Norman Borlaug

Norman Ernest Borlaug (born 25 March 1914) is an American agricultural scientist, humanitarian, and the father of the Green Revolution. He introduced new wheat varieties and agricultural production techniques to Mexico, Pakistan, and India in the mid-20th century. The resulting multiplications in food production have saved over a billion people from starvation and greatly improved the food security of those nations. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970 in recognition of his contributions to world peace by preventing hunger. More recently, he has helped apply these successful methods of increasing food production to Asia and Africa.

Early life, education, and family

Borlaug is the great-grandchild of Norwegian immigrants to the United States; his parents, Ole Olson Dybevig and Solveig Thomasdaughter Rinde, from Leikanger, Norway, immigrated to Norway Grove, Dane, Wisconsin, in 1854). He was born the eldest of four children (his three younger sisters are Palma Lillian, Charlotte, and Helen) to Henry Oliver (1889–1971) and Clara (Vaala) Borlaug (1888–1972) on a farm in the small Norwegian-American community of Saude, near Cresco, Iowa Template:Mn. As a child, he worked on the family farm, planting crops and raising livestock. He attended the one-room New Oregon #8 rural school in Howard County up through eighth grade; today, the school building is owned by the Norman Borlaug Heritage Foundation as part of "Project Borlaug Legacy"Template:Mn. In high school, Borlaug played baseball and wrestled. His wrestling coach continually encouraged him to "give 105%."

He attributes his decision to leave the farm and pursue further education to his grandfather, Nels Olson Borlaug (1859–1935), who strongly encouraged Borlaug's learning, once saying, "You're wiser to fill your head now if you want to fill your belly later on." Template:Mn

After high school, Borlaug attended the General College at the University of Minnesota after failing his university entrance exam. After two quarters, he transferred to the College of Agriculture's forestry program. While at the University of Minnesota, he was a member of the varsity wrestling team, and helped introduce the sport to Minnesota high schools by putting on exhibition matches around the state. "Wrestling taught me some valuable lessons ... I always figured I could hold my own against the best in the world. It made me tough. Many times I drew on that strength. It's an inappropriate crutch perhaps, but that's the way I'm made"Template:Mn. Borlaug is now a member of the Collegiate Wrestling Hall of Fame.

Periodically, Borlaug found it necessary to drop out of school and find a job to pay for room, board, and the USD$25 quarterly tuition. One of these jobs was as a leader in the Civilian Conservation Corps, working with the unemployed on federal projects. From 1935 to 1938, before and after receiving his Bachelor of Science forestry degree in 1937, Borlaug worked for the United States Forestry Service at stations in Massachusetts and Idaho. He spent one summer at Cold Mountain, near Idaho's Salmon River—the most remote station in the Forest Service.

File:Elvin Charles Stakman.jpg

Elvin Charles Stakman

At the end of his undergraduate education, Borlaug attended a life-changing lecture by Elvin Charles Stakman, a professor and head of the plant pathology group at the University of Minnesota. Stakman discussed the manifestation of the plant disease rust, a parasitic fungus that feeds on phytonutrients, in cereal crops. He had discovered that special plant breeding methods created plants resistant to rust. His research greatly interested Borlaug, but two weeks later Borlaug's job at the Forest Service was eliminated due to budget cuts. He asked Stakman if he should go into forest pathology. Stakman replied, "Forest pathologists starve to death ... You should go into plant pathology"Template:Mn. Borlaug then re-enrolled to the University to study plant pathology, and received his Master of Science degree in 1940 and Ph.D. in plant pathology and genetics in 1942.

Borlaug met his wife, Margaret Gibson, while in college, as he waited tables at a Dinkytown coffee shop where they both worked. They would go on to have two children, Norman Jean "Jeanie" (Laube) and William Borlaug. The Borlaugs currently have five grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.

Career

From 1942 to 1944, Borlaug was employed as a microbiologist at DuPont in Wilmington, Delaware. It was planned that he would lead research on industrial and agricultural bacteriocides, fungicides, and preservatives. However, following the December 7, 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor, his lab was converted to do work for the United States armed forces. He was offered the position of head of the newly-established Cooperative Wheat Research and Production Program in Mexico; however, he declined, finishing his war service at DuPont Template:Mn. In July 1944, after rejecting DuPont's offer to double his salary, and temporarily leaving behind his pregnant wife and 14-month-old daughter, he flew to Mexico City to head the Cooperative Wheat Research and Production Program as a geneticist and plant pathologist.

In 1964, he was made the director of the International Wheat Improvement Program at El Batán, Texcoco, on the eastern fringes of Mexico City, as part of the newly-established Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (Centro Internacional de Mejoramiento de Maíz y Trigo, or CIMMYT), an autonomous international research training institute developed from the Cooperative Wheat Research Production Program, with funding jointly undertaken by the Ford and Rockefeller Foundations and the Mexican government. Borlaug officially retired from the position in 1979; however, he remains a senior consultant at the CIMMTY. Since his retirement, he continues to be involved in plant research at CIMMTY in addition to taking up charitable and educational roles.

Wheat research in Mexico

File:BorlaugHarrar1943.jpg

Norman Borlaug and George Harrar, 1943

The Cooperative Wheat Research Production Program, a joint venture by the Rockefeller Foundation and the Mexican Ministry of Agriculture, involved research in genetics, plant breeding, plant pathology, entomology, agronomy, soil science, and cereal technology. The goal of the project was to boost wheat production in Mexico, which at the time was importing a large portion of its grain. He would remain with the project for 16 years. During this time, he bred a remarkably successful high-yield, disease-resistant, semi-dwarf wheat.

Wheat is the second most produced cereal crop after rice.

Borlaug spent the first 10 years breeding wheat cultivars resistant to disease, including rust. In that time, his group made 6,000 individual crossings of wheat. By 1956, the rust-resistant varieties had helped double Mexican wheat production and allow the country to become self-sufficient in grain for the first time in historyTemplate:Mn.

Borlaug's work had been concentrated in the central highlands around Mexico City, where the problems with rust and poor soil were most prevalent. He realized, however, that he could speed up breeding by taking advantage of the country's two growing seasons. In the summer he would breed wheat in the central highlands as usual, but then immediately take the seeds north to the Yaqui Valley research station near Ciudad Obregón, Sonora. The difference in altitudes and temperatures allowed more crops to be grown each year.

Borlaug's boss, George Harrar, was against this expansion. Besides the extra costs that would be incurred from doubling the work, Borlaug's plan went against a then-held principle of agronomy that has since been disproved. It was believed that seeds needed a rest period after harvesting, in order to store energy for germination before being planted, whereas Borlaug's new plan left no time between harvest and planting. Harrar vetoed his plan, causing Borlaug to resign. Elvin Stakman, who was visiting the project, calmed the situation, talking Borlaug into withdrawing his resignation and Harrar into allowing the double wheat season. Wheat would then be bred at locations 700 miles (1000 km) apart.

File:HarrarStakmanMexico56.jpg

Harrar and Stakman in Mexico, 1956

As an unexpected benefit of the double wheat season, the new breeds didn't have problems with photoperiodism. Normally, wheat strains couldn't adapt to new environments, due to the changing periods of sunlight. "As it worked out," Borlaug later recalled, "in the north, we were planting when the days were getting shorter, at low elevation and high temperature. Then we'd take the seed from the best plants south and plant it at high elevation, when days were getting longer and there was lots of rain. Soon we had varieties that fit the whole range of conditions. That wasn't supposed to happen by the books"Template:Mn. This meant that the project wouldn't need to start separate breeding programs for each geographic region of the planet.

To significantly increase yield in nutrient-poor soil, Borlaug needed to use fertilizer. However, the cultivars he was working with had long thin stalks that collapsed under the weight of the extra grain—a trait called lodging. In 1953, he acquired a Japanese dwarf variety of wheat called Norin 10 that had been crossed with a high yielding American cultivar called Bervor 14Template:Mn. Dwarfing is an important agronomic quality for wheat; dwarf plants produce thick stems and do not lodge. Norin 10-Bervor 14 is semi-dwarf and produces more stalks and thus more heads of grain per plant. Borlaug crossbred the semi-dwarf Norin 10-Bervor 14 cultivar with his disease-resistant cultivars to produce wheat varieties that were adapted to tropical and sub-tropical climatesTemplate:Mn.

The wheat was extremely successful in Mexico, and Borlaug began looking for other places where he could start programs similar to that in Mexico. Rather than return to the United States, he turned his attention to regions of the world plagued with chronic hunger and famine. He decided that his work would have the greatest impact in India and Pakistan. During the mid-1960s, the Indian subcontinent was at war, and experiencing widespread famine and starvation, even though the United States was making emergency shipments of millions of tons of grain to the region. The Indian and Pakistani bureaucracies and the region's cultural opposition to new agricultural techniques initially prevented Borlaug from fulfilling his desire to immediately plant the new wheat strains there. By 1965, the famine became so bad that the governments stepped in and allowed his projects to occur.

The Green Revolution

Main article: Green Revolution

In the late 1960s, most experts believed global famines in which billions would die were imminent. Biologist Paul R. Ehrlich wrote in his 1968 bestseller The Population Bomb, "The battle to feed all of humanity is over... In the 1970s and 1980s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now." Ehrlich also said, "I have yet to meet anyone familiar with the situation who thinks India will be self-sufficient in food by 1971," and "India couldn't possibly feed two hundred million more people by 1980."

Borlaug was determined to avoid a food crisis. He arranged to put new cereal strains into extensive production to help end starvation in India and Pakistan. Despite the Second Kashmir War raging around him and his "tough group of hunger fighters", they planted their first crop. One of Borlaug's "hunger fighters", M. S. Swaminathan, led the introduction of grain varieties and techniques to India's farmers, earning him the title of father of the Indian "Green Revolution". By 1970, wheat yields in Pakistan and India had doubled. Borlaug later described the high yields in India: "There was this huge harvest, mountains of grain by the railroad sidings waiting to be shipped, unthreshed grain on the threshing floors, and finally it was so bad, they had to close the schools and store the grain." Template:Mn

The use of these wheat varieties has also had a substantial positive effect in six Latin American countries, six countries in the Near and Middle East, and several others in Africa. By 1968, when Ehrlich's book was released, the United States Agency for International Development was hailing Borlaug's achievements as a "Green Revolution".

The success of Borlaug's wheat cultivars led to the development of high-yield rice cultivars at the International Rice Research Institute, started by the Ford and Rockefeller Foundations, and at China's Hunan Rice Research Institute. Borlaug's colleagues at the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research also developed and introduced a high-yield variety of rice throughout most of Asia.

Increased food production

Wheat yields in developing countries, 1951–1985

Wheat yields in Mexico, India, and Pakistan, 1951–1985

By 1963, 95 percent of Mexico's wheat lands grew the new semi-dwarf seeds developed by Borlaug. That year the harvest was six times greater that the 1944 level, the year Borlaug arrived in Mexico. Mexico was completely self-sufficient for what production and a net exporter of wheatTemplate:Mn.

In Pakistan, wheat yields nearly doubled, from 4.6 million tons in 1965 to 7.3 million tons in 1970; Pakistan was self-sufficient in wheat production in 1968; yields were over 21 million tons by 2000. In India, yields increased from 12.3 million tons in 1965 to 20.1 million tons in 1970. By 1974, India was self-sufficient in the production of all cereals. As Borlaug later described the high wheat yields in India, "there was this huge harvest, mountains of grain by the railroad sidings waiting to be shipped, unthreshed grain on the threshing floors, and finally it was so bad, they had to close the schools and store the grain." Template:Mn. By 2000, India was harvesting a record 76.4 million tons of wheat. Since the 1960s, food production in both nations has increased faster than the rate of population growth.

Resulting land conservation

Borlaug pointed out that if it were not for the introduction of high-yield varieties, nations would have had to turn to vast deforestation to create more farmable acreage. "Without high-yield agriculture," Borlaug says, "either millions would have starved or increases in food output would have been realized through drastic expansion of acres under cultivation -- losses of pristine land a hundred times greater than all losses to urban and suburban expansion." From 1950 to 1992, the amount of worldwide cropland only increased from 1.7 to 1.73 billion acres, but the grain output went up from 692 million to 1.9 billion tons--a 170% increase from 1% more land. Paul Waggoner, of the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station, calculates that India's use of high-yield farming has saved 100 million acres of virgin land from destruction-- an area about the size of California, or 13.6% of the total area of IndiaTemplate:Mn.

Nobel prize

For his contributions to the Green Revolution, Borlaug was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970. In his Nobel Lecture, he speculated on his award "When the Nobel Peace Prize Committee designated me the recipient of the 1970 award for my contribution to the 'green revolution', they were in effect, I believe, selecting an individual to symbolize the vital role of agriculture and food production in a world that is hungry, both for bread and for peace." Template:Mn

File:Borlaug.gif

Borlaug c. 1970

Winning the Nobel Prize politicized Borlaug's work. Despite many successes fighting hunger, Borlaug, and the Green Revolution more generally, have been criticized for bringing large-scale monoculture, input intensive farming techniques to the countries that previously had relied on subsistence farming, and widening social inequality. Borlaug is widely dismissive of such criticisms. He describes environmentalists as "fat-bellied philosophers", and says of critics of the Green Revolution, "the haves are telling the have-nots that they should stay with their impoverished rural life-styles, since greater material well-being leads to environmental destruction." To the assertion that his wheat benefits large farmers at the expense of small farmers he replies, "the wheat plant is pretty apolitical. It doesn't care whether it is growing on a big farm or a small farm." He also notes that the Green Revolution "is a change in the right direction, but it has not transformed the world into a Utopia."

Current roles

Following his retirement, Borlaug has continued to actively participate in teaching, research and activism. He spends much of the year based at CIMMYT in Mexico, conducting research, and four months of the year serving at Texas A&M University as a distinguished professor of international agriculture, teaching one semester each year.

Production in Africa

In the early 1980s, environmental lobbyists prevented Borlaug's planned expansion of efforts into Africa. "The environmental community in the 1980s went crazy pressuring the donor countries and the big foundations not to support ideas like inorganic fertilizers for Africa," said David Seckler, the director of the International Irrigation Management Institute. They persuaded the Rockefeller and Ford Foundations and the World Bank to stop funding most African agriculture projects. "World Bank fear of green political pressure in Washington became the single biggest obstacle to feeding Africa," Borlaug says. Western Europe's green parties persuaded most of their governments to stop supplying fertilizer to Africa. Borlaug found that foundation managers and World Bank officials were being hopelessly-confused regarding the distinction between pesticides and fertilizer. He says, "The opponents of high-yield for Africa were speaking of the two as if they were the same because they're both made from chemicals, when the scales of toxicity are vastly different. Fertilizer only replaces substances naturally present in the soils anyway." Template:Mn

File:CIMMYT maize.jpg

The CIMMYT maize (left) used in Africa yields 30–80% more grain under drought conditions than conventional commercial varieties (right).

In 1984, during the Ethiopian famine, Japanese war criminal-turned-billionaire philanthropist Ryoichi Sasakawa, the chairman of the Japan Shipbuilding Industry Foundation (now the Nippon Foundation), contacted the semi-retired Borlaug, wondering why the successful methods used in Asia were not extended to Africa, and hoping Borlaug could help. Borlaug replied that he was too old to start such a large project. The next day, Sasakawa replied, saying, "Young man, I'm 13 years older than you are— it sounds like we should have started yesterday. It's time to get to work." Template:Mn

File:Borlaug1983.jpg

Norman Borlaug in 1983

Since 1986Template:Mn, Borlaug has been the President of the Sasakawa Africa Association (SAA). The SAA is a research and extension organization, that aims to increase food production in African countries that are struggling with food shortages. The Sasakawa-Global 2000 is a joint progam between the SAA and Global 2000, initiated by Jimmy Carter, which focuses on food, population and agricultural policy. "I assumed we'd do a few years of research first," Borlaug later recalls, "but after I saw the terrible circumstances there, I said, 'Let's just start growing'" Template:Mn Soon, Borlaug had projects in seven countries. Yields of maize quickly tripled. Yields of wheat, cassava, sorghum, and cowpeas also increased. At present, program activities are under way in Benin, Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Ghana, Guinea, Mali, Malawi, Mozambique, Nigeria, Tanzania, and Uganda.

Pierre Crosson, an agricultural analyst for the nonpartisan think tank Resources for the Future, calculates that sub-Saharan Africa needs to increase farm yields by 3.3% annually for the next thirty years, just to keep up with the projected population growth (as of 1997). Those utilities which allowed Borlaug's projects to succeed in India and Pakistan, such as well-organized economies, and transportation and irrigation systems, are severely lacking throughout Africa, providing more obstacles to increasing yields.

Despite these setbacks, Borlaug has found encouragement. Visiting Ethiopia in 1994, Jimmy Carter won Prime Minister Meles Zenawi's support for a campaign to aid farmers, using the fertilizer diammonium phosphate and Borlaug's methods. The following season, Ethiopia recorded the greatest harvests of major crops in history, with a 32% increase in production, and a 15% increase in average yield over the previous season. The rapid increase in yields suggests that there is still hope for higher food production throughout sub-Saharan Africa.Template:Mn

World Food Prize

The World Food Prize is an international award recognizing the achievements of individuals who have advanced human development by improving the quality, quantity or availability of food in the world. The prize was created in 1986 by Norman Borlaug, as a way to recognize personal accomplishments, and as a means of education by using the Prize to establish role models for others. The first prize was given to Borlaug's former colleague, M.S. Swaminathan, in 1987, for his work in India. The next year, Swaminathan used the US$250,000 prize to start a research center.

File:Borlaug with wheat.jpg

Borlaug in Mexico in 2000.

High-yield biotechnology advocacy

Borlaug has always supported the efforts of biotechnology to decrease world famine. Throughout his years of research, his programs often faced opposition by those who see genetic cross-breeding as unnatural or having a negative impact on the environment. He believes these views are a result of not educating the general public about the importance and complexities of such work. He has pointed out that Mother Nature has crossed genetic barriers numerous times. For example, using his words, "today's modern red wheat variety is made up of three groups of seven chromosomes, and each of those three groups of seven chromosomes came from a different wild grass. First, Mother Nature crossed two of the grasses, and this cross became the durum wheats, which were the commercial grains of the first civilizations spanning from Sumeria until well into the Roman period. Then Mother Nature crossed that 14-chromosome durum wheat with another wild wheat grass to create what was essentially modern wheat at the time of the Roman Empire." Template:Mn

In many cases, genetically modified plant varieties also require less spraying of chemicals. The use of Round-up Ready Soybean seeds, for example, has cut chemical use in half. Template:Mn

In Borlaug's view, it is easy for environmentalists to oppose changes that don't affect their lives. "Some of the environmental lobbyists of the Western nations are the salt of the earth, but many of them are elitists. They've never experienced the physical sensation of hunger. They do their lobbying from comfortable office suites in Washington or Brussels. If they lived just one month amid the misery of the developing world, as I have for fifty years, they'd be crying out for tractors and fertilizer and irrigation canals and be outraged that fashionable elitists back home were trying to deny them these things." Template:Mn

The future of global farming

The limited potential for land expansion for cultivation—only 17% of cultivable land produces 90% of the world's food crops—worries Borlaug, who, in March 2005, stated that, "we will have to double the world food supply by 2050." With 85% of future growth in food production having to come from lands already in use, he recommends a multidisciplinary research focus to further increase yields, mainly through increased crop immunity to large-scale diseases, such as the rust fungus, which affects all cereals but rice. His dream is to "transfer rice immunity to cereals such as wheat, maize, sorghum and barley, and transfer bread-wheat proteins (gliadin and glutenin) to other cereals, especially rice and maize". ^[1]

According to Borlaug, "Africa, the former Soviet republics, and the cerrado [grasslands of Brazil] are the last frontiers. After they are in use, the world will have no additional sizable blocks of arable land left to put into production, unless you are willing to level whole forests, which you should not do. So future food-production increases will have to come from higher yields. And though I have no doubt yields will keep going up, whether they can go up enough to feed the population monster is another matter. Unless progress with agricultural yields remains very strong, the next century will experience sheer human misery that, on a numerical scale, will exceed the worst of everything that has come before." ^[2]

Honors and recognition

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Norman Borlaug with his bust in the University of Minnesota's Borlaug Hall, October 2003.

In 1968, Borlaug received what he considered an especially satisfying tribute when the people of Ciudad Obregón, where some of his earliest experiments were undertaken, named a street after him. Also in that year, he became a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences.

In addition to the Nobel Prize, Borlaug has also received the 1977 U.S. Presidential Medal of Freedom, the 2002 Public Welfare Medal from the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, and the 2002 Rotary International Award for World Understanding and Peace.

Several research institutions and buildings have been named in his honor, including: the Norman E. Borlaug Center for Farmer Training and Education, Santa Cruz de la Sierra, Bolivia, in 1983; Borlaug Hall, on the St. Paul Campus of the University of Minnesota in 1985; Borlaug Building at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) headquarters in 1986; the Norman Borlaug Institute for Plant Science Research at De Montfort University, Leicester, United Kingdom in 1997; and the Norman E. Borlaug Center for Southern Crop Improvement, at Texas A&M University in 1999.

The stained-glass "World Peace Window" at St. Mark's Cathedral in Minneapolis, Minnesota, depicts "peace makers" of the 20th century, including Norman Borlaug, Martin Luther King, Jimmy Carter, Albert Schweitzer, Dorothy Day, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Eleanor Roosevelt, the 14th Dali Lama, Frank Kellogg, Anwar Sadat, Menachem Begin and Mahatma Gandhi.^[3]

In Iowa and Minnesota, "World Food Day", October 16, is referred to as "Norman Borlaug World Food Prize Day". Throughout the United States, it is referred to as "World Food Prize Day".

As of January 2004, Borlaug had received 49 honorary degrees from as many universities, in 18 countries, and was a foreign or honorary member of 22 international Academies of Sciences.Template:Mn

Publications and lectures

File:Carter-borlaug-shake.jpg

Norman Borlaug and Jimmy Carter

This list is incomplete.

Variation and variability of Fusarium lini. 1945. Technical bulletin, University of Minnesota, Agricultural Experiment Station. ASIN B0007GQTBG
The Impact of agricultural research on Mexican wheat production. 1958. Transactions of the New York Academy of Science, 20, 278-295. ASIN B0007JYK82
Wheat breeding and its impact on world food supply. 1968. Australian Academy of Science. ASIN B0007JKBAI
Mankind and civilization at another crossroad. 1971. Agricultural Equipment Division of Allis-Chalmers Corporation ; Madison : Distributed by the Wisconsin Agri-Business Council. ASIN B0006WF6M4
The green revolution, peace and humanity. 1972. CIMMYT reprint and translation series. ASIN B0007AG2CI
Agricultural science and the public . 1973. Paper, Council for Agricultural Science and Technology. ASIN B00071TWJC
The destiny of man and world civilization. 1974. Winthrop Rockefeller distinguished lecture series, University of Arkansas. ASIN B0006W5WNM
Food production in a fertile, unstable world. 1978. World Food Institute lecture, Iowa State University. ASIN B0006Y04W4
Exploiting plants to meet world food needs. 1979. ASIN B0007AYX1K
Civilization will depend more upon flourishing crops than on flowery rhetoric. 1979. Alfred M. Landon lectures on public issues, Kansas State University. ASIN B0006XCZCM
A choice for mankind: Adequate food production with equatible [sic] distribution or hunger and poverty for millions. 1981. ASIN B0006XTZKW
Wheat in the Third World. 1982. Authors: Haldore Hanson, Norman E. Borlaug, and R. Glenn Anderson. Boulder, Colo: Westview Press. ISBN 0865313571
Land use, food, energy and recreation. 1983. Aspen Institute for Humanistic Studies. ISBN 0940222078
Accelerating agricultural research and production in the Third World: A scientist's viewpoint. 1985. York distinguished lecturer series, University of Florida. ASIN B00070VM5A
Feeding a human population that increasingly crowds a fragile planet. 1994. Mexico City. ISBN 9646201343
Feeding a World of 10 Billion People: The Tva/Ifdc Legacy. 2003. ISBN 0880901446
Prospects for world agriculture in the twenty-first century. 2004. Norman E. Borlaug, Christopher R. Dowswell. Published in: Sustainable agriculture and the international rice-wheat system. ISBN 0824754913
Foreward to The Frankenfood Myth: How Protest and Politics Threaten the Biotech Revolution. 2004. Henry I. Miller, Gregory Conko. ISBN 0275978796

Quotation

"When he won the Nobel Prize in 1970, they said he had saved a billion people. That's Billion! Carl Sagan 'Billion' with a B! ... Norman is the greatest human being, and you probably never heard of him."

Penn Jillette, of the comedy team Penn and Teller

References

Template:MnbRootsWeb. [Borlaug
Template:MnbState Historical Society of Iowa. 2002. FY03 HRDP/REAP GRANT APPLICATION APPROVAL
Template:MnbMartha McFarland, M. 2003. Sowing Seeds of Peace.
Template:MnbUniversity of Minnesota. 2005. Borlaug and the University of Minnesota
Template:MnbDavidson, M.G. 1997. An Abundant Harvest: Interview with Norman Borlaug, Recipient, Nobel Peace Prize, 1970, Common Ground, August 12
Template:MnbUniversity of Minnesota. 2005. Borlaug's Work in Mexico
Template:MnbRetiz, L.P. 1970. New wheats and social progress. Science,169:952-955
Template:MnbHedden, P. 2003. The genes of the Green Revolution. Trends in Genetics, 19:5-9 PMID 12493241
Template:MnbUniversity of Minnesota. 2005. The Beginning of the Green Revolution
Template:MnbEasterbrook, G. 1997. Benefactor of Humanity. Centre for Global Food Issues
Template:MnbBorlaug, N. E. (1972). Nobel Lecture, December 11, 1970. From Nobel Lectures, Peace 1951-1970, Frederick W. Haberman Ed., Elsevier Publishing Company, Amsterdam, 1972
Template:Mnb Dr. Norman E. Borlaug's Curriculum Vitae
Template:Mnb Norman Borlaug: A Billion Lives Saved
Template:MnbBorlaug, N.E. and Dowswell, C.R. The acid lands: one of agriculture's last frontiers. 5–15 in Plant–soil interactions at low pH (ed. Moniz, A.C. et al. ) (Brazil, Brazilian Soil Science Society, 1997).