Borlaug is often called the 'father of the green revolution' and in later life came to be identified with Mendelian genetics and even for his advocacy of GM crops. HOWEVER, the accomplishment that started the 'revolution' was him doing the SAME sort of inter-species hybridizing as Burbank, Michurin and Lysenko (when he was an active horitculturalist). Basically, he crossed Mexican wheat with E. Asian wheat to get a hybrid that had short straw so the crop could take heavy doses of fertilizer. He then crossed that with E. African to get a more drought resistant variety. The Mendelian aspects of this were worked out AFTERWARD. The techniques didn't require Mendelian genetics (which at the time concentrated on research of INTRA-SPECIE breeding).
http://www.idrc.ca/evaluation/ev-115017-201-1-DO_TOPIC.html Now that horses have been replaced with machines, the need for long straw has largely disappeared, and the dangers of lodging have also disappeared. This is because the modern trend has been towards the exact opposite of long straw. The so-called dwarf and semi-dwarf wheats have very short straw, measuring as little as two feet in length. These dwarf wheats have the advantage that they can be given heavy doses of fertilizer without danger of lodging. As a result, their yields can be increased considerably. This was the basis of the Green Revolution. In the 1940s, the Rockefeller Foundation decided to undertake agricultural research in non-industrial countries and, with the cooperation of the Mexican Government, they started in Mexico. One of their scientists was Norman Borlaug who was breeding improved varieties of wheat. He became aware of the falling prices of fertiliser, of the yield increases that could be obtained from this fertiliser, if there were no lodging, and of the possibility of developing dwarf wheats that were resistant to lodging. This became the basis of his research. The dwarf character in wheat originated in Japan, and it was incorporated into American wheats by O. A. Vogel. Borlaug took Vogel's dwarf wheats to Mexico in 1954. He bred new dwarf wheat varieties from them, and they yielded so well that it was economic to grow them with artificial fertilisers, on irrigated land, in northwest Mexico. The increase in wheat production was dramatic. Within a few years, Mexico became self-supporting in wheat. The next development was that scientists in India heard about these new varieties and, after a few experiments, they imported bulk quantities of seed from Mexico. Very soon, India changed from being a wheat importing nation to being a wheat exporting nation. Similar increases in production occurred in Pakistan, China, and various countries of the Middle East and North Africa. In the meanwhile, other scientists of the Rockefeller and Ford Foundations were copying Borlaug's work in the Philippines, except that they were working with rice. They too produced new dwarf varieties that could be grown with cheap fertiliser, and which then had greatly increased yields. Quite quickly, countries such as the Philippines, India, Indonesia, and Thailand, increased their rice yields as much as the wheat growers had increased their wheat production. The public relations people of these two Foundations coined the terms "miracle wheat", "miracle rice", and "green revolution". We can forgive them for their euphoria, and their Madison Avenue terminology. The effects of the green revolution really were stunning. Here, at last, was technical aid, from the Industrial World to the Non-Industrial, that really meant something. Millions of people were saved from starvation, and at least one billion people were saved from serious malnutrition. And, as we saw in the last chapter, Norman Borlaug was given the Nobel Peace Prize. It was possibly the most richly deserved Peace Prize ever awarded. _______________________________________________ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list [email protected] To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
