Issue date: 7/17/07 Section: News

Media Credit: Spencer Selvidge Nobel Peace Prize winner and A&M; professor Norman Borlaug stands in his backyard in Dallas, Texas, in early June. Borlaug has been battling cancer while continuing his life's work. [Click to enlarge]

Media Credit: Courtesy of the Norman Borlaug Institute for International Agriculture Nobel Peace Prize winner and Texas A&M; professor Norman Borlaug in 1970. [Click to enlarge]

Media Credit: Courtesy of the Norman Borlaug Institute for International Agriculture Norman Borlaug visits Africa. From the early 1980s to present day, Borlaug has worked to relieve a number of famine-plagued countries throughout the world. [Click to enlarge]

Media Credit: Chris Griffin [Click to enlarge]

DALLAS - Norman Borlaug's house is filled with awards. They rest in glass cases and china cabinets. They sit on desks, pedestals and mantles. In every room there is a national recognition, an honorary degree, a Big Ten wrestling award or a Nobel Peace Prize.

These days, Borlaug has more important things to do than rest on his laurels.

"I believe he appreciates [his awards] and is honored by them, but if he had his choice and his health was perfect, he would be in Africa or in any other developing nation in the fields with the scientists, with the farmers," granddaughter Julie Borlaug said.

Today, Borlaug joins the Wright Brothers, Thomas Edison and Martin Luther King Jr. as a recipient of the Congressional Gold Medal.

Julie Borlaug said the award is an honor for her grandfather, but that he'll use the opportunity to speak about the importance of agriculture, and not about his own accomplishments.

"It's just amazing how it doesn't affect his ego. He uses it as a platform to restate that the work's not done."

Humility is the theme of Borlaug's life. He was born on his family's small farm in Saude, Iowa, a rural blip halfway between Des Moines, Iowa, and St. Paul, Minnesota. He attended a one-room school through eighth grade, sharing the class with students who would often leave to help with farm work.

"There were 17-year-old boys still trying to finish the eighth grade. I take it was quite common," Borlaug said.

Through the National Youth Administration, a depression-era program designed to provide work-study jobs to college students, Borlaug enrolled at the University of Minnesota, where he studied forestry. It was in Minneapolis that he was exposed to the hunger he would combat his entire life.

"When I got to Minnesota, to my horror, I saw hundreds of people go downtown to Minneapolis - people with their hands up - young, middle-aged people asking for a nickel to buy bread. That's how things were."

But Borlaug wasn't wealthy himself, and had to leave school at times to make money for his tuition. He worked at the United States Forestry Service stations while attending college. In 1937, he was a fire controller by the Salmon River in Idaho, and was considered to be the most isolated forestry service worker in the lower 48 states.

He was 45 miles from the end of a road, but he fit right in.

"Well, the isolation didn't bother me much."

As an undergraduate, Borlaug considered forestry to be his calling. That would change after attending a lecture titled "These Shifty Little Enemies that Destroy our Food Crops" by Charles Stakman, a plant pathologist from the University of Minnesota.

After a budget cut made it impossible to get his forest service job back post-graduation, Borlaug decided to attend graduate school under Stakman for plant pathology.

"I went to talk to the head of the department, and I said 'Look, this is what happened to me' and he said 'that's not a very good reason to start graduate school.'"

A budget cut and a lecture changed the world.

Borlaug spent his first couple years after getting his master's and doctorate degrees as a microbiologist with DuPont. His lab was converted for military research after World War II started. He and his colleagues researched many things, including canteen sanitation and electronics insulation, but perhaps his group's most famous work at DuPont was engineering glue that could resist warm Pacific water. It was used for supply containers carrying food to Marines.

It was the first hunger he helped solve.

Borlaug's most well-known work started in Mexico and came in the form of a genetically modified, semi-dwarf wheat plant. Working with local Mexican and American scientists and farmers, he was able to create, culture and spread a shorter and stouter wheat plant that was stronger, resisted disease and yielded more. It quickly turned around Mexico's status as a wheat producer.

Borlaug said through that approach, they became self-sufficient in wheat production and that the knowledge gained there helped the rest of the world.

But Borlaug wasn't done. While experts were predicting famine in the 60s for India and Pakistan, he was working to bring the same success to the warring nations. It wasn't safe work, and the Indian-Pakistan war sometimes crept close to where he was planting.

"I could see, when we were planting wheat at night in October or November, cannons firing across the port."

In 1965, Borlaug began importing the semi-dwarf wheat to India and Pakistan. Pakistan became self-sufficient in wheat production as a result in 1968. India became self-sufficient in 1974.

His work was a big success. It was big enough to win him a Nobel Peace Prize. It was big enough to be labeled a revolution - the Green Revolution.

And while many experts and media will assert Borlaug as the father of the Green Revolution, and tally the numbers saved in the billions, the 93-year-old farmer-scientist is quick to spread the credit around.

"The numbers, those are just guesses. This was the collective effort of this whole group of young people we had trained."

Edward Runge, a senior adviser at the Norman E. Borlaug Institute for International Agriculture and a close friend of Borlaug's said the impact that he has had on the world can't be understated.

"[Borlaug] might be the most important human being that's been around in a long, long time," Runge said.

Today, training and recognizing the future leaders of agriculture is one of Borlaug's passions. Borlaug began teaching at A&M; in 1984, created the World Food Prize in 1987, which is awarded to individuals who have made important discoveries or advancements in the field of agriculture, and is currently helping young people intern in foreign countries through the Norman E. Borlaug Institute for International Agriculture.

Runge said that young people in agriculture is important to the Nobel Prize laureate.

"Being 93-years-old, you'd kind of expect that maybe he would not have as good a connection with youth as he does. His youth institute is very close to his heart," Runge said.

It's a lot of work for a man old enough to have seen the worst of the Great Depression, especially given that he has been battling lymphoma for the past year.

But he keeps going. Runge said Borlaug's health is improving, and that he hopes to be back in the fall. In the meantime, the farmer-turned-forester-turned-scientist is hoping to improve the food situation in Africa, and urge other colleges to start youth agriculture institutes.

It's not hard for Borlaug to keep himself motivated, though, as he can state his central passion in clear terms.

"I hate suffering and human misery," Borlaug said.

By now, human misery has learned to hate Norman Borlaug.

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