Billions Served - agronomist Norman Borlaug - Interview

Reason, April, 2000 by Ronald Bailey

Reason: It seems that every five years or so, Lester Brown predicts that massive famines are imminent. Why does he do that? They never happen.

BorLaug: I guess it sells. I guess what he writes has a lot to do with raising funds.

Reason: Brown notes that India tripled its wheat yields in the past three decades, but he says that will be impossible to do again. Do you think he's right?

BorLaug: No. The projections in food production in India continue to go up on the same slope. When we transferred the Green Revolution wheat technology to India, production was 12 million tons a year. Last year it was 74 million tons, and it is still going up. Once in a while production may go down by a couple of million tons when there's a drought, but in general it continues to go up. Also, the increase in production has occurred with very modest increases in cultivated area. A lot of wild land has been saved in India, China, and the United States by high-yield technology.

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. There are still many hungry people, not dying from starvation, but needing more food to grow strong bodies and maintain health and work effectively. The grain is there in the warehouses, but it doesn't find its way into the stomachs of the hungry.

Reason: What do you think of Paul Ehrlich's work?

Borlaug: Ehrlich has made a great career as a predictor of doom. When we were moving the new wheat technology to India and Pakistan, he was one of the worst critics we had. He said, "This person, Borlaug, doesn't have any idea of the magnitude of the problems in food production." He said, "You aren't going to make any major impact on producing the food that's needed." Despite his criticisms, we succeeded, of course.

Reason: When an alleged expert like Ehrlich is being negative like that, does that discourage people? Does it hurt the efforts to boost food production?

Borlaug: Sure, because we were funded by a foundation.... They'd hear his criticisms, and I'm sure there were some people at Rockefeller saying, "Maybe we shouldn't fund that program anymore." It always has adverse effects on budgeting.

Reason: Why do you think people still listen to Ehrlich? One can go back and read his doomsday scenarios and see that he was wrong.

Borlaug: People don't go back and read what he wrote. You do, but the great majority of the people don't, and their memory is short. As a matter of fact, I think this [lack of perspective] is true of our whole food situation. Our elites live in big cities and are far removed from the fields. Whether it's Brown or Ehrlich or the head of the Sierra Club or the head of Greenpeace, they've never been hungry.

Reason: You mentioned that you are afraid that the doomsayers could stop the progress in food production.

Borlaug: It worries me, if they gum up all of these developments. It's elitism, and the American people are vulnerable to this, too. I'm talking about the extremists here and in Western Europe....In the U.S., 98 percent of consumers live in cities or urban areas or good-size towns. Only 2 percent still live out there on the land. In Western Europe also, a big percentage of the people live off the farms, and they don't understand the complexities of agriculture. So they are easily swayed by these scare stories that we are on the verge of being poisoned out of existence by farm chemicals.