Borlaug is dead

Norman Borlaug, father of the “green revolution” is dead. While catastrophiliacs talked about impending doom and authoritarian ways of population control, Borlaug invented methods that would result in a dramatic improvement in crop yields.

Don Boudreaux at Cafe Hayek writes-

A man who truly and radically and wonderfully ‘made a difference’ – Norman Borlaug – has died. This father of the Green Revolution directly enabled millions of persons to live healthier, longer lives — indeed, millions to be born who otherwise would never have lived.

Ronald Bailey at Reason links to a decade-old interview with the man-

In the late 1960s, most experts were speaking of imminent global famines in which billions would perish. “The battle to feed all of humanity is over,” biologist Paul Ehrlich famously wrote in his 1968 bestseller The Population Bomb. “In the 1970s and 1980s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now.” Ehrlich also said, “I have yet to meet anyone familiar with the situation who thinks India will be self-sufficient in food by 1971.” He insisted that “India couldn’t possibly feed two hundred million more people by 1980.”

But Borlaug and his team were already engaged in the kind of crash program that Ehrlich declared wouldn’t work. Their dwarf wheat varieties resisted a wide spectrum of plant pests and diseases and produced two to three times more grain than the traditional varieties. In 1965, they had begun a massive campaign to ship the miracle wheat to Pakistan and India and teach local farmers how to cultivate it properly. By 1968, when Ehrlich’s book appeared, the U.S. Agency for International Development had already hailed Borlaug’s achievement as a “Green Revolution.”

In Pakistan, wheat yields rose from 4.6 million tons in 1965 to 8.4 million in 1970. In India, they rose from 12.3 million tons to 20 million. And the yields continue to increase. Last year, India harvested a record 73.5 million tons of wheat, up 11.5 percent from 1998. Since Ehrlich’s dire predictions in 1968, India’s population has more than doubled, its wheat production has more than tripled, and its economy has grown nine-fold. Soon after Borlaug’s success with wheat, his colleagues at the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research developed high-yield rice varieties that quickly spread the Green Revolution through most of Asia.

Contrary to Ehrlich’s bold pronouncements, hundreds of millions didn’t die in massive famines. India fed far more than 200 million more people, and it was close enough to self-sufficiency in food production by 1971 that Ehrlich discreetly omitted his prediction about that from later editions of The Population Bomb. The last four decades have seen a “progress explosion” that has handily outmatched any “population explosion.”

Borlaug, who unfortunately is far less well-known than doom-sayer Ehrlich, is responsible for much of the progress humanity has made against hunger. Despite occasional local famines caused by armed conflicts or political mischief, food is more abundant and cheaper today than ever before in history, due in large part to the work of Borlaug and his colleagues.

More than 30 years ago, Borlaug wrote, “One of the greatest threats to mankind today is that the world may be choked by an explosively pervading but well camouflaged bureaucracy.” As REASON’s interview with him shows, he still believes that environmental activists and their allies in international agencies are a threat to progress on global food security. Barring such interference, he is confident that agricultural research, including biotechnology, will be able to boost crop production to meet the demand for food in a world of 8 billion or so, the projected population in 2025.

The NYT has a piece on him.

Rotting away

If I had the patience to write a book on everything that is wrong with governance in India, I would in all probability end up with a tome that would rival the Mahabharata in size. Agriculture and retail are two sectors that the government has managed to screw royally because of its good intentions; with a friend like this, who needs an enemy. There is an article in today’s ET – by Nidhi Nath Srinivas – about how most vegetables produced in India rot away thanks to policies of the government, and to some extent because of the shortsightedness of businesses who have caught the government’s disease of not being able to think long term. He writes-

The big difference is that when we buy Chanel we know who is taking our cash. When we buy vegetables, we have no clue. Surely we can demand to know who profits when tomatoes become more expensive than petrol (as I write, both are unavailable).

Quite obviously profits are not flowing towards vegetable farmers, who are as miserable as consumers. Take garlic. “We are losing about Rs 20,000 a killa on garlic because the mandi price is only Rs 5/kg,” says farmer Siaram of a village near Fatehgarh Sahib. We are paying Rs 30/kg for it. No wonder vegetable prices are so hard to swallow. They are pure fiction.

[...]

“Thank god, they are not. Otherwise, rates would been even lower,” says Siaram, who depends on hired labour. Though garlic is a hardy vegetable and can be stored, Siaram is unwilling to take the risk. “The extra cost of sacks, labour and storage will make losses worse,” he adds. Siaram is now depending on cucumber and cauliflower to pick up the slack.

The situation is about the same on most fruit and vegetable farms spread over 20 mn acres across India. Farmers are caught between the pincers of middlemen and perishable crops. Actually his farm size leaves Siaram far better off.
For farmers, the one ray of hope had been the entry of large companies in fresh food retail. That hope is over. Farmers have understood that large retailers can’t be preferred customers in their current avatar.

“All of them — Reliance Fresh, Bharti, Wal-Mart, Six Ten, and Subhiksha — visit my village. We are not keen to sell to them because they demand higher quality but pay same mandi price. In the mandi we can sell even poorer-quality produce for the same price. So why should we lose money by selling to them,” says farmer Haneef of a village 20 km from Khanna, Asia’s largest grain mandi.

Various state governments set up APMCs – Agricultural Produce Marketing Committees – to “[regulate] the marketing of different kinds of agriculture and pisciculture produce for the same market area or any part thereof.” These APMCs set up the mandis you see in cities all around India. Some state governments – like Gujarat – allow private companies to set up their own mandis but the same groups that oppose “Big Retail” also oppose the entry of corporates into this sector. They are not concerned with the producer and the consumer; they only want their pound of flesh. Sugar cane farmers are sometimes the worst affected by government meddling. Various state governments frame rules wherein farmers are prohibited from selling their produce to anyone except the mill – generally a cooperative one “run” by some crooked politician – in their district thereby, killing the market for cane.

Back to Srinivas’ article, the RBI monopoly on banking regulation makes it impossible for the food processing industry to access loans from banks-

But processors feel equally chopped and quartered by the lack of working capital. They buy fresh produce at harvest, process (which takes about six weeks) and market it over the off season. Most companies do two sale cycles in a year. Unfortunately, that isn’t good enough for their bankers, who demand sales worth Rs 5 for every rupee invested.

“They say these are RBI norms. If that is so, the rules need to be changed,” says the managing director of a Chandigarh-based company that makes frozen foods, ready meals, ketchups and stuff for brands such as Heinz, Al Kabeer, Reliance, and Big Bazaar, besides exports. Fresh food processors have to rotate their working capital as best as they can. When they fail, they fall sick and collapse. “The problem is not with the food processing industry. The problem is with the crazy credit lines,” he points out.

After crippling farming, forcing consumers to pay obscene prices for vegetables, controlling retail to “protect the livelihood” of the dig-a-pit-fill-it-and-call-it-work brigade, the government is out to cripple the processed foods industry.

No wonder vegetables rot away, the farmers remain poor and vegetables prices are outrageous. If the situation has to improve, every minister, bureaucrat and “social worker” needs a sound kick on their back side. They surely deserve it!