was working with six young scientists. When told of the award, Norman responded with disbelief: "No. No. That can't be, Margaret. Someone's pulling your leg."
In her presentation speech, the Nobel Committee Chair Aase Lionaes stated that Borlaug "more than any other single person of this age, has helped to provide bread for a hungry world" and had "turned pessimism into optimism in the dramatic race between population explosion and our production of food." She described him as "a dynamic, indomitable, and refreshingly unconventional research scientist" who was "not only a man of ideals but essentially a man of action."
In his brief acceptance speech, Borlaug emphasized that progress against hunger requires uniting food production efforts with population control: "There can be no permanent progress in the battle against hunger until the agencies that fight for increased food production and those that fight for population control unite in a common effort."
Following the ceremony, Borlaug delivered his Nobel lecture titled "The Green Revolution, Peace, and Humanity," summarizing his philosophy: "If you desire peace, cultivate justice, but at the same time cultivate the fields to produce more bread; otherwise there will be no peace." After the ceremonies, Norman and Margaret visited his ancestral homeland in Norway where they were treated "like royalty."
Recognizing that the Nobel Prize categories did not include an award for food production or agricultural advancements, Borlaug later petitioned the Nobel Foundation to add such a category. When informed this was legally impossible under Alfred Nobel's will, Borlaug spent three years searching for a sponsor to establish a World Food Prize.
In 1986, with support from his colleague Robert Havener, Borlaug secured funding from General Foods Corporation. However, when General Foods was acquired by Philip Morris, support was terminated in 1990. At this critical juncture, Borlaug met John Ruan, a self-made Iowa millionaire who had built a trucking empire from a single truck. Ruan embraced Borlaug's vision and became the prize's sponsor.
The Ruan family created the World Food Prize Foundation with a $10 million endowment. The prize, now valued at $250,000, is awarded annually on or near United Nations World Food Day (October 16) in Des Moines, Iowa, to recognize "exceptional achievement in assuring adequate food and nutrition for all." Since its inception in 1987, laureates have come from around the world, recognizing achievements in plant breeding, pest management, micro-credit, agricultural policy, and aquaculture.
Capítulo 7
Expanding the Green Revolution to China and Africa
Norman Borlaug's work in China began in the wake of President Nixon's historic 1972 visit that broke two decades of diplomatic silence between the United States and China. Just two years later, Borlaug joined nine other American agricultural scientists on a month-long exchange visit sponsored by the US National Academy of Sciences.
Upon arrival in China, Borlaug recognized Lou Chen Hou, a former fellow graduate student from the University of Minnesota, among the Chinese greeters. Given the political climate during the waning years of the Cultural Revolution, Borlaug opted for discretion, exchanging only a subtle wink with his old colleague rather than an enthusiastic greeting.
Borlaug returned to China in 1977 leading a wheat specialist exchange, and again in 1979 with CIMMYT colleagues. He noted stark differences between Soviet and Chinese scientific approaches: "The USSR had held its scientists down under Lysenko... who caused the expulsion, imprisonment, even death, of hundreds of scientists." By contrast, China became increasingly open after the Cultural Revolution, allowing their scientists to train freely at CIMMYT without constant supervision.
Borlaug's influence on Chinese agriculture had begun even earlier when Pakistan supplied China with experimental Mexican wheat lines in 1966. By 1970, China purchased 5,000 tons of Borlaug's high-yielding wheat seed from Pakistan, sparking a revolution in spring wheat production. With just 7 percent of the world's arable land, China feeds 22 percent of the world's population-an achievement Borlaug calls "one of the remarkable achievements of the twentieth century."
While China's agricultural transformation was largely successful, Africa represented a more challenging frontier. For nearly 20 years in his later career, Borlaug worked with farmers in Africa, alongside former President Jimmy Carter and the Nippon Foundation of Japan, in a program called Sasakawa-Global 2000. Africa faces daunting constraints to agricultural development, including rural isolation, minimal irrigation (only 5% of cultivated land compared to 30-50% in Asia), frequent droughts, widespread human and animal diseases, and historical underinvestment in agricultural infrastructure.
The initiative began when Japanese philanthropist Ryoichi Sasakawa asked Borlaug why there had been no Green Revolution in Africa. Despite initially claiming he was "too old" and lacked knowledge of Africa, Borlaug was convinced when the 13-years-older Sasakawa insisted they start immediately. Borlaug organized a workshop in Geneva with about fifty experts, including former President Jimmy Carter. The partnership between Sasakawa Africa Association and Carter Center's Global 2000 program was formed, with Borlaug providing technical leadership and Carter helping in the policy arena.
Starting in Ghana and Sudan in 1986, Borlaug assembled a team including former Mexican collaborators and young African experts. The program expanded to 15 countries, working through national agriculture ministries to help farmers test new food production technologies. Each participating farmer received technical support and inputs on credit to grow test plots using improved varieties, moderate fertilizer applications, and better cultural practices. Results were impressive, with yields two to three times higher than national averages, demonstrating the potential for an African Green Revolution.
Recognizing protein deficiency in African diets, Sasakawa-Global 2000 introduced Quality Protein Maize (QPM), which contains twice the levels of essential amino acids lysine and tryptophane compared to regular corn. In Ghana, researchers developed a QPM variety named "Obatanpa" ("good nursing mother"), which has been widely adopted for making nutritious porridge for babies.
Capítulo 8
Feeding 10 Billion: Borlaug's Vision for the Future
Even in his later years, Borlaug remained focused on the future challenges of feeding humanity. He expressed confidence that Earth can provide food for up to ten billion people-six times the population when he was born-if societies support continuous research in both conventional and biotechnology while policymakers prioritize rural development.
Borlaug identified the Cerrado region of Brazil as having tremendous agricultural potential, where new technologies have transformed 500 million acres of previously worthless acid-soil savanna into productive farmland. This breakthrough has made Brazil the world's second-largest soybean producer while reducing Amazon deforestation. Similar soil conditions exist in Paraguay, Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, and Venezuela, leading Borlaug to predict that "South America is likely to replace North America as the largest agricultural production area in the world."
He believed this technology could also benefit vast areas of sub-Saharan Africa, Indonesia, and southeast China, though inadequate infrastructure remains a major constraint. While 20-30% of future food needs may come from expanding cultivated lands, Borlaug emphasized that 70-80% must come from higher yields through continued research and extension efforts.
Borlaug argued that both conventional breeding and biotechnology will be essential to meet growing food demands, especially as crop yield increases have begun to decline while population grows by 80 million annually. He explained that humans have been genetically modifying crops for 10,000 years through selection, but modern biotechnology allows scientists to precisely transfer specific genes between distantly related species-a breakthrough beyond traditional Mendelian methods.
This technology has already produced insect-resistant maize and cotton that reduce pesticide use, and herbicide-resistant soybeans. Borlaug dreamed of transferring rust immunity from rice to wheat and developing drought-resistant varieties. Despite opposition from environmental groups like Greenpeace, scientific bodies including the National Academy of Sciences have found no adverse health effects from genetically modified crops. Borlaug dismissed fears as "ideologically inspired pseudo-science," stating emphatically: "Responsible biotechnology is not the enemy; starvation is."
Borlaug also dismissed the notion that organic fertilizers alone could feed the world: "Use all the organics available, but for God's sake, don't try to tell the world that we can produce the food that's needed without chemical fertilizers." He calculated that replacing today's 70 million metric tons of chemical nitrogen would require 4.7 billion tons of animal manure-"quite a dung heap"-requiring a three-to-four-fold increase in livestock production. The additional land needed to feed these animals "would be better used to grow food for hungry people."
Capítulo 9
The Personal Cost and Lasting Legacy
While Norman Borlaug's work transformed agriculture worldwide, his family paid a hefty price. With Norman frequently away and their children grown, his wife Margaret suffered from empty-nest syndrome. She coped by reading extensively, taking historical tours of Mexico City, improving her Spanish, volunteering with organizations like Girl Scouts and the American Society, and teaching English to young students for ten years. Despite these challenges, Norman later credited Margaret with instilling worthy values in their children and deserving "most of the credit for how well they turned out."
As he entered his 90s, Norman Borlaug reflected on his remarkable career with characteristic humility, describing himself as "only a catalyst." His empathy for struggling people stemmed from his Iowa farm upbringing and experiences during the Great Depression, where he witnessed bank failures, farmers losing land, and hunger in cities. These experiences left lasting impressions that motivated his lifelong mission to combat world hunger.
Borlaug identified two particularly gratifying achievements: seeing his Mexican wheat research spread with dramatic impact to major wheat-producing countries worldwide, and encountering former visiting scientists he trained in Mexico now conducting good agricultural research and production in their home countries. He credited numerous mentors who influenced his life, including his grandfather Nels Borlaug, wrestling coach Dave Bartelma, college friend George Champlin, Professor E.C. Stakman, and George Harrar.
Numerous institutions worldwide bear Borlaug's name, including the Norman E. Borlaug Center for Farmer Training in Bolivia, the Norman E. Borlaug Building at CIMMYT in Mexico, the Norman Borlaug Institute at De Montfort University in the UK with centers in Bulgaria, Czech Republic, and China, and the Norman E. Borlaug Center for Southern Crop Improvement at Texas A&M. In 2003, the US Department of Agriculture established the Norman E. Borlaug International Science and Technology Fellows Program to continue his legacy.
In Iowa, where every schoolchild learns about their "Hero of Hunger," his boyhood home and one-room schoolhouse have been preserved by the Norman Borlaug Heritage Foundation. Established in 2000, the Foundation promotes educational programs reflecting Borlaug's achievements and philosophy, particularly targeting youth who need heroes of substance.
Perhaps most fitting to his legacy, Borlaug took particular pride in the Youth Institute established in 1994 as part of the World Food Prize. "My original concept for the World Food Prize was for it to serve as a stimulus for young people to take an interest in food and population issues and go into related sciences," he explained. The program sends promising high school students on eight-week internships to research centers across Africa, Asia, and Latin America. With a sparkle in his eye, Borlaug observed how participants develop maturity and self-confidence, adding, "And some will go into international agriculture work."
Even in his final years, Borlaug remained engaged with emerging threats to global food security. When a virulent new strain of stem rust called Ug99 emerged in Uganda in 1999, later spreading to Kenya and Ethiopia, Borlaug developed a plan for international rust nurseries and committed personal funds to combat this threat. At a major meeting in Nairobi in September 2005, the 91-year-old Borlaug served as honorary chairman, working to rebuild the international wheat system he had constructed 50 years before. Despite challenges, Borlaug remained optimistic, stating: "Rusts recognize no political boundaries. To control rust pandemics, there is no alternative to international cooperation."
Norman Borlaug's life and work embody the power of science, determination, and humanitarian vision to address one of humanity's most fundamental challenges: feeding a growing population. His legacy lives on not just in the institutions bearing his name or the billions of lives touched by his agricultural innovations, but in his enduring message that hunger is a solvable problem if we commit our knowledge, resources, and political will to addressing it.
