Dimension 5: World Food and Hunger with Norman Borlaug(AV12805)

there were only a few of these men who survived come with with good competence they're men now 75 or so they're still on the firing line a few of these are carrying the whole load and during this whole period of Lee Cinco there were no people trained in conventional genetics and plant breeding so there's a big gap this is one of the things that holds back their old IRA cultural development of course there many other things like fertilizers certainly way at the top of the park but I have a feeling that through food this is one of the best bonds with other countries of other ideologies we can understand each other perfectly well at the scientific level so long as we were dealing with these things that are basic to to all human needs similarly we've been working informally with Algeria in the last few months we hope to be able to give them a hand in a little more formal way in the next six months starting perhaps late summer we have three Algerians with us at the present time the directions ask for some of your Mexican yes they have they have quite a few I think they've got a lot of them from India and we've sent them much of our breeding material I think that they need to develop the agronomy I don't know how to grow these things and here again you they have pretty good wheat varieties themselves don't they well these kinds that stand bad conditions the same kinds the old land races but when you start fertilizing such thing it's it's kind of like a Model T Ford group let's put it the other way around it's like having a 1971 Cadillac and put in that old gasolina for how many Octane's that we used to run the tea on the water very good we head back to that ball of brown I thought you made some rather interesting statements in your lecture this evening about the use of pesticides and fertilizers at this time would you care to elaborate on this event and tell us how you feel about restriction on use of fertilizers and pesticides well I think in the case of fertilizers I think it's pretty evident to anyone who sits back and thinks about this that you wouldn't have an agricultural economy prosperous agriculture such as that in the USA had it not been for chemical fertilizer the old way we did things pretty largely with rotations of the cereals render and legumes up to a point was affected but we would never have achieved the years that we achieve on our best farms now without the use right kind of dosages of chemical fertilizers and it also of course is reduced per unit cost of production so and then to make this situation to bring it up as it relates to the rest of the world now I think probably for a few years if somebody just fully they said well you can't use chemical fertilizer anymore the u.s. probably not starve to death immediately put all of this land back interaction get rich well I'm not so sure people who are better already studies show if you scare them well enough in the cities and all you see in me we've got what four and a half percent the people on farms now something in that order less than five please tonight dr. Haiti but for pretender the work force about less than five percent of the people living farm in the lower good share of those urban nights especially in the large cities a I don't know where this food comes from they think it comes from the supermarkets but rather there's kind of a rule of thumb here you might use how to make everybody better off what if we use somewhat less fertilizer in production where less demand is inelastic a smaller amount sells for more rings integrator total revenue but would increase farmers income United States then we could fit more fertilizer to underdeveloped countries people died early because of malnutrition their lifespan would increase I say there might be an in-between spot here where you make everybody better off and help Vergil our cover was polluting the environment at the same time just think of trying to implement that kind of practice would that be lovely job to be placed in charge of this I'm not actually how does a dictator if it should be easier to ration fertilizer than to try to ration land the way we're done now that's a very complicated and inefficient way well let me take care the other side of these pictures fertilizer in the hungry world you affluent people here well you've got some alternatives delicacy in the hundred nations they have none that's always worn out as far as plant nutrient availability is concerned you can't change the you measured way no matter how you change the agronomic practice how you change the variety and how you control the diseases because we are certainly part of part of their advantage want to say you could step up life expectancy by overcoming malnutrition even if you rented up the place where you endangered their health because of intake and chemicals so you'd still make them better off you still extend their life and also there's no easier way to substitute for land for them than fertilizer I think if you analyze always material get your hand on it shows it about a ton of fertilizer substitutes for about 50 acres of land as typically cultivated world around so I say there's for an undeveloped country everything maybe makes fine but you see also everybody's concerned much more so than hi about the use of chemical fertilizers in big quantities you know people are living longer today than ever before despite all of these things I think there you a lot of actors involved yes and I think that for anyone who starts pointing a finger at the use of chemical fertilizers at the levels that in the developing world that there can economically supply just whistling in the our decision financial possibility is I'm sorry some of my very best critics have been very vociferous in this inside publications that using these heavy doses of fertilizer we must be contaminating all the rivers and this sort of thing is ridiculous I was well arriving is much more contaminated than biologically than the atmosphere in India you can't go there and eat any fresh vegetables or drinking a ton boiled water with the organic fertilizer they use on fields I would certainly feel that smooth safer for everybody to use chemical fertilizers you I think that people now the ecologists many of the purest I'm not talking about the average ecologist and I started out as an ecologist to forest ecologist for stream watershed management wildlife management and then I work for chemical research organization for a number of years tonight could I inject something here that I think it's marvelous was that the organization that were you threatened to quit if they wouldn't allow you the freedom to use the laboratories at night and on holidays yes ma'am this was during the warriors side like you see you you're looking at one of the first guys to had DDT up to his ears arms and when we knew very little about this I'm still alive and I'm still pretty mean I'm going to expect the diet from DDT poisoning very soon and I think that what's going on here is that a lot of people are calling wolf before there's very much evidence to to show whoa I'll admit that long DDT type of pesticide which is persistent survives as such the molecules go for a long period of time can get into the food chains and some of these birds there are other waters you don't know what it'll do the next generation of people leaner well I think there's pretty good evidence about this this is just a lot of silliness about the mutagenic effects that are going on all sorts of things it's very difficult to produce these kinds of changes too much has been said about this without any real good evidence not only in the case of DDT but in many of the others well you're both sides I mean if you don't know you don't know either way anybody who's tried to commit from provoke mutations wouldn't simplify it to the point where these kinds of dosages that are being used to likely to produce monsters in the human species I think this is sorry before your for your critics of an undeveloped country I think they're looking at only in a one-sided sense and I think there's set of trade-offs maybe perhaps between chemical pollution and biological pollution you maybe you have to find the right balance of thing as I would still think for an undeveloped country such as India biological pollution without any chemicals is much more dangerous to mankind and everything else and chemical Isis there than you do here I would disagree with you I'm sorry mister so I just can't buy your negative point of view on illicit lemak why point of really is chemical fertilizers well I say I'm talking for mankind you people here are very privileged people indeed you can afford to have these kinds of points of view but this very program will probably go halfway around the world and will be used to say you see what happens in the USA and now you're advocating this kind of an approach for our country but it's not good enough for the USA this is psychologically ruinous to any program to try to help these people from the standpoint of solving their food problems well I would say that it would be foolish in India for example to go heavily into livestock because they can't afford to convert it the grains as much as we can write as a difference between two countries I think there's a difference in in the policy that you take on use of the pesticides for example in in two different countries the different kinds of problems and concern and it's always a question of taking the plus benefits in the - and the net and then yeah that's all I see in the case of DDT you've got to remember what it did on malaria control worldwide that's a pretty big plus and it allowed way a lot of people - there's no good substitute even up to this lifetime in the case of DDT though uncaught many cotton insects there's no presently there's no good active substitute more people are killed right now but good and fast with the organic phosphates especially in in the developing countries and certainly it's happened with DDT they're killed fast maybe this is good but I think it's tragedy not to change the subject it's all part of the same subject package here but we haven't we've talked about production we've talked about the population control pesticides there's another angle as a client breeder however that concerns me in much of what's being done in countries where green revolutions are going on when you bring in a new wheat variety that has the capabilities of responding to irrigation to increase fertiliser and so forth this way of course immediately it replaces to a very great extent and very rapidly indigenous varieties that we have places now over a period of time for the future the plant breeders you and I and plant pathologists who work in these areas we're dependent entirely upon what we call germplasm banks now these are simply reservoirs that are either being reproduced naturally like the Wild Oats species are being reproduced in Israel at the present time in the deserts or they may be very large collections which are perpetuated in storage special storage conditions as we have at the National Laboratory in Fort Collins Colorado or they may just be a series of collections which are growing sufficiently periodic to to maintain the viability of the seed stocks now when you move into an area like India and so on or some other places you certainly supplant many different genetic types now this happened to us in the Corn Belt when hybrid corn took over here so rapidly in early 40s and except for by the foresight at that time and I might say lucky foresight really some of the breeders in some of these states all of the old corns were fed to the pigs up to the last year see once you had lost that Reservoir germ plasm that product of thousands and perhaps millions of years of evolution those genes are lost forever essentially now what's being done on a worldwide basis I know what's being done with my own crop which happens to be the old crop what's being done internationally to try to preserve some of this for the future generations of plant breeders if you like because raw material with which to combat these diseases biologically that we know are going to change to improve the quality of the grain to meet the new fertilizer applications they're going to go and fight insects fight insects and I suppose the case of leakers largest single collection viable seed oil is in the US Department of Agriculture score in Fort Collins it had another 15 or 18,000 they must have a wall of 18,000 at the present time this is being added to gradually but there's a committee representing various organizations to try to expand this in the foreseeable future the next couple of years not only weed itself but related species of grasses progenitors of the weed species and as this as you pointed out very well skin needs to be done and it needs to be done fast of course India was really outside of the zone of origin of week as way out in the periphery the areas were where you need much more collection or in Afghanistan Iraq Iran Turkey as far as Israel then the secondary origin in the case of weekly GOP and I rather doubt that there's adequate sampling this is why this committee is supposed to make recommendation I think I'll probably be funded in this next year to go well what's what's the possibility that round brought up an interesting point today we're discussing this what's the possibility of leaving this is unnatural or burying so to speak in other words we have some natural prairies that were protecting in Iowa because we want to sort of see what they were like now we're not doing it for perpetuation term plasm on the Prairie at this point in time but we're doing it so that our children and their children's children can see what the Prairie was like back in the very early days you see before men invaded and took this all over and supplanted those first species what about the natural herb area this is being done naturally with the old species in Israel but I don't know whether we can afford this or another aspect of that population route and in this case is both lamb and goats okay between them why they won't be any natural Oh a lot of species in their zones of origin each time they're worked over more viciously is there more people and need for more man chases that goes up the mountain a little fire so I in most densely populated areas that are already over grace I don't think this is going to be the solution there are many countries who have made local collections they have poor facilities for storage FAO has made one collection on verbs that scored in Turkey and of course one of the very large collections going back again to the late 20s and 30s was survivalists in Russia most of this collection presumably was lost he no longer existed some of it remains I think the corn people are working the current project with your simit have made rather extensive collections everything in Latin America yes I think that there's a good representative collection of most of the unimproved mesas from Mexico South including in the islands of the Caribbean could I change the subject briefly in your lecture tonight you mentioned the prejudice of the Indian people against a red wheat and they wanted a white wheat and food prejudices generally and made me wonder about the situation in rice I understand that this philippine rice is still not very acceptable the rice seating in areas of India is not true the original ir8 this would be true well this is Japanese type sticky gooey trying to eat with chopsticks instead of the dry cooking Rice's that are preferred in Indian Southeast Asia but many of the newer varieties that are coming out like IR six and twenty this is more of the Indian type as far as cooking quality is concerned and you see this is this sort of second echelon problem that's being corrected maintaining the high yield at the original type that was widely distributed and which is only adapted incidentally to areas where you have a lot of sunshine you see if you move ir8 into the dripping tropics heavy summer rainfall or monsoon rains there's a whole series of diseases that were decimated it's not adapted to those environments but newer types are being developed are already gone commercial production which take care of some areas where ir8 is not adapted and this will be that's where your problem ala the melody is it well I would say the deceased thing of course has to be correct at first when you go into these and insect problems also introduced of heavy rainfall areas this is where you get into lots of trouble and diseases and ir8 just can't go there from that standpoint quite apart from the question of quality but the quality thing I think we're making good progress on this of course you see the the Institute's were never meant to be substitutes for the national breeding programs or research stations there simply to be additional help behind these to try to build a strong national programs whether it's in reefs wheat or rice in India or any other crop or in Pakistan and all of the countries we try to build in technical know-how to train people and feeding in materials but they've got to carry the large amount of the responsibility we do however much I hope for African crops I think that in the case of benzine where you are in Africa that holds a situation of different surroundings but making good progress in South and along the north rim and waitin it can be hand in the East in the south or in tropical Africa I think that there be good progress in corn and sorghum sand in some area where Rice's eatin like there's good possibility there but rice isn't in most parts of Africa preferred food corn and sorghum would be more to their liking and easier to easier to explain gentlemen we will be back for the conclusion of tonight's program after this message on September 22nd 1960 the ship steamed out of San Francisco harbor bound for Indonesia in dimension and performance she was a common American steamship except except for the fact that her hold was an oak plant we ever had and this is the last portion of our program and as is not really our practice with dimension 5 usually we keep on talking until the wee small hours but dr. Borlaug has had a very hard day and has an early morning plane to catch what do you call going back to the West Mexico's to Sonora state of Sonora will you be off getting your hands dirty and little early in the field there were a number of questions that our viewers had and I regret so much that we're not able to talk to you longer it has been a real pleasure having you as our guest tonight Lauren so it's been marvelous to have you and the other gentlemen I see more frequently on the Iowa State University campus stalwart Saul and for our viewers thank you very much for being with us join us again next week for dimension 5