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December 11. 2006St. Louis Post-Dispatch (summary)
By Eric Hand
Green Revolution Feeds the World, But Not Africa
'Hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now,' wrote scientist Paul Ehrlich in his 1968 book The Population Bomb. But Norman Borlaug defused the bomb. Borlaug, a plant scientist born nearly a century ago on an Iowa farm, is obscure in the U.S., despite a Nobel Peace Prize. But he is widely known elsewhere as the father of the Green Revolution, which brought modern agriculture to the developing world.
The tools he still promotes — high-yielding seeds, fertilizer, irrigation, pesticides — have pushed food production in nations such as Mexico, India and China to outpace rapid population growth. But not Africa, which for reasons of infrastructure and geography missed out.
Toward the end of World War II, Borlaug began a high-yield wheat breeding program in Mexico, which was a net wheat importer. Within a decade, Mexico was exporting wheat. The techniques spread to Asia. Populations did explode, but the food kept up. In India, for example, the population more than doubled between 1961 and 2001. In that time, India almost tripled its grain production...
Borlaug said organic farming is a luxury. 'It's very confusing and very disgusting in the Third World when people come from the affluent nations and tell the Third World political leaders that they can produce the food that's needed for 6.54 billion people with organic fertilizer alone,' he said in a speech earlier this year...'You see that agriculture and high-yield technology are not necessarily an enemy of the environment. It can be a blessing,' Borlaug said.
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