Pelosi: No Person Has Done More Than Dr. Norman Borlaug to Liberate the World From Hunger

[Sapphire Blue]

Pelosi: No Person Has Done More Than Dr. Norman Borlaug to Liberate the World From Hunger
07/17/2007

Washington, D.C. – Speaker Nancy Pelosi awarded Dr. Norman Borlaug the Congressional Gold Medal this morning in the Capitol Rotunda. Below are her remarks as prepared:

“It is a distinct privilege to join the President of the United States, House and Senate Leadership, and our esteemed Iowa Congressional delegation to honor Dr. Norman Borlaug today.

“In 1963, President John F. Kennedy said: ‘The war against hunger is truly mankind’s war of liberation.’

“That same year, Dr. Norman Borlaug was giving bread to a hungry world, saving millions of lives in countries such as Mexico, India, and Afghanistan.

“No person, before or since, has done more to answer the call to help liberate the world from hunger. As such, Dr. Borlaug is one of the greatest liberators the world has ever known.

“Seven years after President Kennedy’s call to action against hunger, Dr. Borlaug was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his work, the only person working in the agricultural field to receive this honor. Commonly know as the ‘Father of the Green Revolution,’ Dr. Borlaug’s scientific and humanitarian efforts have saved countless people from starvation and hunger while raising living standards throughout the world.

“In his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech, Dr. Borlaug called on humankind to make reality the ideal of brotherhood between all nations. He concluded, ‘Let our wills say that it shall be so.’

“It was his will, his bold vision, and the solutions of science, by which Dr. Borlaug used the timeless resources of one farmer and one field to feed more people than ever before.

“And today we are called upon again as a nation and a world, to muster all our will, all our vision, and the answers that science has given us to solve the great challenges before us: hunger and poverty; the real and growing threat of global warming; and the fury of despair felt around the world.

“As we honor Dr. Borlaug, we also salute those whose love and support made his glorious achievements possible – his family. We recognize his wife Margaret, who worked alongside him for more than 50 years, until she passed away earlier this year. The honor and prestige of this award recognizes both of their work between them.

“We also acknowledge Dr. Borlaug’s two children, Jeanie and Billy, his five grandchildren and four great grandchildren.

“Let us honor the leadership of Dr. Borlaug by meeting the challenges before us.”


http://www.speaker.gov/newsroom/speeches?id=0060

Norman E. Borlaug
Founder, The World Food Prize
1970 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate


View Dr. Borlaug's CV | View extended biography


In 1970 Norman E. Borlaug was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for a lifetime of work to feed a hungry world. Although a scientist with outstanding contributions, perhaps Dr. Borlaug's greatest achievement has been his unending struggle to integrate the various streams of agricultural research into viable technologies and to convince political leaders to bring these advances to fruition.

Born of Norwegian descent, Dr. Borlaug was raised in Cresco, a small farming community in northeast Iowa. He learned his work ethic on a small mixed crop and livestock family farm and obtained initial education in a one-room rural school house.

Dr. Borlaug's skills as an athlete (mainly in wrestling) opened the door for him to attend the University of Minnesota, where he studied to be a forester, wrestled, and worked various odd jobs. After graduating in 1937 with a BS in Forestry, he went to work for the United States Forest Service, initially in Idaho and later in Massachusetts and Connecticut. He returned to graduate school at the University of Minnesota, and took up the study of plant pathology, receiving his Ph.D. in 1942. Years later, the University of Minnesota would house its plant pathology and agronomy programs in Borlaug Hall.

After graduation, Dr. Borlaug worked as a Microbiologist for E.I. Dupont de Nemours, until being released from his wartime service.

In 1944, Dr. Borlaug participated in the Rockefeller Foundation's pioneering technical assistance program in Mexico, where he was a research scientist in charge of wheat improvement. For the next sixteen years, he worked to solve a series of wheat production problems that were limiting wheat cultivation in Mexico and to help train a whole generation of young Mexican scientists.

The work in Mexico not only had a profound impact on Dr. Borlaug's life and philosophy of agriculture research and development, but also on agricultural production, first in Mexico and later in many parts of the world.

It was on the research stations and farmers' fields of Mexico that Dr. Borlaug developed successive generations of wheat varieties with broad and stable disease resistance, broad adaptation to growing conditions across many degrees of latitude, and with exceedingly high yield potential.

These new wheat varieties and improved crop management practices transformed agricultural production in Mexico during the 1940's and 1950's and later in Asia and Latin America, sparking what today is known as the "Green Revolution." Because of his achievements to prevent hunger, famine and misery around the world, it is said that Dr. Borlaug has "saved more lives than any other person who has ever lived."


http://www.worldfoodprize.org/about/Borlaug.htm

[EFerrari]

1. K&R

[cutlassmama]

2. What a wonderful and honorable man!

yet there was no mention in the press about this. Why?

[Sapphire Blue]

4. Welcome to DU, cutlassmama.

There has been press coverage... Google News has 261 related articles.

[cutlassmama]

5. Thanks for the welcome. I was wondering about press coverage.

[Dogmudgeon]

3. Gee whillikers, Science sure is hard! What's Britney doing this week?

Like, yo, give it up, mad propz an' all to Da Mayne Man, Norman Borlaug.

--p!

[Wapsie B]

6. A great Iowan, a great American.

:thumbsup: