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Borlaug sees tremendous need to train young people Tuesday, October 23, 2007
Agri News staff writer
PROTIVIN, Iowa -- Speaking at a banquet in his honor last week, Norman Borlaug, who earned the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970 for developing high-yielding wheat that reversed food shortages in India and Pakistan, said there is a tremendous need to train young people as agricultural scientists to lead the battle against hunger.
Borlaug said that when he started working in Mexico, it was the first attempt by a nongovernment organization to help a food-deficit country get involved in training a new generation of scientists. At that time there were no graduate faculty in agricultural science anywhere in Latin America.
"It was a real pioneering project," Borlaug said.
Borlaug said that it's not just seed varieties that have saved people from starvation. It's the transfer of knowledge -- teaching farmers how to grow those varieties, how to fertilize and control weeds and pests and diseases.
"Finally it takes governments adopting economic policies that permit farmers to adopt technology, have access to credit and get a price so that they can make a living," Borlaug said. "These changes will occur only when you have established credibility and given farmers the confidence through demonstrations on their fields," Borlaug said. "We need shock treatment -- increases from 10 bushels per acre to 75 to 100 bushels in one jump to let farmers see what is possible on their land."
Once Borlaug got the job done in Mexico, the Rockefeller Foundation sent him to North Africa and the Far East. Change, Borlaug said, must come from new generations of agricultural scientists. Those established in their posts won't take a chance.
"If we stand still with a growing world population, we're walking backwards," he said. "There has to be drastic change not just in science and technology, but in the ability of political leaders to make change. The basic knowledge that permitted me to do this work, I learned from the land in Howard, Chickasaw and Winneshiek County. I'm grateful to your parents and grandparents from which I learned many of these things."
Borlaug said the United States needs a program like the Peace Corps used to be when it started during the Kennedy administration.
"Today there are a lot of kids who want to learn something about agriculture, but they can't do it," Borlaug said. "We have a lot of things to teach our younger generation, and we have a dilemma in transferring knowledge from one generation to another."
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