The vicissitudes of agriculture are a mixture of the good, the bad, and the ugly. Something good recently was the awarding of the Congressional Gold Medal (the nation's highest civilian award) to Norman Borlaug, a Nobel Peace Prize winner and father of the so-called Green Revolution that brought modern agricultural methods to much of the developing world. It averted malnutrition, famine and death for many millions of poor people.

The bad was the selection of former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan to head a new group intended to achieve a "green revolution" in African agriculture. The effort is largely bankrolled by Microsoft co-founder and Chairman Bill Gates. If past performance is any indication, the only things likely to become greener are the numbered bank accounts of Mr. Annan and his cronies.

The ugly was the failure of the process by which Gates, the world's richest man and most generous philanthropist, has made such an inexplicable blunder.

The contrasts between Borlaug and Annan could hardly be greater. Borlaug, now 93, worked miracles of several kinds. First, he and his colleagues in the mid-20th century laboriously crossbred thousands of wheat varieties from around the world to produce some new variations with resistance to rust, a destructive plant pest. This advance raised crop yields 20 percent to 40 percent.

Borlaug, in order to achieve maximum yields, also crafted so-called dwarf wheat varieties that when aggressively fertilized would not become top-heavy and fall over in the field. He also devised an ingenious technique called "shuttle breeding" ˆ growing two successive plantings each year, instead of the usual one ˆ in different regions of Mexico. The availability of two test generations of wheat each year cut by half the time required for breeding new varieties.

But perhaps Borlaug's greatest achievement was overcoming what he called the "bureaucratic chaos, resistance from local seed breeders and centuries of farmers' customs, habits, and superstitions" in order to get his innovations adopted.

A cruel irony is that Annan's United Nations devoted prodigious amounts of energy and resources to creating the very kinds of bureaucratic chaos and other obstacles ˆ including regulatory hurdles ˆ that Borlaug deplored.

These two men are the yin and yang, the positive and negative poles, of humanity. In recent years Borlaug has lent his support to the modern equivalent of the green revolution: the application of gene-splicing, or genetic modification, to agriculture. This second wave promises to be as important as the first, offering the possibility of even higher crop yields, less need for agricultural chemicals and water, enhanced nutrition ˆ and even plant-derived, orally active vaccines.

In the early days of Annan's tenure as head of the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa, established with an initial $150 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation, he left no doubt about his technophobic antagonism to gene-splicing: "Africa should rely on African solutions ˆ local labor, seeds and markets ˆ without seeking imported biotech 'magic bullets' or the promise of more open foreign markets."

"We in the alliance will not incorporate [gene-spliced organisms] in our programs. We shall work with farmers using traditional seeds," Annan intoned.

These statements are tantamount to suggesting that instead of modern vaccines and hygienic practices in Africa, witch doctors should cast spells to prevent infectious diseases. It's not only backward, but also genocidal: Genetically improved seeds can spell the difference between subsistence farmers being able to sell part of their harvest and their families dying of starvation.

Such technophobia should come as no surprise. During Annan's years at the helm, the United Nations conducted a virtual war on gene-splicing, and the results were catastrophic, especially for poor nations but also for others. Many U.N. agencies have been complicit in the unscientific, highly politicized and excessive regulation of biotechnology, which has prevented critical advances in agricultural and pharmaceutical research and development.

Biotechnology regulation is a growth industry at the U.N., one that regularly defies scientific consensus and common sense.

The result is vastly inflated research and development costs, less innovation and diminished exploitation of superior techniques and products ˆ especially in poorer countries, which need them desperately.

Mr. Annan's execrable performance at the U.N., including his presiding over a virtual war on the most precise, predictable and effective techniques to advance agriculture, makes him eminently unqualified for his new position. Mr. Gates should ask himself how he would feel if Annan tried to deny computers to Africans and insisted instead that they use traditional, primitive calculating devices.

Similar to resolving a glitch with Windows, the Gates Foundation should reboot ˆ or, more precisely, give Mr. Annan the boot. And for its African agricultural initiative, it should seek a Norman Borlaug.

Henry I Miller is a physician and scholar at the Hoover Institution (Stanford University) and former FDA Official

Source:

Henry I. Miller (27.7.07). Polar opposites of agricultural progress: The contrasts between Borlaug and Annan could hardly be greater. Orange County Register

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