tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1220057250271426855.post8905538204158825756..comments2023-06-08T10:14:58.258-04:00Comments on The Yeoman Farmer: Defusing the Population BombTYFhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14507074580402175405noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1220057250271426855.post-85964789716505771712009-09-22T11:51:33.587-04:002009-09-22T11:51:33.587-04:00There is a different (and highly skeptical) take o...There is a different (and highly skeptical) take on Dr. Borlaug's legacy here: http://hnn.us/articles/116855.html<br /><br />It's worth reading as a counterpoint to the hagiographies.<br /><br /><i><br />"[I]n the spring of 1968, India and Pakistan reaped the largest wheat harvests on record. After two drought years, the sudden abundance caught officials off guard. They commandeered school buildings and theaters to hold the overflow, but it was not enough. Thousands of bushels, piled on roads and railway sidings, rotted for lack of storage. Nonetheless, the governments of Indira Gandhi and Ayub Kahn—along with the Rockefeller Foundation—claimed credit, attributing the turnaround to rural revitalization programs emphasizing fertilizer, irrigation, and new dwarf strains of wheat developed by Borlaug.<br /><br />Trusting both the forecasts and the press releases, the Norwegian parliament awarded Borlaug the 1970 Nobel Peace Prize for lifting the “menace of doomsday hanging over us.” There were other explanations for what had happened on the Punjabi plains. Central Intelligence Agency analysts were deeply skeptical of “the so-called green revolution.” Noting that too few acres were planted in the new wheats to account for the statistical gains, and that China, without dwarf varieties, had also seen a major turnaround, they chalked up the bumper crop to a pronounced shift in the weather, a phenomenon later known as the El Nino cycle."<br /></i><br /><br />The entire article is worth reading.<br /><br /><br />peace,<br />ZachZachhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07658949890957239166noreply@blogger.com