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Tuesday, September 15, 2009

[mukto-mona] Eid Mubarak (Eid-ul-Fitr- 2009) [8 Attachments]

[Attachment(s) from kazi shamsul alam deepu included below]

2009.09.16 Wednesday.
Wish all of my Friends, Colleague/ ex Colleague, relatives and good wishers to celebrate a lovely Eid around the globe.
Ramadan is in its last stage now.
Eid-ul-Fitr is just waiting outside the door.
So EID MUBARAK to you all ... .. .
&
Let this Eid bring peace, prosper and happiness to
Bangladesh.

Thanking You All,

.........................................
Kazi Shamsul Alam Deepu
Manager, HR
DKKL
DK Group.
(A Denmark Bangladesh Joint venture)

Cell # 01819-151033.

Email: ksadeepu@dkgbd.com & ksadeepu@yahoo.com


 
 
 
 
Kazi Shamsul Alam Deepu
Manager, HR
DKKL
DK Group
Banani, Dhaka- 1213.
Cell: 01819-151033.


Attachment(s) from kazi shamsul alam deepu

8 of 8 Photo(s)


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[mukto-mona] Destroying trees will cost a lot [1 Attachment]

[Attachment(s) from Ripan Biswas included below]

Dear Editor,
 
Hope you are doing well and thanks for publishing my previous write ups.
 
This is an article titled "Destroying trees will cost a lot". I will be highly honoured if you publish this article. I apprecite your time to read this article.
 
Thanks
 
Have a nice time
 
With Best Regards
 
Ripan Kumar Biswas
New York, U.S.A
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Destroying trees will cost a lot
 
Ripan kumar biswas
Ripan.biswas@yahoo..com
 
Whenever I see the 70-foot-tall digital billboard outside the Penn Station in Manhattan, New York, displaying the running total of long-lived greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, I scare how the changing climate is pushing many Earth systems towards critical thresholds that will alter regional and global environmental balances and threaten stability at multiple scales.
 
We are altering the environment far faster than we can possibly predict the consequences. And climate change is not something that we can fix whenever we want. Comparable climate shifts have happened before, but over tens of centuries, not tens of years. The unprecedented rapid change could accelerate the already high rate of species extinction as plants and animals fail to adapt quickly enough. For the first time in history, humans are affecting the ecological balance of not just a region but the entire world, all at once.
 
Almost every day we seem to hear of yet another problem affecting the environment and the problem includes  pollution, acid rain, global warming, the destruction of rainforests and other wild habitats, the decline and extinction of thousands of species of animals and plants....and so on. We have all the economic, intellectual and technological know-how to head off this calamity and avoid the disruption and misery that inaction would entail. These range from energy saving measures and clean and renewable energy sources, to more efficient transport and better planning and management of our economies.
 
The solutions are probably numerous and, according to many economists, ecologists, and environmentalists, even affordable when compared with the costs of complacency. But forests and trees can take a central and pivotal role to slow down and reverse some of the damage of climate change if we utilize and sustainably manage them. At the global level, trees and forests are closely linked with weather patterns and also the maintenance of a crucial balance in nature.
 
As trees are important for a variety of reasons, offering numerous benefits for mankind, wildlife and the environment, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) has launched a major worldwide tree planting campaign.. Under the "Plant for the Planet: Billion Tree Campaign," people, communities, business and industry, civil society organizations and governments are encouraged to enter tree planting pledges with the objective of planting at least one billion trees worldwide each year. In a call to further individual and collective action, UNEP has set a new goal of planting 7 billion trees by the end of 2009. The campaign strongly encourages the planting of indigenous trees and trees that are appropriate to the local environment.
 
While the movement towards a deeper commitment to environmental protection through planting new trees and taking care of the existing ones is rapidly increasing all over the world, a 10 km stretch of Teknaf beach in southeastern Bangladesh has turned barren after over 30,000 Jhau (tamarisk) trees were felled by a section of local influential people within seven days in the week of September 7-13, 2009. The forest department and other law enforcement agencies remained silent spectators of the mindless tree felling. This report surely doesn't match with the government earlier declaration that says government is going to give over 700,000 acres of land for tree plantation through a national campaign this year as part of Bangladesh's Climate Change Strategy Action Plan, which was finalized by an inter-ministerial committee on Wednesday, August 26, 2009.
 
Although law enforcement agencies arrested over half a dozen people, including a former forest guard on charges of felling tamarisk tress on September 15, 2009 and recovered about 7,500 felled trees from different nearby villages of the beach, but the damage done to the environment through denuding the land, will bring irremediable natural calamity to the coastal life of Teknaf. As costal forests act as bioshields, around half a million tamarisk trees were planted in 1995 on 700 acres of sandy beach on a stretch of about 10 km from Shahparir Dwip in Sabrang Union of the upazila to Baharchhara to save life and properties of the people living along the Teknaf coast from erosion. But now this stretch in Cox's Bazaar runs a high risk in any natural disaster like cyclone and tidal surge as it has become denuded land.
 
Bangladesh that frequently faces crucial natural behavior is at high risk from the impacts of climate change. People who can no longer farm on drowning coastal land are falling inward to cities already crammed with jobless and desperate masses. Smaller than Illinois, US, Bangladesh has 152.6 million people, half the US population. Imagine what it will be like in 50 years, when the Bay of Bengal is predicted to cover 11 percent of Bangladesh's land. By some estimates, a one-meter sea level rise would submerge about one-third of Bangladesh's total area, uprooting 25-30 million people. Bangladesh is set to disappear under the waves by the end of the century, says NASA. The International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) predicted that Bangladesh was on course to lose 17% of its land and 30% of its food production by 2050. Bangladesh has already begun to feel the effects of climate change as flood periods have become longer and cyclones cause greater devastation. As sea-levels rise, the IPCC warned that 35 million refugees could flee Bangladesh's flooded delta by 2050.
 
"We have a short time to avert serious climate change. We need action and we need to plant trees. Countering climate change can take root via one billion small but significant acts in our gardens, parks, countryside and rural areas," said Achim Steiner, Executive Director of UNEP at the launching of "Plant for the Planet: Billion Tree Campaign." The same call has been pronounced by the President of Bangladesh Zillur Rahman when he was inaugurating the afforestation programme-2009 at Bangabhaban, Dhaka on June 25, 2009. "We've to plant trees immensely to bring back the lost serene environment," he said. Globally, forest cover is at least one-third less than what it once was.
 
Trees provide not only environmental protection, but also significant income and livelihood options globally for more than one billion forest-dependent people. Trees provide a wide range of products such as timber, fruit, medicine, beverages, fodder and services like carbon sequestration, shade, beautification, erosion control, soil fertility. Without trees human life would be unsustainable. Their beauty adds diversity to the world's natural landscape. Trees also play an important cultural, spiritual and recreational role in many societies. In some cases, they are integral to the very definition and survival of indigenous and traditional cultures.
 
While we need to plant and preserve existing trees and forests to restore the earths forests cover, the expanding carbon sinks, and to lessen the impact of global warming, some influential people in Bangladesh backed by political leaders or government officials, don't hesitate to destroy the valuable trees and forests for their ulterior motive. And their illegal attempts repeatedly prove beyond any doubt that how much the government is concern about the environment and greenery at the field level.
 
The longer the risk is ignored, the more drastic the consequences.
 
Wednesday, September 16, 2009, New York
Ripan Kumar Biswas is a freelance writer based in New York


Attachment(s) from Ripan Biswas

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[ALOCHONA] Dinbodol



Dinbodol
 
 
 
 



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Re: [mukto-mona] US government was behind 9/11, says American actor Charlie Sheen



This is insanity. Those who believe in the 9/11 conspiracy live in a different world, and Hollywood is no ordinary world. Shawn Penn, Charlie Sheen, Michael Moore, etc. all adore socialist dictators such as Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro. These Hollywood stars have a common mantra: Act like a Proletarian, live like a Capitalist.

 
Jiten Roy

--- On Sun, 9/13/09, Abhiyya <abhiyya@yahoo.com> wrote:

From: Abhiyya <abhiyya@yahoo.com>
Subject: [mukto-mona] US government was behind 9/11, says American actor Charlie Sheen
To:
Date: Sunday, September 13, 2009, 9:26 AM

 

Those intersted to know more on the topic, Please visit: http://world911trut h.org/

Charlie Sheen claims US government was behind 9/11

Charlie Sheen has prompted outrage in America by claiming that the government was behind the September 11 terror attacks

 
 
Charlie Sheen claims US government was behind 9/11
Charlie Sheen, who is the highest-paid actor on American televison, claimed that the official 9/11 story is a fraud 
In the lead up to today's eighth anniversary of the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, which killed more than 3,000 people, the actor has insisted there was a cover-up by the Bush administration.
He appealed to President Barack Obama to reopen an investigation into the attacks.
Sheen, who is the highest-paid actor on American televison, claimed that "the official 9/11 story is a fraud" and said the commission set up to investigate the attacks was a whitewash.
He said the attacks served "as the pretext for the systematic dismantling of our Constitution and Bill of Rights" and claimed the administration of former president George Bush was behind them.
He even hinted that Osama Bin Laden was working with the CIA up until 9/11.
Sheen, who appears in the hit comedy series Two And A Half Men, made his claims in the transcript of a fictional encounter with Mr Obama, called Twenty Minutes With The President.
It was published on the website of radio show host Alex Jones, PrisonPlanet. com, two days ahead of Sheen's appearance on Jones's show today.
Most of his observations make up the basis of all the conspiracy theories surrounding the terror attack.


With Regards

Abi
 

"At his best, man is the noblest of all animals; separated from law and justice he is the worst"

- Aristotle

--- On Sat, 9/12/09, Prathiba Sundaram <prathibasam@ yahoo.com> wrote:


 

US government was behind 9/11, says American actor Charlie Sheen

 

LONDON : Hollywood actor Charlie Sheen has requested US President Barack Obama to hold a new investigation into the 9/11 attacks as he believes them

 

to be staged by the Bush government.

The 'Wall Street' star made the outrageous claims through a short film '20 Minutes With The President' which was made public ahead of the eighth anniversary of the attacks that killed 3,000 people, reported Telegraph online.

The 44-year-old actor followed it up with a video, addressed to Obama, which he posted on YouTube.

Sheen, the highest-paid actor on US TV, argues that "the official 9/11 story is a fraud" and says the commission set up to investigate was a whitewash.

He claims the attacks simply served "as the pretext for the systematic dismantling of our Constitution and Bill of Rights".

The actor says the administration of former president George Bush was behind the attacks, which they were then able to use to justify an invasion of Iraq , even hinting that Osama Bin Laden was working with the CIA up until 9/11.

He also urged other Americans who were sceptical of the investigation, to demand the truth.

"We cannot allow governments to continue to advance their political agendas by exploiting forged pretexts and the fact that big budget hit pieces against 9/11 truth are still being rolled out proves that the establishment is upset that the population is waking up to false flag terror," he said.

 




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[mukto-mona] 17 point recommendations for strong Union Sarkar [1 Attachment]

[Attachment(s) from HakikulIslam Chowdhury included below]

Please be informed and take necessary action on it.
Thanks.
BAPS

Attachment(s) from HakikulIslam Chowdhury

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[ALOCHONA] NYT - Mr. Boota Giving Ramadan a Drumroll in Brooklyn at 4 A.M.



 

Mr. Boota wants to be a good American, and a good Muslim. "I don't want to bother other communities' people," he said. "Just the Pakistani people."

 

September 13, 2009

Giving Ramadan a Drumroll in Brooklyn at 4 A.M.

By KIRK SEMPLE

New York Times

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/13/nyregion/13drummer.html?pagewanted=print

 

A few hours before dawn, when most New Yorkers are fast asleep, a middle-aged man rolls out of bed in Brooklyn, dons a billowy red outfit and matching turban, climbs into his Lincoln Town Car, drives 15 minutes, pulls out a big drum and — there on the sidewalk of a residential neighborhood — starts to play.

 

The man, Mohammad Boota, is a Ramadan drummer. Every morning during the holy month, which ends on Sept. 21, drummers stroll the streets of Muslim communities around the world, waking worshipers so they can eat a meal before the day's fasting begins.

 

But New York City, renowned for welcoming all manner of cultural traditions, has limits to its hospitality. And so Mr. Boota, a Pakistani immigrant, has spent the past several years learning uncomfortable lessons about noise-complaint hot lines, American profanity and the particular crankiness of non-Muslims rousted from sleep at 3:30 a.m.

 

"Everywhere they complain," he said. "People go, like, 'What the hell? What you doing, man?' They never know it's Ramadan."

 

Mr. Boota, 53, who immigrated in 1992 and earns his living as a limousine driver, began waking Brooklynites in 2002. At first he moved freely around the borough, picking a neighborhood to work each Ramadan morning.

 

Not everyone was thrilled, he said. People would throw open their windows and yell at him, or call the police, who, he said, advised him kindly to move along.

 

As the years went by, he and his barrel drum were effectively banned from one neighborhood after another. He now restricts himself to a short stretch of Coney Island Avenue where many Pakistanis live.

 

Fearing that even that limited turf may be threatened real estate for him, he has modified his approach even further — playing at well below his customary volume, for only about 15 to 20 seconds in each location, and only once every three or four days.

 

The complaints have stopped, he said. But as he reflected on his early years of drumming in the streets of New York — before he knew better — wistfulness seeped into his voice. He rattled off the places he used to play, however briefly: "Avenue C, Newkirk Avenue, Ditmas, Foster, Avenue H, I, J and Neptune Avenue."

 

"You know," he reluctantly concluded, "in the United States you can't do anything without a permit."

 

Mr. Boota wants to be a good American, and a good Muslim. "I don't want to bother other communities' people," he said. "Just the Pakistani people."

 

Several prominent Muslim organizations in New York said they knew of no other drummers who played on Ramadan mornings. But while the custom's usefulness has been largely eclipsed by the invention of the alarm clock, it has hung on in many places. Indeed, Mr. Boota said he continues the practice, in spite of the challenges and resistance, as much to keep a tradition alive as to feed a cultural yen of his countrymen.

 

"They're waiting for me," he said.

 

The daily Ramadan fast runs from the start of dawn to dusk. So shortly after 3 one recent morning, Mr. Boota left his wife, Mumtaz, as she prepared a predawn meal in their Coney Island apartment. About 15 minutes later he pulled his Lincoln to a stop in front of Bismillah Food, a small Pakistani grocery store on Coney Island Avenue, near Foster Avenue. Several men were inside; taxicabs parked outside suggested their occupation.

 

In one fluid motion, Mr. Boota popped the trunk, cut the motor, leapt out, hoisted the drum's strap over his shoulder, greeted the owner — "Salaam aleikum" — and, standing in the sidewalk penumbra of the shop's fluorescent light, began playing.

 

The men came to the door. "He's a very popular man here," one of them said, nodding at Mr. Boota, who wore his usual performance attire: a traditional shalwar kameez, a loose two-piece outfit, elaborately embroidered with gold thread.

 

Mr. Boota wielded his two drumsticks in a galloping clangor that echoed off the facades of the darkened buildings.

 

After about 20 seconds, he ended his performance with a punctuative smack of the taut drum heads. There was an exchange of mumbled pleasantries, the men moved back inside the store, and as quickly as he had arrived, Mr. Boota was behind the wheel of his car again, driving a block south to another Pakistani-owned business.

 

"A few seconds," he said, as he cut the engine again. "Ten, 15 seconds, and bye-bye."

 

For the next 20 minutes, he repeated this drill outside three Pakistani restaurants, four convenience and grocery stores and a service station.

 

No one complained — audibly, at least. And a close watch on nearby windows along the street revealed no annoyed, or even curious, residents.

 

"You see, nobody yelling at you," Mr. Boota said cheerily. "Everybody happy to see you."

 

He added, "I don't want people unhappy."

 

Drumming, Mr. Boota said, is a family tradition. He is a seventh-generation ceremonial drummer and is now training his 20-year-old son, Sher, one of eight children. In addition to his Ramadan reveilles, Mr. Boota plays at Pakistani weddings, birthday parties, graduation celebrations and other events.

 

"A lot of happiness hours!" he exclaimed.

 

During his rounds the next night, he stopped at a Pakistani-run service station and wandered with his drum into the service bay. He wanted to demonstrate the full capacity of his instrument. One of the mechanics slid the heavy doors shut, and Mr. Boota started to play at full volume, unleashing deafening sheets of sound. For three solid minutes he pounded out relentless, churning polyrhythms that filled the space like smoke.

 

Mr. Boota was obviously reveling in the power of his drum after a week of frustrated Ramadan duty. As the ringing in the listeners' ears faded, he headed back to his car.

 

"It's a great noise," he said.

 

Majeed Babar contributed reporting.



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[ALOCHONA] Obituary - Norman Borlaug the father of the Green Revolution



A man has passed away who profoundly impacted the food situation in Bangladesh, but no one on this site seemed to remember!!! Goebelsian Isha Khan and his reptilian clones are too busy like Don Quixote chasing imaginary windmills in the sky to look at the real world!!!

 

Two looks at Norman Borlaug the father of the Green Revolution, for those who are interested.

 

 

 

September 14, 2009

Norman Borlaug, Plant Scientist Who Fought Famine, Dies at 95

By JUSTIN GILLIS

New York Times

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/14/business/energy-environment/14borlaug.html?_r=1&pagewanted=print

 

Norman E. Borlaug, the plant scientist who did more than anyone else in the 20th century to teach the world to feed itself and whose work was credited with saving hundreds of millions of lives, died Saturday night. He was 95 and lived in Dallas.

 

The cause was complications from cancer, said Kathleen Phillips, a spokeswoman for Texas A&M University, where Dr. Borlaug had served on the faculty since 1984.

 

Dr. Borlaug's advances in plant breeding led to spectacular success in increasing food production in Latin America and Asia and brought him international acclaim. In 1970, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

 

He was widely described as the father of the broad agricultural movement called the Green Revolution, though decidedly reluctant to accept the title. "A miserable term," he said, characteristically shrugging off any air of self-importance.

 

Yet his work had a far-reaching impact on the lives of millions of people in developing countries. His breeding of high-yielding crop varieties helped to avert mass famines that were widely predicted in the 1960s, altering the course of history.

 

Largely because of his work, countries that had been food deficient, like Mexico and India, became self-sufficient in producing cereal grains.

 

"More than any other single person of this age, he has helped provide bread for a hungry world," the Nobel committee said in presenting him with the Peace Prize. "We have made this choice in the hope that providing bread will also give the world peace."

 

The day the award was announced, Dr. Borlaug, vigorous and slender at 56, was working in a wheat field outside Mexico City when his wife, Margaret, drove up to tell him the news. "Someone's pulling your leg," he replied, according to one of his biographers, Leon Hesser. Assured that it was true, he kept on working, saying he would celebrate later.

 

Criticism of Techniques

The Green Revolution eventually came under attack from environmental and social critics who said it had created more difficulties than it had solved. Dr. Borlaug responded that the real problem was not his agricultural techniques, but the runaway population growth that had made them necessary.

 

"If the world population continues to increase at the same rate, we will destroy the species," he declared.

 

Traveling to Norway, the land of his ancestors, to receive the award, he warned the Nobel audience that the struggle against hunger had not been won. "We may be at high tide now, but ebb tide could soon set in if we become complacent and relax our efforts," he said. Twice more in his lifetime, in the 1970s and again in 2008, those words would prove prescient as food shortages and high prices caused global unrest.

 

His Nobel Prize was the culmination of a storied life in agriculture that began when he was a boy growing up on a farm in Iowa, wondering why plants grew better in some places than others. His was also an unlikely career path, one that began in earnest near the end of World War II, when Dr. Borlaug walked away from a promising job at DuPont, the chemical company, to take a position in Mexico trying to help farmers improve their crops.

 

The job was part of an assault on hunger in Mexico that was devised in Manhattan, at the offices of the Rockefeller Foundation, with political support in Washington. But it was not a career choice calculated to lead to fame or honor.

 

Indeed, on first seeing the situation in Mexico for himself, Dr. Borlaug reacted with near despair. Mexican soils were depleted, the crops were ravaged by disease, yields were low and the farmers could not feed themselves, much less improve their lot by selling surplus.

 

"These places I've seen have clubbed my mind — they are so poor and depressing," he wrote to his wife after his first extended sojourn in the country. "I don't know what we can do to help these people, but we've got to do something." The next few years were ones of toil and privation as Dr. Borlaug and his colleagues, with scant funds or equipment, set to work improving yields in tropical crop varieties.

 

He spent countless hours hunched over in the blazing Mexican sun as he manipulated tiny wheat blossoms to cross different strains. To speed the work, he set up winter and summer operations in far-flung parts of Mexico, logging thousands of miles over poor roads. He battled illness, forded rivers in flood, dodged mudslides and sometimes slept in tents.

 

He was by then a trained scientist holding a doctoral degree in plant diseases. But as he sought to coax better performance from the wheats of Mexico, he relied on a farm boy's instinctive feel for the plants and the soil in which they grew.

 

"When wheat is ripening properly, when the wind is blowing across the field, you can hear the beards of the wheat rubbing together," he told another biographer, Lennard Bickel. "They sound like the pine needles in a forest. It is a sweet, whispering music that once you hear, you never forget."

 

Norman Ernest Borlaug was born on March 25, 1914, in his grandfather's farmhouse near the tiny settlement of Saude, in northeastern Iowa. Growing up in a stalwart community of Norwegian immigrants, he trudged across snow-covered fields to a one-room country school, coming home almost every day to the aroma of bread baking in his mother's oven.

 

He was a high-spirited boy of boundless curiosity. His sister, Charlotte Culbert, recounted in an interview in 2008 in Cresco, Iowa, that he would whistle aloud as he milked the cows, and pester his parents and grandparents with questions. "He'd wonder why in some areas the grass would be so green, and then over here it wouldn't be," Mrs. Culbert recalled.

 

At the time, most farm boys dropped out of school. But Norman's grandfather Nels Borlaug, regretting his own scant education, urged his grandson to keep going. Norman worked his way through the University of Minnesota during the Great Depression. More than once in those desperate years he encountered townspeople in Minneapolis on the verge of starvation, which sharpened his interest in the problems of food production.

 

Tackling a Problem

He first studied forestry, but fell under the influence of a legendary expert in plant diseases, Elvin C. Stakman, who encouraged him to switch to the broader field of plant pathology. After earning a doctorate in the field, he took a job with DuPont in 1942 and worked on chemical compounds useful in the war. But Professor Stakman helped persuade him to join the Rockefeller Foundation's Mexican hunger project in 1944.

 

Dr. Borlaug's initial goal was to create varieties of wheat adapted to Mexico's climate that could resist the greatest disease of wheat, a fungus called rust. He accomplished that within a few years by crossing Mexican wheats with rust-resistant varieties from elsewhere.

 

His insistence on breeding in two places, the Sonoran desert in winter and the central highlands in summer, imposed heavy burdens on him and his team, but it cut the time to accomplish his work in half. By luck, the strategy also produced wheat varieties that were insensitive to day length and thus capable of growing in many locales, a trait that would later prove of vital significance. The Rockefeller team gradually won the agreement of Mexican farmers to adopt the new varieties, and wheat output in that country began a remarkable climb. But these developments turned out to be a mere prelude to Dr. Borlaug's main achievements.

 

By the late 1940s, researchers knew they could induce huge yield gains in wheat by feeding the plants chemical fertilizer that supplied them with extra nitrogen, a shortage of which was the biggest constraint on plant growth. But the strategy had a severe limitation: beyond a certain level of fertilizer, the seed heads containing wheat grains would grow so large and heavy, the plant would fall over, ruining the crop.

 

In 1953, Dr. Borlaug began working with a wheat strain containing an unusual gene. It had the effect of shrinking the wheat plant, creating a stubby, compact variety. Yet crucially, the seed heads did not shrink, meaning a small plant could still produce a large amount of wheat.

 

Dr. Borlaug and his team transferred the gene into tropical wheats. When high fertilizer levels were applied to these new "semidwarf" plants, the results were nothing short of astonishing.

 

The plants would produce enormous heads of grain, yet their stiff, short bodies could support the weight without falling over. On the same amount of land, wheat output could be tripled or quadrupled. Later, the idea was applied to rice, the staple crop for nearly half the world's population, with yields jumping several-fold compared with some traditional varieties.

 

This strange principle of increasing yields by shrinking plants was the central insight of the Green Revolution, and its impact was enormous.

 

By the early 1960s, many farmers in Mexico had embraced the full package of innovations from Dr. Borlaug's breeding program, and wheat output in the country had soared sixfold from the levels of the early 1940s.

 

Attention Across Globe

Urgent queries began to pour in from other poor countries, for they were caught in a bind. After World War II, the introduction of basic sanitation in many developing countries caused death rates to plunge, but birth rates were slow to follow. As a result, the global population had exploded, putting immense strain on food supplies.

 

On the Indian subcontinent in particular, a crisis developed. The population was growing so much faster than farm output that it was not clear how the masses could be fed. In the mid-1960s, huge grain imports were required to avert starvation.

 

At the invitation of the Indian and Pakistani governments, Dr. Borlaug offered his advice. He met resistance at first from senior agricultural experts steeped in tradition, but as the food situation worsened, the objections faded. Soon, India and Pakistan were ordering shiploads of Dr. Borlaug's wheat seeds from Mexico.

 

One vital shipment through the Port of Los Angeles was delayed by the Watts riots of 1965 in that city, and Dr. Borlaug spent hours yelling on the phone to get it through.

 

Indian and Pakistani farmers took up the new varieties, receiving fertilizer and other aid from their governments. Just as in Mexico, harvests soared: the Indian wheat crop of 1968 was so bountiful that the government had to turn schools into temporary granaries.

 

As with the Mexican effort, the Rockefeller Foundation and other donors set up a project in the Philippines to work on rice. It led to the creation of semidwarf varieties that also caused rice yields to soar. Chinese scientists ultimately followed in the footsteps of Western researchers, using semidwarf varieties to establish food security in China and setting the stage for its rise as an industrial power. And Dr. Borlaug and his colleagues helped spread the new crop varieties to additional countries of Latin America, notably Colombia, Ecuador, Chile and Brazil.

 

Confronting the Effects

Dr. Borlaug's later years were partly occupied by arguments over the social and environmental consequences of the Green Revolution. Many critics on the left attacked it, saying it displaced smaller farmers, encouraged overreliance on chemicals and paved the way for greater corporate control of agriculture.

 

In a characteristic complaint, Vandana Shiva, an Indian critic, wrote in 1991 that "in perceiving nature's limits as constraints on productivity that had to be removed, American experts spread ecologically destructive and unsustainable practices worldwide."

 

Dr. Borlaug declared that such arguments often came from "elitists" who were rich enough not to worry about where their next meal was coming from. But over time, he acknowledged the validity of some environmental concerns, and embraced more judicious use of fertilizers and pesticides. He was frustrated throughout his life that governments did not do more to tackle what he called "the population monster" by lowering birth rates.

 

He remained a vigorous man into his 90s, serving for many years on the faculty of Texas A&M and continuing to do vital agricultural work. In recent years, he marshaled efforts to tackle a new variety of rust that is threatening the world's wheat crop.

 

Dr. Borlaug's wife of 69 years, the former Margaret Gibson, died in 2007. He is survived by a sister, Charlotte Borlaug Culbert; a daughter, Jeanie Borlaug Laube; a son, William Borlaug; five grandchildren; and six great-grandchildren.

 

Gary H. Toenniessen, director of agricultural programs for the Rockefeller Foundation, said in an interview that Dr. Borlaug's great achievement was to prove that intensive, modern agriculture could be made to work in the fast-growing developing countries where it was needed most, even on the small farms predominating there.

 

By Mr. Toenniessen's calculation, about half the world's population goes to bed every night after consuming grain descended from one of the high-yield varieties developed by Dr. Borlaug and his colleagues of the Green Revolution.

 

"He knew what it was they needed to do, and he didn't give up," Mr. Toenniessen said. "He could just see that this was the answer."

 

Gerald Jonas and Sarah Wheaton contributed reporting.

 

Against the grain on Norman Borlaug

The feted agronomist may have saved a billion from starvation, but critics say he planted the seed for future environmental woes

Leo Hickman

guardian.co.uk,

Tuesday 15 September 2009

 

Accolades don't come much more gushing than those expressed this week following the death of Norman Borlaug, the agronomist whose lifelong work developing high-yield crops played a major role in heralding the so-called "green revolution" and who has often been credited as the "man who saved a billion lives".

 

 

Throughout his life he was feted with awards and honours across the world: the Nobel Peace Prize, the US Presidential Medal of Freedom, India's Padma Vibhushan, to name just a few.

 

But despite the passionate humanitarian zeal that drove much of his work, he certainly had his critics. The criticism was not so much aimed at the man himself, but for the biotech legacy he played such a major role in creating. After all, this was the man who arguably did more than any other to nurture the era of monocrops, GM foods and the intensive use of petrochemical pesticides and fertilisers. He may well have saved a billion people from imminent starvation, but by doing so, say his critics, he also inadvertently helped to plant the seed for future environmental woes.

 

Has there ever been a person in human history whose legacy has pivoted so precariously on the fulcrum between good and bad? We will only know the complete answer in the decades to come once the full implications of the world being so reliant on what are now called "conventional" farming methods have been borne out in the context of overpopulation, peak oil, climate change, water depletion and all the other issues now so inextricably linked to modern farming.

 

Borlaug was not naive on these issues, though. In his Nobel acceptance speech, he recognised that "we are dealing with two opposing forces, the scientific power of food production and the biologic power of human reproduction":

 

There can be no permanent progress in the battle against hunger until the agencies that fight for increased food production and those that fight for population control unite in a common effort. Fighting alone, they may win temporary skirmishes, but united they can win a decisive and lasting victory to provide food and other amenities of a progressive civilization for the benefit of all mankind.

 

Borlaug said this in 1970 when the global human population stood at 3.7 billion. Today, it is fast approaching seven billion. Modern farming has won the "battle" with population control convincingly.

 

Borlaug also dismissed the sometimes barbed attack of the environmentalists by arguing that his high-yield crops helped protect rainforests because they allowed farmers to continue exploiting existing farmland, therefore avoiding the need to stray into neighbouring forests with their chainsaws and firesticks.

 

As he grew older, though, he became an increasingly fervent supporter of GM technology, arguing that without it the booming human population would face widespread famine.

 

It was another subject for which he often came into combat with some environmentalists. But he saved much of his disdain for the organic farming movement. This is what he told Reason magazine in 2000 when asked what he thought of organic farming:

 

Don't tell the world that we can feed the present population without chemical fertiliser. That's when this misinformation [about the merits of organic farming] becomes destructive.

 

Borlaug's vision and subsequent success was underpinned by the widespread availability of cheap oil. His solution for feeding the world was one that could only have ever been dreamed up in that post-war era when the energy source was obvious and unquestioned. But times have changed: with Borlaug's passing we are reminded how impatiently we await a successor to dream up the answer to our battle between rising population levels and sustainable food production.

 

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