Harvest of Thanks: Paying Tribute to the Father of the Green Revolution

Wed, 23 Nov 2022 20:20:24 GMT

South of Cresco, Iowa, you will find a small farmstead with quite a story.

“By the time they came to live in this house, which was 1922, Norm was about eight years old or so and they had just bought the farm a year or two before that. It was 56 acres,” says Tom Spindler, with the Norman Borlaug Heritage Foundation.

Spindler is speaking of young Norman Borlaug. Next to the home you will find the school Norm attended as a boy. Both Norman’s father and grandfather attended the very same school. They ended their formal education without going to high school. The story would be different for Norman.

“They saw in him that he had a spark. I remember Charlotte, his younger sister, said the family always felt even when he was a teenage boy this guy had something in him that was something special,” Spindler says.

The family drove Norman 14 miles into Cresco where he would board for the week, then come home on the weekends to help on the family’s farm. Norman’s agriculture teacher and wrestling coach encouraged him to go to college. His grandfather, Nels, helped make that happen.

“As Norm decided to go to the University of Minnesota, he gave him 11 silver dollars and he said to Norm, ‘Norm boy you take this and pay your tuition for the first quarter. Feed your head now so you can feed your belly later,’ Spindler says.

Norman would go on to feed much more than his own belly. Borlaug helped develop wheat varieties in Mexico, and later in Pakistan, India and other locations that helped feed and save the lives of millions of people. His work led many to call him the father of the green revolution. Today, the farm where Borlaug was raised continues his mission.

“We do lots of educational programming here,” Spindler says. “We host two inspire days. We call them inspire days because Norman Borlaug was a very inspiring person. We target mostly fifth grade, and we have fifth graders from probably a dozen different schools that come.”

Borlaug’s work was recognized by many around the world. Notably, he won the 1970 Nobel Peace Prize and later the Presidential Medal of Freedom among many awards in his lifetime. But as Spindler shares, Borlaug was always a teacher at heart – a mission they carry on today – and a story that shows the impact one farm boy can have on the world.

“Look what he did in his lifetime — from being a farm kid feeding his horses, the cows and the chickens and farming that land with horses and then he is credited with saving hundreds of millions of lives,” he says.

Recovery from Hurricane Helene is Slow as Farmers Worry Land May Be Lost Forever

Producers in Western North Carolina are still working to clean up from damage suffered from Hurricane Helene in September. The latest estimates from Virginia Tech put the final price tag for damage to agriculture, forestry and related industries in the state between $416 million and $630 million.

One professor at Virginia Tech puts future income losses for farmers at more than $50 million. That’s due to land having to be taken out of production. It’s expected producers of Christmas trees, blueberries, beef cattle and apples will be the hardest hit.

The North Carolina Farm Bureau traveled to the western part of the state to report on the damage firsthand. Lynda Loveland, Director of Communications for NC Farm Bureau, spoke to Yancy County farmer Kevin Wilson. He told Loveland he wasn’t sure he would ever see the county rebuilt back to where it was in his lifetime.

“People have lost homes; people have lost lives. We’re going to be dealing with scars from this flood for centuries from now,” said Wilson.

Wilson described the day the powerful storm hit: “From about 8:30 am to 10:30 am it was just nothing but an onslaught of wind and rain. Rain would come in sheets. I don’t think anybody expected the amount of water we were going to get.”

“We’ve got a boatload of fences to rebuild. We did lose some corn,” Wilson told Loveland.

He says one pasture behind his home had developed a bit of a mudslide that hadn’t broken loose yet, and he was watching it closely to see if it would give way.

“I would say my wife and I probably lost two-thirds of our timber. When you go up on the mountain it looks like Pickup Sticks,” said Wilson.

He also discussed the loss of other agricultural land in a county that needs to be preserved as much as possible.

“Some of the most fertile land in Yancy County was along the Cane River Valley--great places to grow corn, hay, things of that nature, but this storm was ruthless,” Wilson said.

Wilson is concerned about what it will take to try and reclaim land now covered in dirt and debris. “That is definitely a detriment to the county because these river bottoms were super valuable.”

“I think that’s going to be one of the biggest challenges moving forward is how do we rebuild? How do we get back to a point of normalcy? How do we get back to where it was?”

Farm Journal would like to thank the NC Farm Bureau for sharing this report. You can find more of NC Farm Bureau’s coverage following Hurricane Helene, on their YouTube page here .