Land Conservation-Forested and Fragile Sands Saved

By the 1990’s the extraordinary impact of the Green Revolution is undeniable. Food production rose dramatically, on much the same land area as was in agricultural use before the Green Revolution. Great swaths of forested and environmentally fragile land were saved from the plow. Norman, a forester and naturalist at heart, is rightly credited for much of this preservation; he is intensely proud of saving forested lands. 

The 1970 Nobel Peace Prize

The Elvin Charles Stakman Award

1961 - Norman Borlaug receives the Elvin Charles Stakman Award, from the Department of Plant Pathology at the University of Minnesota. It is one of the first recognitions, outside of Mexico, given to Norman for his astounding achievements.

New Ally and Weak Stems

The Undergraduate 

1933 - Freshman Surprises-Humble Pie

Norman Borlaug and high school friend Ervin Upton ride to Minnesota in George Chaplin’s roadster. They room with Chaplin near the Minneapolis Campus of the University. Norman’s adventure begins with two big setbacks, and two remarkable happenings. He fails the University’s entrance examination and is humiliated, ready to return home to farm. The second is the freshman football team tryout, where he finds there is no future as a 145 lb Gopher football guard.

Birth of Norman Borlaug

On March 25, 1914 Norman Ernest Borlaug was born in his grandfather’s farmhouse to Henry and Clara (Vaala) Borlaug. The farm was located in northeastern Iowa near the Norwegian-American hamlet of Saude and in the New Oregon Township of Howard County (of which Cresco is the county seat). Norman is a descendant of the Borlaug, Vaala, Swenumson, and Landsverk families who immigrated to the United States from Norway in the mid-1800s. After some moving about, the families eventually settled on farms near Saude.

Norman Borlaug was famous for his decades-long, science-based international agriculture improvement and educational efforts. His Mexican group’s work spearheaded ‘The Green Revolution.’ This revolution greatly increased the world’s food supplies by improving crop plants while simultaneously upgrading soils and growing conditions It coincided with the mechanization of farming, and the worldwide spread of graduate level, science-based agriculture education.

Borlaug’

After his 1937 graduation in Forestry, and with the promise of a U.S. Forest Service job, Norman and Margaret Gibson married. The job offer fell through, due to the funding problems, and the couple faced dire financial straits. Norman approached the eminent Professor of Plant Pathology Elvin C. Stakman for a paid graduate assistantship. Stakman questioned Borlaug’s motives (financial rather than intellectual), but gave him a temporary job ‘reading’ microscope slides and counting spores. He later assigned Norman a graduate assistantship under Dr. Clyde M.