Once, in a race against famine in Mexico, and having no tractors or oxen, agronomist Norman Borlaug and his associates made harnesses for themselves in order to pull cultivators. They pulled them many miles, knowing they were racing against time to save a nation.
Borlaug was not rich, entertaining, or charismatic. So, how did he become one of the most significant people in world history?
Because of wheat. Most of the world’s wheat today comes from the disease-resistant, high-yield varieties that Borlaug and his colleagues developed. When he won the 1970 Nobel Peace Prize, the committee said it was because, “More than any other single person of this age, he has helped provide bread for a hungry world.”
Never a celebrity, Dr. Borlaug has been called the greatest person nobody knows.
His basic insight, formed as a child on an Iowa farm, was very simple: humans could push farm production beyond anything ever seen. Borlaug had lived during the dawn of Fordson tractors. As they spread to America’s farms, they released 75 million acres – previously required to feed horses and mules – for feeding people!
Borlaug understood the dawn of a new age. Healthy seed and fertilizer could pull miracles out of soil.
In 1944, at thirty years old and working as a scientist for E. I. du Pont in Wilmington, Delaware, Borlaug was invited into a dream. The Rockefeller Foundation wanted to help lift the people of Mexico out of poverty. They chose him to lead the project. Against all the professional and familial reasons he should not accept that challenge, he went. He stepped into a horror.
Mexico was a scientific wasteland; Borlaug had no facilities, no staff, no equipment, no vehicle, and no budget. In fact, he slept on the floor of a room that had no water or electricity, but did have spiders, rats, and snakes. But the real horror was that Mexico’s crops teetered on the edge of collapse. Famine was a genuine possibility, and Borlaug was the only person in Mexico who could see it.
Furthermore, he and his wife learned she was carrying a child with spina bifida. Because of transportation and financial constraints, she could not join her husband in Mexico, and he could not take a break to go home to her. So, besides trying to save a nation from famine, he was overwhelmed with worry, loneliness, and guilt. He came “perilously close to cracking” during that time.[1]
Borlaug lived in Mexico for sixteen years. Working tirelessly to beat rust, increase yield, develop shorter stalks (because of high wind), and teach the nation to use fertilizer. By the time he left in 1960, he had increased the national wheat harvest by 600%! And 95% of Mexico’s wheat was from varieties he developed.
He did so while enduring overwhelming adversity:
* Floods. Because of a drenching flood, he and a helper worked around the clock harvesting wheat by hand – just as it was done 5,000 years ago – in order to save precious seed. They reaped 50 tons by hand!
* Landslides. During a torrential rainstorm on a narrow and very slick mountain pass, two landslides cut him off from going forward or backward. His little truck (carrying the agricultural hope of a nation) came close to washing off the mountain.
* Rejection. Throughout much of his Mexico service, the government tried to kick him out; they thought the “Gringo” made them look incompetent.
* Isolation. For most of his Mexico years, Borlaug’s wife and family had to remain in the US. Despite their separation, they seemed to have a strong marriage. But loneliness remained a serious factor.
* Hurricane. A freak hurricane destroyed his Mexico operations and killed two of his scientists who were trying to save the precious seeds. All the seeds were lost; he had to start over.
Jesus said, “Unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it produces much grain.”[2]
Like that grain of wheat, Norman Borlaug released his own comforts and desires to fall into the ground and die. But his life also produced much grain. He changed the patterns of nutrition for the whole earth, and forever.
We at The Timberline Letter care about focused living. Showing up, standing up. Living higher. Thinking clearly. Seeing further. Hearing deeper. Norman Borlaug lived an astounding life of high-altitude virtues, work, resilience, and wisdom. He endured; he remained in focus.
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[1] Noel Vietmeyer, Our Daily Bread (Bracing Books; Lorton, VA, 2011) p. 99
[2] John 12:24 taken from taken from the NEW KING JAMES VERSION (NKJV):
Copyright© 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
