Ms. Julie Borlaug. Austin, Texas August 2, 2011

Transcription

1 Remarks from Ms. Julie Borlaug, Assistant Director of Partnerships at the Borlaug Institute for International Agriculture, at the 2011 Association of American Plant Food Control Officials (AAPFCO) Annual Meeting Austin, Texas August 2, 2011 It is such an honor and a great privilege for me to address you this morning at the 2011 AAFCO Annual Meeting. Your industry played a key role in the success of the Green Revolution and my grandfather was grateful of the pivotal role fertilizer played in improving the world s food supply over the past 50 plus years. I am the granddaughter of Dr. Norman E. Borlaug and I had the pleasure of working closely with my grandfather at the Borlaug Institute for International Agriculture at Texas A&M University. The institutes goal is to carry out the legacy of my grandfather through the land grant mission of teaching, extension and research. At the Borlaug Institute, we believe that the legacy of my grandfather demands effective partnerships among universities, governments, industries, and NGOs. The Borlaug Institute s programs provide researchers, policymakers and university faculty from developing countries the ability to strengthen sustainable agricultural practices through scientific training and collaborative research opportunities. The Borlaug Institute aims to be the leading international agriculture program among U.S. universities, measured by the quality of its international teaching, science and extension programs. The Borlaug Institute is engaged in activities critical to international agricultural development. Our areas of focus include contribution to global food security, human and institutional resources development, and promotion of institutional cooperation. These objectives are addressed through agricultural development projects and partnerships, in countries such as Rwanda, Iraq, and Guatemala to name a few. Ms. Julie Borlaug As the Assistant Director for Partnerships, I work to strengthen our relationships with organizations and programs such as the USDA Borlaug Fellows Programs, the USAID Borlaug Commemorative Research Initiative, the World Food Prize Youth Institute, and other private and public partners to form stronger collaborations to further the Borlaug legacy. 1

2 As many of you may know, my grandfather was recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, Medal of Freedom and Congressional Gold Medal for his pioneering work in developing high yielding wheats for areas with limited cultivation for land and increasing populations. These wheats and improved crop management practices transformed agricultural production in Mexico during the 1940s and 1950s and later in Asia and Latin America, sparking what today is known as the Green Revolution. In preparing for this morning s remarks, I reviewed many of my grandfather s speeches and interviews on the subject of fertilizer. Fortunately, I came across my grandfather s key note address at the IFDC s Travis P. Hignett Memorial Lecture in My grandfather was one who was never short on words and believed you must understand history in order to really become an expert on a topic. However, instead of reading all 36 pages of his speech, which actually started with my grandfather reviewing the 1918 founding of the TVA s Agriculture Resource Development program, I thought instead I would incorporate some of his key points with in my remarks to save us some time. My grandfather was many things, a teacher, a warrior against hunger but he was first and foremost he was a scientist. He often said that the fear of change is the greatest obstacle to progress. He came down on the side of innovation, and was known for being bold and quick to act. Industry leaders were fond of my grandfather b/c he has been such a strong advocate for innovation and technological change. My grandfather s most potent view of science was that man s most advanced knowledge and technology should be used in battle against hunger and poverty. He was greatly troubled by the unwillingness of nations to employ the best technologies in food production. In his view there was no technology too advanced for developing nations. Even fellow scientists and research administrators did not escape his admonition when they moved slowly on research to develop high protein maize, and rust resistant wheat. There is a Nobel Prize waiting he said, for the person who finds the rust resistance gene in rice and moves it to the wheat plant. As many of you know, we as an industry face a great challenge - how to feed the world in We are going to need to produce more food than ever before. This is to feed the growing population but also the changing way people are eating. At the beginning of the 21 st century with a population of 6.1 billion in 2000 and headed for 9.2 billion by 2050, the challenge of yet again doubling food production in only 50 years has become a daunting task. The situation is further exacerbated b/c now, we must also double food production sustainably by 2050 on approximately the same area of arable land using less resources, particularly, fossil fuel, water and nitrogen at a time when we must also mitigate some enormous challenges associated with climate changes as we have seen with the drought in the Horn of Africa and here in Texas. Furthermore, there is the critical and urgent humanitarian need to alleviate poverty, hunger and malnutrition. We know how to replenish soils, enhance crops and apply fertilizers, pesticide and water for maximum yield. We know how to 2

3 properly harvest, protect, dry and fumigate crops. We know how to package, store, ship and market food for maximum income to farmers and maximum benefit to consumers. But across Africa, Latin America and the Middle East, people still struggle to pull one ton of grain per hectare while American and Japanese and European farmers get up to six tons. Many agriculture experts believe we have failed to bring science and the wisdom of the 21 st century to millions of farmers still trapped in ancient techniques. As a result for the first time in history one billion people last year were undernourished according the FAO. Over the next 4 decades the world population will climb from 6 billion to over 9 billion and nearly all growth will be in the poorest countries. Yet the keys to ending hunger are known - usage of fertilizers, integrated pest management, hybrid seeds, building of infrastructure, fair prices and good government policies and biotechnology. In my grandfather s 2003 IFDC speech he stated that The Green Revolution has been a much-debated subject. During the late 1960s, the initial euphoria over the highyielding wheat and rice varieties and more intensive crop production practices was followed by a wave of criticism. Some criticism reflected a sincere concern about social and economic problems in rural areas that were not and cannot be solved by technology alone. Some criticism was based on premature analyses of what was actually happening in areas where the Green Revolution technologies were being adopted. Some criticism focuses on issues of environmental damage and sustainability. Many of these criticisms have some element of truth to them. Obviously, wealth has increased in irrigated areas, relative to less-favored rainfed regions, thus increasing income disparities. Cereals, with their higher yield potential, have displaced pulses and other lower yielding crops, but with a net gain in total calories produced. Farm mechanization has displaced low-paid laborers, although many have found betterpaying jobs off the farm in towns and cities. High-yielding cereal varieties have replaced lower-yielding land races, generally with significant improvements in disease resistance, especially in the case of wheat. He further stated For those whose main concern is protecting the environment, what would the world have been like without the technological advances that have occurred? Had the global cereal yields of 1950 still prevailed in 1999 we would have needed nearly 1.2 billion ha of additional land of the same quality instead of the 660 million that was used. Obviously, such a surplus of land was not available, and certainly not in Asia, where the population had increased from 1.2 to 3.8 billion over this time period. Moreover, if more environmentally fragile land had been brought into agricultural production, the impact on soil erosion, loss of forests and grasslands, biodiversity and extinction of wildlife species would have been much more severe. And the debate on the environmental impact of fertilizer and usage still exist more than ever today. My grandfather often said that While farmers should endeavor to use all of the organic nutrients that is economically feasible not only to replenish nutrients but to improve overall soil structure and health there simply are not enough 3

4 organic manures and crop residues available to replenish and maintain soil fertility in these potentially higher yielding production systems needed to meet growing food requirements and reduce poverty. Furthermore, he stated that The attacks against chemical fertilizers are also difficult to understand. Bio-chemically, it makes no difference to the plant whether the nitrate ion it eats comes from a bag of fertilizer or decomposing organic matter. Moreover, given the very low current levels of fertilizer use and the alarming trends in declining soil fertility, a very strong case can be made that increased fertilizer use in such as Sub- Saharan Africa is one of the most environmentally friendly things we can do. We need to shift the debate to how best to supply adequate plant nutrients in the most efficient way possible. Increased consumption of chemical fertilizer is absolutely essential to meet the growing demand. He continued by saying Yet, to hear many uninformed people, chemical fertilizer is seen more as a poison than the plant food that it really is. Equally misinformed is the notion that organically produced food has higher nutritive value. This is not so. Although the affluent nations can certainly afford to pay more for food produced by the so-called organic methods, the one billion chronically undernourished people of the low-income, food-deficit nations cannot. Indeed, it would be impossible for organic sources to replace the 80 million tons of nitrogen contained in chemical fertilizer. If we tried to do it with cattle manure, the world beef population would have to increase from about 1.5 billion to 6-7 billion head, with all of this resulting in overgrazing, erosion and destruction of wildlife habitat. My grandfather firmly believed that to end hunger we must embrace next generation of technology and one of the key components is the creation of the next generation of fertilizers and production technologies. In a press statement at the 2010 launch of the IFDC s Virtual Fertilizer Research Center, Amit Roy, IFCD President and CEO stated the following: Because of the current issues facing international agriculture, new and innovative research is needed to help feed the world. The time has come for developing practices and technologies to improve the use of land and labor resources, reduce emissions into the air and water and conserve natural resources. With the population, economic and environmental issues facing us, the world cannot afford the current level of inefficiency in fertilizer production and use. It is estimated that 50 percent of the food consumed worldwide results directly from the use of (or benefits of) nitrogen fertilizer. Yet, only about one-third of the nitrogen fertilizer applied to crops in developing countries is utilized due to inefficiency in application methods and the inherent properties of current fertilizer products. The financial cost and waste burden farmers who pay for three times as much nutrient as their crops absorb. But that does not account for the total financial cost or waste. The wasted fertilizer does not disappear but often becomes an environmental pollutant, either in the form of potent greenhouse gas or runoff that fouls streams and lakes. And it should be noted, that over the past 25 years, no new efficient fertilizer product has been developed 4

5 particularly no product affordable for use on food crops by farmers in less developed countries. With a billion hungry people, it is unacceptable to condone such crop nutrient waste. With global climate change and declining biodiversity, it is also unacceptable to continue the unnecessary pollution of our environment. The world needs a new generation of fertilizer products and processes that make more efficient use of available resources (IFDC, 2010.) In a 2008 letter to Amit Roy, President & CEO of IFDC, my grandfather stated that The work of the Green Revolution is not yet finished and I believe it will take a new round of technological advancement, political commitment, commercial development and a lot of hard work to complete the job. He continued by stating We need to develop new products that will deliver just the nutrients that the growing plants require and to diminish environmental externalities. We need to invest in this sort of advanced fertilizer research and we need to coordinate it with advanced plant genetic research so that we can achieve synergy between more efficient use of available nutrients by plants and more efficient delivery of nutrients by fertilizer products. And we need to develop systems that can make these products cheaper and more accessible to farmers. We need to cut the cost of food production so that developing country farmers can produce affordable food to feed their growing urban populations. In building upon my grandfather s remark s Amit Roy continued by stating The world food supply has managed to stay ahead of rising population due to increasing productivity and a modest expansion of cultivated area. However, non-renewable resource reserves (such as phosphates and potash), increasing energy costs and the growing cost to the environment when bringing more land under cultivation pose new challenges. Fertilizer research and development can make a major contribution in addressing the challenges faced by Africa and Asia. Global food security depends on a focused effort to improve soil fertility and increase productivity of food crops, and fertilizer plays a major role. The production and use of current fertilizer products must be improved. To provide the world the next generation of fertilizers, the private sector must play a significant role in partnership with public institutions (IFDC, 2010.) My grandfather s passion and lifelong devotion to feeding as he would say the hungry and miserable was truly amazing. He never faltered or tired of this life long battle. He strongly believed that science and technological breakthroughs in agriculture, especially in fertilizers, pest management and hybrid seeds played the key role in improving the quantity, quality and availability of the food for the world s people over the past 50 years. He knew if we provided farmers with access to the best seeds and other inputs, fair prices and good government policies no child would ever have to go hungry again. As it was the Green Revolution, agricultural science and technology and strong partnerships among the public and private sector are still central to solving the world food problems. As history has shown, few countries have achieved increased 5

6 prosperity without equivalent growth in agriculture. In conclusion, let me leave you with two thoughts, first a favorite quote of my grandfather s by Andre and Jean Mayer, two American nutritionists, in an article, Agriculture-The Island Empire, published in 1974 in the journal Daedulus of the America Academy of Arts & Sciences. Few scientists think of agriculture as the chief or the model science. Many, indeed, do not consider it a science at all. Yet it was the first science the mother of all sciences; it remains the science that makes human life possible; and it may well be that, before the century is over, the success or failure of science as a whole will be judged by the success or failure of agriculture. And the second by my grandfather, This is a basic problem, to feed 6.6 billion people. Without fertilizer, forget it. The game is over. Again, thank you for having my here with you today. To learn more about the Norman Borlaug Institute for International Agriculture, please visit For more information about the Association of American Plant Food Control Officials, visit 6