Educational Media Reviews Online

Norman Borlaug is a scientist active in conducting and promoting research into increasing food production in Third World countries. He received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970. This video chronicles Borlaug's life, which began in Iowa in the 1920s. As a Depression child, Borlaug saw first hand some of the devastation wrought by starvation, and he decided early on to devote the rest of his life to solving problems of insufficient staple crops in the developing world. Borlaug went to work, after graduating from the University of Minnesota, in Mexico, where he is credited with starting that country's Green Revolution with the skillful use of chemical fertlizers to enrich soils that had been cultivated since pre-Columbian times and the breeding of high-yield and more nutritionally complete corn. In succeeding decades, Borlaug carried his approach to sub-Saharan Africa under the auspices of the Sasakawa Global 2000 organization.

It is encouraging to witness in this video proof that, as Borlaug maintains, Third World farmers are eager to adopt new farming methods informed by scientific research when given the proper explanations about their use and necessary technical and financial assistance. Borlaug takes issue with environmentalists from the industrialized world who condemn the use of chemical fertilizers; he asserts that one cannot fairly compare the comparatively tiny amount of fertilizers used by Third World farmers with the massive amounts employed in temperate countries.

This video intersperses Third World success stories with quotations from Borlaug and many other food and agricultural scientists to make the point that new and scientifically informed ways of producing food for the burgeoning populations of the lesser-developed countries are essential. Recommended for all academic libraries with audiovisual collections in agriculture and international development.