Norman Borlaug Centennial

[chadn737]

This year is the 100 years after the birth of agronomist and plant geneticist Norman Borlaug, one of the greatest humanitarians in human history. Norman Borlaug helped initiate the Green Revolution, developing dwarf varieties of high-yielding wheat which have been estimated to have saved 1 billion lives throughout the developing world from death by starvation and malnutrition. In 1970 he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his work. He was an amazing and humble man. I had the pleasure of meeting him briefly twice before he died and he was an immense inspiration for the professional I have route taken. This man is a true hero and its a shame that his name is not better known. Lets change that.

 

http://www.worldfoodprize.org/norm/#.UyXyr_SwKfA

Edited March 16, 2014 by chadn737

[imatfaal]

A truly amazing man - thanks for posting that.

 

How many Nobel Laureates are also members of the Wrestling Hall of Fame?

[overtone]

"I realize how fortunate I was to have been born, to have grown to manhood, and to have received my early education in rural Iowa. That heritage provided me with a set of values that has been an invaluable guide to me in my work around the world... These values ... have been of great strength in times of despair in my struggle to assist in improving the standards of living of rural people everywhere." - Norman Borlaug

http://www.extension.iastate.edu/agdm/articles/duffy/DuffyOct97.htm

 

From Wiki:

• - Through a Depression-era program known as the National Youth Administration, he was able to enroll at the University of Minnesota in 1933. Borlaug failed the entrance exam, but was accepted to the school's newly created two-year General College. After two quarters, he transferred to the College of Agriculture's forestry program. -
• - To finance his studies, Borlaug had to put his education on hold periodically to take a job. One of these jobs, in 1935, was as a leader in the Civilian Conservation Corps, working with the unemployed on U.S. federal projects. Many of the people who worked for him were starving. He later recalled, "I saw how food changed them ... All of this left scars on me".^[16] From 1935 to 1938, before and after receiving his Bachelor of Science in forestry in 1937, Borlaug worked for the United States Forest Service at stations in Massachusetts and Idaho.
• -
• - Borlaug attended a Sigma Xi lecture by Elvin Charles Stakman, a professor and soon-to-be head of the plant pathology group at the University of Minnesota. - - - when Borlaug's job at the Forest Service was eliminated because of budget cuts, he asked Stakman if he should go into forest pathology. Stakman advised him to focus on plant pathology instead.^[14] Borlaug subsequently enrolled at the University to study plant pathology under Stakman, receiving a Master of Science degree in 1940 and Ph.D. in plant pathology and genetics in 1942
• -
• - In 1940, the Avila Camacho administration took office in Mexico. The administration's primary goal for Mexican agriculture was augmenting the nation's industrialization and economic growth. U.S. Vice President-Elect Henry Wallace, who was instrumental in persuading the Rockefeller Foundation to work with the Mexican government in agricultural development, saw Avila Camacho's ambitions as beneficial to U.S. economic and military interests.^[18] The Rockefeller Foundation contacted E.C. Stakman and two other leading agronomists. They developed a proposal for a new organization, the Office of Special Studies, as part of the Mexican Government, but directed by the Rockefeller Foundation. It was to be staffed with both Mexican and US scientists, focusing on soil development, maize and wheat production, and plant pathology.
• - In July 1944, after rejecting DuPont's offer to double his salary, and temporarily leaving behind his pregnant wife and 14-month-old daughter, {Borlaug}flew to Mexico City to head the new program as a geneticist and plant pathologist.^[16]

The context: WWII alliance. Henry Wallace was a left wing politician, and the Camacho administration was then continuing Cardenas's partial restoration of communal (ejido) farmland ownership in Mexico (“redistribution” of land acquired by large scale feudal and capitalist landowners over the years). And the influence of E.C.Stakman, Borlaug’s mentor at the U, had not only prepared and inspired Borlaug (far beyond that one lecture http://www.nasonline.org/publications/biographical-memoirs/memoir-pdfs/stakman-elvin.pdf ), not only set the stage among the overseers of the Rockefeller Foundation and other private wealth in the US, but also established a presence for agricultural research among the otherwise industry focused officials and academics in Mexico where Stakman had lectured - in Spanish – on plant diseases and crop production.

 

While we are honoring Norman Borlaug (a familiar hero and long a proudly claimed alumnus of the U of M, with memorial plaques and so forth greeting all students at the Agriculture campus in Saint Paul for many years now)

let’s throw a little love toward Elvin Charles Stakman, and around him the great land grant universities of the American midwest and their founding socialist ideology (whereby the General College at the U was established as well as the public agricultural research efforts from which so much good has come), and the good offices of the Roosevelt and Camacho administrations. Imagine Borlaug’s career as an herbicide developer working under Dupont management – or Monsanto.

 

It takes a village.

[chadn737]

Nothing like soiling a thread honoring a great man with politics. I have no desire to see this thread derailed by the dirt of politics. This man was a true humanitarian and inspiration, lets focus on that.

Edited March 17, 2014 by chadn737