Norman Borlaug

Saude, Iowa was a Norwegian farming settlement, and he took his first eight grades in the one-room New Oregon schoolhouse there. His grandfather Nels told him he was wiser to fill his head now if he wanted to fill his belly later. He wrestled at Cresco High School. He failed the University of Minnesota entrance exam in 1933, was admitted to the General College instead, transferred into forestry, and finished a bachelor's degree in 1937 — the year he married Margaret Gibson, whom he had met in a campus coffee shop. A doctorate in plant pathology and genetics followed in 1942 under E. C. Stakman. He spent the war at DuPont on adhesives, disinfectants and DDT formulations for the military.

In July 1944 the Rockefeller Foundation sent him to Mexico to raise the wheat harvest. He wanted two breeding generations a year instead of one, which meant planting at two sites 700 miles and 8,500 feet apart, and which contradicted the accepted doctrine that seed needs a rest after harvest. George Harrar vetoed it. Borlaug resigned. Stakman, visiting, talked both men down, and shuttle breeding began in 1945. He then bred the Japanese dwarfing line Norin 10 into disease-resistant wheats and got short, stiff-strawed plants that could carry a heavy head without falling over. By 1963, 95 percent of Mexico's wheat was semi-dwarf and the harvest was six times the 1944 figure. In 1965 he pushed 450 tons of seed through to India and Pakistan past fumigation damage, customs, a bank balking at a misspelled cheque, and a war.

He never said the problem was solved. In the Nobel lecture he warned that the power of human reproduction had to be curbed as well or the green revolution would prove temporary, and that there is no miracle variety of wheat or rice or maize that cures a stagnant agriculture. Critics said the package he sold — one seed plus fertilizer, pesticide and irrigation — favored large growers, tied smallholders to debt, narrowed the number of varieties in the ground, and drew down water and soil. He answered that Western environmental lobbyists had never felt hunger and did their work from comfortable office suites. When he carried the method to Africa in the 1980s, campaigns against the expansion pushed the Rockefeller and Ford Foundations and the World Bank to stop funding most of his projects there.

The Congressional Gold Medal act of 2006 states that he saved more than a billion lives. It is an estimate, repeated so often that it travels as a measurement, and nobody has produced a better one. He also took the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1977 and the National Medal of Science in 2004, founded the World Food Prize in 1986 so that food production would have an award of its own, and taught a semester a year at Texas A&M into his eighties. Margaret died in March 2007 after 69 years of marriage. He died of lymphoma at his Dallas home on September 12, 2009, at 95. Iowa sent his statue to the Capitol in 2014.

Norman Borlaug's life against the full span of the corpus.

• Shuttle breeding discovery
  Two crops a year at sites 700 miles and 8,500 feet apart, against the doctrine of the day 1945
• Semi-dwarf wheat varieties discovery
  Pitic 62, Penjamo 62, and later Lerma Rojo and Sonora 64 1962
• Nobel lecture on the green revolution speech
  The warning about population sits in the same speech as the victory 1970
• Sasakawa Africa Association company
  Founded after Ryoichi Sasakawa pulled him out of semi-retirement 1986
• The World Food Prize other
  Created so that food production would have a prize of its own 1986

• 1933 aged ~19 Fails the University of Minnesota entrance exam and is admitted anyway The General College took him. He transferred into forestry.
• 1937 aged ~23 Takes a forestry degree and marries Margaret Gibson
• 1942 aged ~28 Doctorate in plant pathology and genetics under E. C. Stakman He spent the next two years at DuPont on military contracts.
• July 1944 aged 30 Joins the Rockefeller Foundation wheat program in Mexico
• 1945 aged ~31 Shuttle breeding begins after he resigns and is talked back George Harrar had vetoed the plan. Stakman brokered it.
• 1963 aged ~49 Mexico is 95 percent semi-dwarf wheat and exporting grain The harvest was six times the 1944 figure.
• 1965 aged ~51 Ships 450 tons of seed to India and Pakistan in the middle of a war Fumigation damage, customs delays and a misspelled cheque nearly stopped it.
• December 10, 1970 aged 56 Awarded the Nobel Peace Prize His lecture warned that population growth would undo the gain.
• September 12, 2009 aged 95 Dies of lymphoma at his home in Dallas, at 95

• Rachel Carson 1907–1964
  Marine biologist whose book Silent Spring launched the modern environmental movement. the other half of the argument
• Jimmy Carter 1924–2024
  39th president who emphasized human rights, brokered the Camp David Accords, and built a major post-presidential humanitarian legacy. partner in Sasakawa-Global 2000
• George W. Bush b. 1946
  43rd president who led the country after the September 11 attacks and launched wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. awarded him the National Medal of Science
• Luther Burbank 1849–1926
  Plant breeder whose hundreds of new varieties changed American horticulture, agriculture, and popular attitudes toward scientific breeding. the earlier American plant breeder
• George Washington Carver 1864–1943
  Agricultural scientist whose research on crop rotation and alternative crops transformed Southern farming. worked the same problem a generation earlier