Father Of "Green Revolution"
Blasts Environmental Fringe

DES MOINES, Iowa — Thirty years ago, farmers in India and Pakistan learned to feed their countries in a stunning reversal of agricultural practices known as the Green Revolution.

Norman Borlaug was synonymous with that revolution, and he won the 1970 Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts.

Now the color green has come to represent just the opposite approach. Instead of agricultural productivity, it symbolizes environmental activism led by people Borlaug calls loudmouth extremists whose lives have become too soft thanks to the technology they like to protest.

At 83 and impatient to expand food production in Africa, Borlaug is furious that the "greenies," as he calls them, have so much influence.

"They say that if we don't use fertilizers, we don't use insecticides, maybe we'd live a little longer," Borlaug said. "That's misguided. I'm very fearful that the general public doesn't recognize what demagoguery in science can do."

Borlaug’s displeasure doesn’t faze the junk-science activists any more than the proven success of his techniques impresses them.

"He's a nice old man who is trying to protect his Nobel Peace Prize," says Pat Mooney, dismissively. Mooney is the director of a Canada-based outfit calling itself the "Rural Advancement Foundation International."

An Iowa native, Borlaug returned to Des Moines recently for ceremonies for this year's recipients of the World Food Prize. The award honors people who have improved the quality and quantity of food in the world.

Borlaug said the anti-science attitude of the environmental activists "really pinches my innards."

The showcase for Borlaug's methods is Ethiopia, once as hopeless as India, a country that now grows enough grain to feed its people.

Borlaug said it is difficult overcoming political instability and destructive farming traditions in Africa. Environmental activists make it tougher.

"Now they talk about organic fertilizer, which is fine. We need to use it," he said.

But replacing the 80 million tons of nitrogen fertilizer used worldwide with organic material is impossible, he contended.

"The equivalent would be four billion tons of manure. How many more billion cattle would we need? What would happen because of over-grazing?" he asked.

And how could all of those animals be fed and still have enough to feed the humans? he wondered.

Borlaug said advanced methods, including chemicals, allow the world to feed itself without clearing vast forests.

"I like all of the back country. By using high technology on the land that is suited for agriculture, we save the land that should be left for forests and wildlife habitat," he said.

The "green" movement, he insisted, comes from people who have no perspective and nothing better to do.

"It's curious that this movement started in Europe," Borlaug said. "They are grandsons and daughters of people who were starving in Europe during World War II. They have no sense of history.

"They don't respect what science and technology has done to make their life pleasant so they can run around from one country to another," he said.

"These people have become activists because they don't have any other challenge," he continued. "Life has become too soft and easy. ... They make a lot of noise, they know all the answers. Most of them have never grown a bushel of grain in their life."

Some environmental activists claim to fear misuse of chemicals, and Borlaug agreed it could happen.

"Yes, there are mistakes in science and technology," he conceded. "There are going to be accidents. But there are accidents with automobiles, too, and we don't abandon the automobile." (Clearly, Borlaug hasn’t heard from all the activists, including Al Gore, who want to do precisely that. — Ed.)

Borlaug was drawn out of retirement in 1984 at the age of 71 by Ryoichi Sasakawa, a Japanese philanthropist who has since died. Sasakawa, former President Jimmy Carter and Borlaug formed the Sasakawa-Global 2000 Foundation, whose goal is to bring Africa to self-sufficiency.

The foundation now runs thousands of test plots in 12 nations, showing farmers what can be done with advanced seeds, irrigation canals, erosion control and timely applications of fertilizers and insecticides.

In every case, Borlaug said, yields will at least double compared to traditional methods.

While he is irritated the work has not gone faster, Borlaug is proud of what has happened so far.

"Ethiopia five years ago was the equivalent of the hopelessness of India back in the middle ‘60s when everyone said, ‘Why are you wasting your life trying to do something for India? It's hopeless,’" he said.

As they did in India, critics said it would be better for Mother Nature to take over, allowing many thousands of people to die so that resources could more closely match demand.

But because of the intensive agriculture, the 1995-96 crop season's 15 percent increase in average yield was the best ever, thanks mostly to the use of chemical fertilizers, Borlaug said.

Roughly concurrent with Borlaug’s Des Moines visit came release of a report warning of vast future famines if advanced agricultural technology is not more widely applied.

The report, by the International Food Policy Research Institute, also warns that El Nino weather disturbances, civil strife, low grain stocks and declining foreign aid could cause greater fluctuations in the supplies of wheat, rice, corn and other cereals.

Unless action is taken to boost agricultural growth, the report predicts that by 2020 the food gap in the staples of most diets in developing countries is expected to grow from the current 94 million tons to 228 million tons.

The report says the number of malnourished children will jump by 45 percent to 40 million in Africa south of the Sahara desert. So many children are malnourished in South Asia that even with a projected decrease, two out of five children will be without enough to eat by 2020.

Ismail Serageldin, a World Bank vice president and chairman of a World Bank-affiliated group of leading agricultural scientists and researchers, said, "The agricultural research community needs to give small farmers in low-income developing countries the technologies they need to produce more food, earn more income and generate more jobs."

Among these technologies, he said, are seed that can resist drouth, infectious insects and frost.

"In the next 25 years, there will be three billion more people on the planet, 95 percent of them in the developing countries," Serageldin said. "If we don't intensify production at the small-farmer level ... the effects on the environment will be devastating pressure."