I feel privileged to have been invited to speak at this memorial designed to celebrate the life and work of Norman Borlaug, who has been aptly referred to by the Nobel Peace Prize Committee as the greatest hunger fighter of our time. I have had the privilege of knowing Dr Borlaug and working with him for nearly 50 years. I first heard him in 1953 outline an innovative strategy for combating wheat rusts at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. From 1963 onwards he visited India in March every year to see the wheat crop. During his extensive travels by road, he used to stop frequently, talk to the farmers and examine the state of the health of the plants. Plants and farmers became his life long friends and companions, and eliminating the wheat rust menace became his unrelenting mission.

Dr Borlaug started his research career in agriculture in Mexico at a time when the world was passing through a serious food crisis. During 1942-43, nearly 2 million people died of hunger during the great Bengal Famine. China also experienced widespread and severe famine during the 1950s. Famines were frequent in Ethiopia, the Sahelian region of Africa and many other parts of the developing world. It was in this background that Borlaug decided to look for a permanent solution to recurrent famines by harnessing science to increase the productivity, profitability and sustainability of small farms.

The work he did in Mexico during the 1950s in breeding semi-dwarf, rust resistant wheat varieties and its extension to India, Pakistan and other countries during the 60s brought about a total transformation in the atmosphere in the possibility of achieving a balance between human numbers and the human capacity to produce food. Developing nations gained in self-confidence in their agricultural capability. He disproved the prophets of doom like Paul and William Paddock and Paul and Anne Ehrlich, who even advocated the application of the “triage” principle in the selection of countries which should and should not be saved from starvation through American assistance.

The introduction of Mexican Semi-dwarf varieties of wheat in India in the early 1960s helped not only to improve wheat production, but also led to the union of brain and brawn in rural areas. The enthusiasm generated by the new technology can be glimpsed in the following extract from an article I had written in the Illustrated Weekly of India in 1969 :

“Brimming with enthusiasm, hard-working, skilled and determined, the Punjab farmer has been the backbone of the revolution. Revolutions are usually associated with the young, but in this revolution, age has been no obstacle to participation. Farmers, young and old, educated and uneducated, have easily taken to the new agronomy. It has been heart-warming to see young college graduates, retired officials, ex-armymen, illiterate peasants and small farmers queuing up to get the new seeds. At least in the Punjab, the divorce between intellect and labour, which has been the bane of our agriculture, is vanishing”

The five principles Borlaug adopted, in his life, to quote his own words, were

• Give your best
• Believe you can succeed
• Face adversity squarely
• Be confident you will find the answers when problems arise
• Then go out and win some bouts

These principles have shaped the attitude and action of thousands of young farm scientists across the world. He applied these principles in the field of science and agricultural development, but I guess he developed them much earlier in the field of wrestling, judging from his induction into the Iowa Wrestling Hall of Frame in 2004.

Having made a significant contribution to shaping the agricultural destiny of many countries in Asia and Latin America, Borlaug turned his attention to Africa in 1985. With support from President Jimmy Carter, the late Ryoichi Sasakawa, Mr Yohei Sasakawa and the Nippon Foundation, he organized the Sasakawa-Global 2000 programme. Numerous small scale farmers were helped to double and triple the yield of maize, rice, sorghum, millet, wheat, cassava and grain legumes. Unfortunately, such spectacular results in demonstration plots did not lead to significant production gains at the national level, due to lack of infrastructure such as irrigation, roads, seed production and remunerative marketing systems. This made him exclaim, “Africa has the potential for a green revolution, but you cannot eat potential”. The blend of professional skill, political action and farmers’ enthusiasm needed to ignite another green revolution as in India was lacking in Africa at that time.

Concerned with the lack of adequate recognition for the contributions of farm and food scientists, he had the World Food Prize established in 1986, which he hoped would come to be regarded as the Nobel Prize for food and agriculture. My research centre in Chennai in India is the child of the first World Food Prize I received in 1987. Throughout his professional career, Borlaug spent time in training young scholars and researchers. This led him to promote the World Food Prize Youth Institute and its programme to help high school students work in other countries in order to widen their understanding of the human condition. This usually became a life-changing experience for them.

When Mahatma Gandhi died in January 1948, the then Prime Minister of India, Jawaharlal Nehru said, “The light has gone out of our life, but the light that shone in this country was no ordinary light. A thousand years later, that light will be seen in this country, the world will see it, and it will give solace to innumerable hearts. For that light represented the living, eternal truth, reminding us of the right path, drawing us from error, taking humankind to freedom from hunger and deprivation”. The same can be said of Norman Borlaug. His repeated message that there was no time to relax until hunger became history will be heard so long as a single person is denied opportunity for a healthy and productive life because of malnutrition.

Norman Borlaug was a remarkable man who was supported by a remarkable family – wife Margaret, son William and daughter Jeanie. His wife Margaret who died in 2007, to my mind, is the unsung heroine of the green revolution. Without her unwavering support, Borlaug might not have accomplished nearly so much in his long and demanding career.

In the Indian spiritual text Bhagwad Gita, sometimes referred to as the Bible of Hinduism, there is a saying that the divine manifests itself in various forms, whenever there is acute suffering or injustice on Earth. I feel it will be appropriate to consider Borlaug as one such messenger who came to the rescue of those struggling for their daily bread. I am saying this because Dr Borlaug was not only a great scientist but also a humanist full of compassion and love for fellow human beings, irrespective of race, religion, color or political belief. This is clear from his last spoken words on the night of Saturday 12 September 2009, Earlier in the day, a scientist had shown him a nitrogen tracer developed for measuring soil fertility. His last words were “Take the tracer to the farmer”. This life long dedication to taking scientific innovation to farmers without delay set Borlaug apart from most other farm scientists carrying out equally important research.

I was privileged to be present when he was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal in 2007. On that occasion he pointed out that between the years 1960 and 2000 the proportion of “the world’s people who felt hunger during some portion of the year had fallen from about 60% to 14%”. The latter figure, he went on, still “translates into 850 million men, women and children who lack sufficient calories and protein to grow strong and healthy bodies”. He added “the battle to ensure food security for hundreds of millions of miserably poor people is far from won”. This is the unfinished task that Norman Borlaug leaves to scientists and political leaders worldwide. It will be appropriate for the Norman Borlaug Institute for International Agriculture to become the flagship of the movement for a world without hunger.

I have the privilege to announce that the Government of India, in recognition of Dr. Norman Borlaug’s monumental contribution to India’s Green Revolution, has decided to institute a Norman Borlaug Chair at the Indian Agricultural Research Institute (IARI), Pusa, New Delhi.

Address at Public Memorial Service dedicated to
Dr. Norman Borlaug at, Texas A&M University
College Station, Texas, USA

October 06, 2009