Norman Borlaug

Norman Borlaug taught at Texas A&M University, where he was Distinguished Professor in the Soil and Crop Sciences Department, until his death in September 2009.

In 1970 Borlaug was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for the "Green Revolution", which brought new hybrid seeds and agricultural chemicals to India and other parts of the Third World. The prize was awarded to him for "a new world situation with regard to nutrition", according to the Nobel Prize Committee. The Committee added, "the kinds of grain which are the result of Dr Borlaug's work speed economic growth in general in the developing countries".

Support for biotech

Through his work on breeding a high-yielding dwarf wheat, Borlaug became a key player in the Green Revolution, for which he was awarded a Nobel prize in 1970. Plants bred to increase yields when used in combination with chemical fertilizers proved highly effective in increasing food production. Borlaug was an aggressive defender of this kind of intensive agriculture, once describing Rachel Carson, the scientist whose book Silent Spring gave birth to the environmental movement, as 'an evil force'.

Borlaug was a keen supporter of the 'gene revolution' and of CS Prakash and his AgBioWorld Foundation. Like a number of key Prakash supporters, Borlaug served on the board of directors of the American Council on Science and Health which crusades against 'health scares' and derives its funding from extensive corporate backing (e.g. Monsanto, Dow, and Cyanamid).

He saw the publication of research which raises concerns about this technology, like that of Dr John Losey on the effects of Bt corn pollen on monarch butterfly larvae, as symptomatic of the politicization of science, 'There's an element of Lysenkoism all tangled up with this pseudoscience and environmentalism. I like to remind my friends what pseudoscience and misinformation can do to destroy a nation.'

Borlaug's emphasis on technological solutions for increased production ignored the broader social context and economic realities that determine hunger. A third of the world's hungry live in India - a country which has a surfeit of food with which to feed its population; yet nutritional norms have actually worsened for those below the poverty line since the Green Revolution. Borlaug himself acknowledges this problem, stating in an interview in Reason magazine:

India has produced enough and sometimes has a surplus in grain. The problem is to get it into the stomachs of the hungry. There's a lack of purchasing power by too large a part of the population... The grain is there in the warehouses, but it doesn't find its way into the stomachs of the hungry.

In the light of this, Borlaug's support for the "gene revolution" on the assumption (as of 2009 unsupported by evidence) that GM crops will feed the hungry seems questionable. He states: "We have to have this new technology [GM] if we are to meet the growing food needs for the next 25 years."

Yet he also appeared to have doubts about the ultimate efficacy of the "gene revolution":

Unless there is one master gene for yield, which I'm guessing there is not, engineering for yield will be very complex. It may happen eventually, but through the coming decades we must assume that gene engineering will not be the answer to the world's food problems.

Criticism of the "Green Revolution"

The Indian physicist, activist and organic farmer Dr Vandana Shiva made an extensive critique of Borlaug's "Green Revolution" in her book, The Violence of the Green Revolution: Ecological Degradation and Political Conflict (Zed Books, 1991). Shiva states that while Punjab was considered the great success of the Green Revolution, after two decades of the Green Revolution, Punjab is

neither a land of prosperity, nor peace. It is a region riddled with discontent and violence. Instead of abundance, Punjab has been left with diseased soils, pest-infected crops, waterlogged deserts and indebted and discontented farmers.

Shiva says that though the problems in the Punjab have been presented as being due to conflicts between ethnic and religious groups, aspects of the conflicts and violence there can be traced to the "ecological and political demands of the Green Revolution as a scientific experiment in development and agricultural transformation."

Commenting on claims made by those who praise the Green Revolution as a triumph of science, Shiva writes that science "takes on a dual character. It offers technological fixes for social and political problems, but delinks itself from the new social and political problems it creates."

Shiva forms the following conclusion on what happened in the Punjab as a result of the Green Revolution:

The experience of the Green Revolution in Punjab is an illustration of how contemporary scientific expertise is politically and socially created, how it builds its immunity and blocks its social evaluation. It is an example of how science takes credit for successes and absolves itself from all responsibility for failures. The tragic story of Punjab is a tale of the exaggerated sense of modern science's power to control nature and society, and the total absence of a sense of responsibility for creating natural and social situations which are totally out of control.

Affiliations

• American Council on Science and Health

Resources

• The Green Revolution wasn't green enough, by Graham Harvey, The Times, 14 September 2009, http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article6833080.ece