What Would Norm Say?

By Ambassador Kenneth M. Quinn
President, The World Food Prize Foundation

Given the decade-long relationship I had with him in building the World Food Prize, I am sometimes asked about what the late Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Dr. Norman E. Borlaug might say about a particular topic.

So, if Norm, as everyone knew him, were still here, you might wonder how he would react to the new report just issued by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, entitled Advancing Global Food Security: The Power of Science, Trade and Business.

Dr. Borlaug was a phlegmatic Norwegian from northeast Iowa and not given to wild outbursts of emotion, so I am not sure that he would have actually hugged the two co-chairs who directed the preparation of this report: World Food Prize Laureate Catherine Bertini and former U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Dan Glickman. But most certainly he would have told them how extremely pleased he was with the great emphasis that the report puts on the critical importance of science.

Dr. Norman Borlaug

Norm was about the primacy of science in agriculture from his days growing up on the farm. His earliest ambition (aside from playing second base for the Chicago Cubs) was to be a high school science teacher. We all can be grateful that, during his time at the University of Minnesota, he became enthralled with the challenge of confronting rust disease that took him to a Ph.D. in plant pathology and then to Mexico and the start of the Green Revolution in India and Pakistan.

Norm, therefore, would have certainly embraced Recommendation 1 of the report about making global food security a high priority of U.S. policy. One of the very first things Norm ever shared with me was how dismayed he was at the downward trend in terms of funding for agricultural research. He believed that the U.S. leadership in global agriculture, in which he played such a significant role of over the past 60 years, could slip away if the funding and priority were not maintained by the President and Congress.

I believe Norm would have felt just as strongly about Recommendation 2, calling for a new science of agriculture based on “sustainable intensification,” an approach also advocated by his great friend Sir Gordon Conway in a 2013 Montpellier Panel Report. Norm’s partner in pioneering the Green Revolution, Dr. M.S. Swaminathan, the first World Food Prize Laureate, has advocated that agricultural advances must take place in the context of “An Ever-Green Revolution.” Norm agreed completely.

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