Progress: Ten Reasons to Look Forward to the Future

by Johan Norberg

The story of Borlaug and the global Green Revolution that he initiated begins in Mexico in 1944, when he started working there for the Rockefeller Foundation on agricultural development.25 The programme was initiated to teach Mexican farmers new methods, but Borlaug was obsessed with coming up with better, higher-yield crops. He grew up in the US Midwest, and noticed that horrible dust storms and crop failures had the least impact where farmers had begun with high-yield approaches to farming. He wanted more countries to have access to this. After thousands of crossings of wheat, Borlaug managed to come up with a high-yield hybrid that was parasite resistant and wasn’t sensitive to daylight hours, so it could be grown in varying climates. Importantly, it was a dwarf variety, since tall wheat expended a lot of energy growing inedible stalks and also collapsed when it grew too quickly. When he introduced this new hybrid, Borlaug also showed farmers how modern irrigation and artificial fertilizer increased the yields. The new wheat was quickly introduced all over Mexico, and amazingly in 1963, the harvest was six times larger than in 1944. Overnight, Mexico became a net exporter of wheat.