'Apostle of Wheat' Borlaug had deep Minnesota roots

In the final days of a nearly three-year battle with lymphoma, Nobel Peace Prize laureate Norman Borlaug was asked by his daughter if he needed anything.

The 95-year-old responded: "Africa. Africa. I have not finished my mission in Africa," his daughter, Jeanie Borlaug Laube, said Sunday from Dallas.

Norman Borlaug, an Iowa farmboy who graduated from the University of Minnesota, believed food was a moral right. He traveled the world as a scientist and humanitarian, becoming the Green Revolution's "Apostle of Wheat" for the high-yield grain he perfected.

Borlaug, who most recently had been a distinguished professor at Texas A&M University, died Saturday at his Dallas home with his two children, five grandchildren and six great-grandchildren at his side. He was alert to the end, his daughter said.

Thanks to Borlaug, families in Asia, Latin America and Africa have more to eat. When the National Academy of Sciences awarded him its Public Welfare Medal in 2002, academy President Bruce Alberts said, "Some credit him with saving more human lives than any other person in history.''

For all but the final two years of his life, Borlaug traveled so extensively that his family saw him only three a times a year, said his son, William Gibson Borlaug. His father, who thought everyone had a right to shelter, a full stomach and an education, "was a great person and did an awful lot of good in the world," the son said.

Borlaug had stayed close to his Minnesota roots. He was in the university's Hall of Fame for wrestling and was to serve as grand marshal at next month's homecoming football game. "He was really looking forward to that," William Borlaug said. "He had a real soft spot in his heart for the University of Minnesota."

When Gophers wrestling coach J Robinson started at the U 24 years ago, Borlaug wandered in, introducing himself as a former Gopher wrestler. The two talked sports for well over an hour, Robinson said. "I just kept thinking: Borlaug? Borlaug? I'm a history major. Then it dawned on me: Green Revolution," he said.

The conversation kindled a connection that lasted through Robinson's final visit to Borlaug at his home last month. "He's probably one of the most genuine people I've met in my entire life," Robinson said.

"How many people care about the starving people in India, Pakistan or Africa?" he said. "I don't think you could find a better role model."

Borlaug liked to joke that his life plan "didn't work out.''

After high school, he wanted to teach as well as to coach football and wrestling. At the U, he had to do remedial work because some of his high school credits weren't accepted, and he had failed an exam that would have gotten him in without the credits. Now his name marks a building on the Twin Cities campus, where he earned a Ph.D. in 1942.

A U professor recommended him for the work that would win the Nobel Peace Prize. The Rockefeller Foundation and the Mexican government were starting an effort to boost farm yields in Mexico, and they hired Borlaug to do wheat research in 1944.

Mexico became home. There Borlaug and his wife, Margaret, whom he met in Minnesota and who died in 2007 at age 95 -- raised their children and organized Little League baseball teams that he coached to the Mexican national championship. Mexicans, however, honor him for a different feat: making them self-sufficient in wheat by 1956.

An astounding discovery

His breakthrough was serendipitous. He tackled a fungus disease called stem rust that had wiped out crops three years in a row. When he crossed local wheat with rust-resistant plants, the rust diminished. Still, yields remained low. Fertilizer didn't help; it caused the plants to grow so tall that they toppled over. So Borlaug crossed them with short varieties from Japan.

The quest for sturdy, high-yielding wheat was likely to take 10 years or more because plants must grow through several generations of selection before new traits are stable. He tried cutting the time in half by growing one crop in northern Mexico, then carting seeds 1,200 miles south to sneak in a second crop each year.

The shuttle breeding provided an unexpected breakthrough: Unlike most varieties, suited only for a small geographic area, his wheat could thrive almost anywhere.

And thrive it did. With Borlaug's help in the 1960s, Pakistan and India became self-sufficient in wheat. Production also jumped in China, Latin America, Australia, Europe and the United States.

But Borlaug became a prime target for groups that claimed that the true legacy of the Green Revolution was polluting chemicals, a lack of crop diversity and large farms that require expensive machinery.

Asked about the criticism in 1991, Borlaug slammed a fist on the table and said, "Stop right there! This is false information that did us great harm.''

Like medicine, farm chemicals must be used correctly, he said.

Critics also accused Borlaug of contributing to overpopulation. With more to eat, more people would survive through their reproductive years, they said, and eventually the population would catch up with yield gains, causing a resurgence in hunger.

Borlaug punched back. His critics, he said, were well-fed elitists. And wherever he worked, he advocated population control. Over the years, results on that point tended to fall in his favor as many developing nations demonstrated that family planning could take hold when hunger and economic need were eased.

In his later years, Borlaug worked with some of the world's poorest farmers. Former President Jimmy Carter and Japanese philanthropist Ryoichi Sasakawa recruited him in 1984 to help drought-stricken regions in Africa.

In 2007, he received the Congressional Gold Medal, the highest civilian honor given by Congress.

Borlaug, who grew up on a farm near Cresco, Iowa, epitomized his Norwegian forebears' steadfast refusal to bend on principles.

"Americans need to understand that peace and tranquility for our grandchildren won't be built on the human misery that abounds in many parts of the world," he said. "Poverty and ignorance are a fertile seedbed into which can be planted all kinds of extreme -isms, like terrorism. ...

"Tranquility cannot be made by the military alone. All the money that goes into the military by the Western allies, and we spend more than any other, is a poor substitute for education that offers people a little better standard of living and buys time to improve their outlook for a decent life."

Said his daughter: "He belonged to the world, more so than he did to us."

rolson@startribune.com • 612-673-1747 Some material for this article was prepared in advance by now-retired Star Tribune staff writer Sharon Schmickle.