This was really interesting. I grew up on a farm in Iowa. Borlaug is from Iowa and he’s essentially our Mother Theresa. He is saintly and exalted and we name things after him like the World Food Prize. But at the same time we have a HUGE nitrates problem in our water supply (not entirely from crops, but from commercial ag in general) and we also have the systemic dismantling of the family farm that has been playing out for about three generations. I can’t wait to send this to my dad.
We have similar problems in Minnesota, where Borlaug did all of his academic work (BS, MS, PhD) at the University of Minnesota. Farm runoff affects the quality of our legendary 10,000 (+) Lakes in numerous ways and migration of fertilization technology to lawns has accelerated that process. The origin and centrality of the Mississippi to Minnesota (and Iowa, Illinois, etc., other heavily agricultural states) assures the export of these problems of water quality down a huge swath of the central US.
The University of Minnesota's College of Food, Agricultural and Natural Resource Sciences, whose Dept. of Agronomy and Plant Genetics is in Borlaug Hall, calls him "the University’s most celebrated alumnus" and "the man who saved a billion lives." From the industry-cooperating "Stakman-Borlaug Center (SBC) for Sustainable Plant Health" to the "Land O Lakes, Inc. Collaboration Center" in the Borlaug Hall commons, the University seems committed to what we might call a Borlaugian vision of solution to food and crop issues around the world.
I'd give Borlaug and the green revolution a lot more credit. There actually was a rapidly growing population and a need to improve agricultural yields world wide. There actually was a successful model for improving agricultural yields. There actually is a reason for concentrating on grain production since grains provide most of the calories in most humans' diets. There actually is a successful development model involving consolidated, capital intensive agriculture and urbanization. The world population doubled between 1960 and 2000, and contrary to the predictions and thanks to the green revolution, there were no widespread, deadly famines.
Unlike trickle down economics, the green revolution worked. That's why I think it's a bad analogy. The caloric challenge driven by rising population was met, and, now, falling fertility rates mean we have time and resources to further improve and tune agriculture. Current agricultural research places a lot more emphasis on cutting the use of fertilizer and, especially, insecticides. There is a lot more work on improving local crops and developing local variants, and we now have much better tools for doing so. There are a lot more local institutions around the world dedicated to improving local agriculture.
I've seen enough farms around the world not to romanticize farming life. Some friends of mine quit "suit jobs" to run a local farm, and, even with a side job and modern farming practice, it is a lot of hard work. At a subsistence level, it is much worse and the consequences of failure more dire. I agree that we need a second green revolution and that it should have a different focus from the first one, but, like the industrial revolution, the green revolution deserves some respect.
Good points; still, Borlaug's myopia needs to be acknowledged and his canonization reversed if we're to meet the challenges created, in part, by his approach.
In my area of the Midwest, huge percentages of crops (genetically modified and fertilized to the rafters for yield) are grown either for livestock feed (soy) or, in part due to market-distorting subsidies, for ethanol production (corn). A more localized approach to what grows well without so much help, as the interviewee points out, could be *part* of a broader solution to a larger set of problems exacerbated by one-size-fits-all agriculture.
So, bash him for failing to deal with problems 50 years down the road. We don't even know that there is a solution that both avoids famine and avoids problems with chemical run off, lack of crop diversity and many other problems that we can't even predict yet. Given the tools, knowledge and institutions that he had to work with, he did a very good job.
I'm just saying that you set a very high bar, one that is probably impossible for anyone to clear.
This was a great interview. Imagine if every PhD program had a “and society” in its title...
As an aside, I just received a wheat grinder for Christmas and my local co-op can order a variety of wheat berries upon request - I’m so excited to experiment with different varietals.
This was so interesting! The opening anecdote reminds me a lot of my own struggles, as a southern USAmerican who has not always lived in the American south, to make biscuits, something I can do in my sleep. It took me a while to figure out that I wasn't messing up the recipe--it was all about the flour. In the south, we have a couple of brands of flour (White Lily and Martha White) that are made from winter wheat, and they are perfect for biscuits. Unfortunately, they are local brands, so I couldn't get them when I was living in Washington state or Wales. All the biscuits I tried to make there were just...underwhelming.
Now that I'm back in the south, I can make them again. But it was so sad to be homesick for southern food and not able to make it when I lived in other places! It gave me a lot of sympathy for immigrants who want the tastes of home but can't replicate them without the foods from home.
I'm curious if Marci has any insight behind globalization of wheat and the rise of celiac disease. I've read many theories, including that it's on the rise because today's wheat varieties have a different percentage of gluten, protein, and other nutrients in them today than in the past.
The Green Revolution was and is important but I wonder if it had unintended consequences for those of us who genetically are canaries-in-the-coal-mine. My uncle was diagnosed with Celiac Disease all the way back in 1986! (Later, several family members also became diagnosed, including my dad in 2000 and me in 2015.)
Just a reminder that we try and avoid stigmatizing phrases like “obesity epidemic” in the comments here - I know it’s all over the place in the news but we work to avoid it here. Thanks!
Yes, there's a lot of research that points to the rise of simple carbohydrates and processed foods made from wheat and corn causing various health issues.
I come from a very insulin resistant family. My great grandmother was blinded by diabetes in a time when the standard american diet included 1/100th of the simple carbohydrates we eat today. My grandfather and mother became diabetics in their 60s. All of them were farmers that grew what we'd call organic crops today. I became prediabetic at 29 and fear that I've crossed into diabetic territory at almost 36. If I deviate from eating a low carbohydrate style of eating then I get awful diabetic symptoms.
Something is very wrong and has changed. Why did it take me half the time that it took my ancestors? When my grandfather was alive he blamed Monsanto. My mother thinks its because our soils are depleted of nutrients and therefore our food is deficient, too. Coincidentally, I started showing symptoms of insulin resistance at age 13 not long after my grandparents stopped farming. All of us started having symptoms while being a "normal BMI".
This was really interesting. I grew up on a farm in Iowa. Borlaug is from Iowa and he’s essentially our Mother Theresa. He is saintly and exalted and we name things after him like the World Food Prize. But at the same time we have a HUGE nitrates problem in our water supply (not entirely from crops, but from commercial ag in general) and we also have the systemic dismantling of the family farm that has been playing out for about three generations. I can’t wait to send this to my dad.
We have similar problems in Minnesota, where Borlaug did all of his academic work (BS, MS, PhD) at the University of Minnesota. Farm runoff affects the quality of our legendary 10,000 (+) Lakes in numerous ways and migration of fertilization technology to lawns has accelerated that process. The origin and centrality of the Mississippi to Minnesota (and Iowa, Illinois, etc., other heavily agricultural states) assures the export of these problems of water quality down a huge swath of the central US.
The University of Minnesota's College of Food, Agricultural and Natural Resource Sciences, whose Dept. of Agronomy and Plant Genetics is in Borlaug Hall, calls him "the University’s most celebrated alumnus" and "the man who saved a billion lives." From the industry-cooperating "Stakman-Borlaug Center (SBC) for Sustainable Plant Health" to the "Land O Lakes, Inc. Collaboration Center" in the Borlaug Hall commons, the University seems committed to what we might call a Borlaugian vision of solution to food and crop issues around the world.
I'd give Borlaug and the green revolution a lot more credit. There actually was a rapidly growing population and a need to improve agricultural yields world wide. There actually was a successful model for improving agricultural yields. There actually is a reason for concentrating on grain production since grains provide most of the calories in most humans' diets. There actually is a successful development model involving consolidated, capital intensive agriculture and urbanization. The world population doubled between 1960 and 2000, and contrary to the predictions and thanks to the green revolution, there were no widespread, deadly famines.
Unlike trickle down economics, the green revolution worked. That's why I think it's a bad analogy. The caloric challenge driven by rising population was met, and, now, falling fertility rates mean we have time and resources to further improve and tune agriculture. Current agricultural research places a lot more emphasis on cutting the use of fertilizer and, especially, insecticides. There is a lot more work on improving local crops and developing local variants, and we now have much better tools for doing so. There are a lot more local institutions around the world dedicated to improving local agriculture.
I've seen enough farms around the world not to romanticize farming life. Some friends of mine quit "suit jobs" to run a local farm, and, even with a side job and modern farming practice, it is a lot of hard work. At a subsistence level, it is much worse and the consequences of failure more dire. I agree that we need a second green revolution and that it should have a different focus from the first one, but, like the industrial revolution, the green revolution deserves some respect.
Good points; still, Borlaug's myopia needs to be acknowledged and his canonization reversed if we're to meet the challenges created, in part, by his approach.
In my area of the Midwest, huge percentages of crops (genetically modified and fertilized to the rafters for yield) are grown either for livestock feed (soy) or, in part due to market-distorting subsidies, for ethanol production (corn). A more localized approach to what grows well without so much help, as the interviewee points out, could be *part* of a broader solution to a larger set of problems exacerbated by one-size-fits-all agriculture.
So, bash him for failing to deal with problems 50 years down the road. We don't even know that there is a solution that both avoids famine and avoids problems with chemical run off, lack of crop diversity and many other problems that we can't even predict yet. Given the tools, knowledge and institutions that he had to work with, he did a very good job.
I'm just saying that you set a very high bar, one that is probably impossible for anyone to clear.
This was a great interview. Imagine if every PhD program had a “and society” in its title...
As an aside, I just received a wheat grinder for Christmas and my local co-op can order a variety of wheat berries upon request - I’m so excited to experiment with different varietals.
This was so interesting! The opening anecdote reminds me a lot of my own struggles, as a southern USAmerican who has not always lived in the American south, to make biscuits, something I can do in my sleep. It took me a while to figure out that I wasn't messing up the recipe--it was all about the flour. In the south, we have a couple of brands of flour (White Lily and Martha White) that are made from winter wheat, and they are perfect for biscuits. Unfortunately, they are local brands, so I couldn't get them when I was living in Washington state or Wales. All the biscuits I tried to make there were just...underwhelming.
Now that I'm back in the south, I can make them again. But it was so sad to be homesick for southern food and not able to make it when I lived in other places! It gave me a lot of sympathy for immigrants who want the tastes of home but can't replicate them without the foods from home.
Super interesting!
I'm curious if Marci has any insight behind globalization of wheat and the rise of celiac disease. I've read many theories, including that it's on the rise because today's wheat varieties have a different percentage of gluten, protein, and other nutrients in them today than in the past.
The Green Revolution was and is important but I wonder if it had unintended consequences for those of us who genetically are canaries-in-the-coal-mine. My uncle was diagnosed with Celiac Disease all the way back in 1986! (Later, several family members also became diagnosed, including my dad in 2000 and me in 2015.)
Just a reminder that we try and avoid stigmatizing phrases like “obesity epidemic” in the comments here - I know it’s all over the place in the news but we work to avoid it here. Thanks!
Thank you for catching that! I should have known better.
Yes, there's a lot of research that points to the rise of simple carbohydrates and processed foods made from wheat and corn causing various health issues.
I come from a very insulin resistant family. My great grandmother was blinded by diabetes in a time when the standard american diet included 1/100th of the simple carbohydrates we eat today. My grandfather and mother became diabetics in their 60s. All of them were farmers that grew what we'd call organic crops today. I became prediabetic at 29 and fear that I've crossed into diabetic territory at almost 36. If I deviate from eating a low carbohydrate style of eating then I get awful diabetic symptoms.
Something is very wrong and has changed. Why did it take me half the time that it took my ancestors? When my grandfather was alive he blamed Monsanto. My mother thinks its because our soils are depleted of nutrients and therefore our food is deficient, too. Coincidentally, I started showing symptoms of insulin resistance at age 13 not long after my grandparents stopped farming. All of us started having symptoms while being a "normal BMI".
As a gopher alumna myself, I did not know this connection! Iowa State University seems to have a similar worldview in regards to agronomy instruction.