Seeker Blog

I’ve seen several pundits commenting on father of the “Green Revolution”, Dr. Norman Borlaug’s Congressional Gold Medal. E.g., Gregg Easterbrook wrote “Greatest Living American Ignored“. Here’s a fragment of Tigerhawk’s comments:

…Borlaug, even at age 93, is a champion for the politically very incorrect idea that we should enthusiastically promote biotech in agriculture, especially in the developing world. I suspect that rich-country journalists know that if they glorify Norman Borlaug and his cause they will be shunned from all the best cocktail parties. It is far easier in such circles to glorify Jimmy Carter and his cause, or even Yasser Arafat and his cause.

Here at TigerHawk, though, we are at no risk of being shunned — we have never been invited to the best cocktail parties — so we can happily present a fair use excerpt from Norman Borlaug’s most recent wisdom, an op-ed piece in today’s Wall Street Journal titled “Continuing the Green Revolution“:

I knew that the evil frankenfood technology had reduced pesticide use and saved water — I didn’t realize just how dramatic the improvements are:

• Ag biotechnology has reduced pesticide applications by nearly 500 million pounds since 1996. In each of the last six years, biotech cotton saved U.S. farmers from using 93 million gallons of water in water-scarce areas, 2.4 million gallons of fuel, and 41,000 person-days to apply the pesticides they formerly used.

• Herbicide-tolerant corn and soybeans have enabled greater adoption of minimum-tillage practices. No-till farming has increased 35% in the U.S. since 1996, saving millions of gallons of fuel, perhaps one billion tons of soil each year from running into waterways, and significantly improving moisture conservation as well.

Our beloved New Zealand is still a “GE Free Zone“. How sad — how long will NZ continue to pile on the pesticides, consume soil-life and waste water? Good ol’ Greenpeace calls it “truefood“, sigh.