PRESS RELEASE
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT: Marie K. Thompson
DATE: February 27, 2003
Nobel Peace
Prize Laureate to Visit IFDC
 Muscle Shoals,
AL, -- Dr. Norman Borlaug--the 1970 Recipient of the Nobel Peace
Prize and the Father of the Green Revolution, which saved hundreds
of millions of people from starvation--will be visiting IFDC and
making a presentation entitled "Feeding a World of Ten Billion
People: The TVA/IFDC Legacy" at 10:00 a.m. on March 14,
2003, at the TVA Auditorium on the TVA Reservation in Muscle Shoals,
AL. This presentation is IFDC's Third Travis P. Hignett
Memorial Lecture; Hignett is remembered worldwide as the
"Father of Fertilizer Technology." The public
is invited to attend.
Dr. Borlaug is a graduate of the University of Minnesota, where he
studied both forestry and plant pathology. In 1944 the
Rockefeller Foundation invited him to work on a project to boost
wheat production in Mexico. At the time Mexico was importing a
large share of its grain. Borlaug and his staff in Mexico
spent nearly 20 years breeding the high-yielding dwarf wheat
that sparked the Green Revolution--the transformation that prevented
the mass starvation previously predicted. It is significant
that when his Nobel Prize for Peace was announced, he could not be
reached by telephone. Messengers were sent to a wheat field,
where he was found seated on a three-legged stool--creating a new
wheat variety.
"Today, at the age of 88, Borlaug still works to get modern
agricultural technology into the hands of hungry farmers in the
developing countries," says Dr. Amit H. Roy, IFDC President and
Chief Executive Officer. "IFDC has been privileged to
collaborate with the famed scientist on projects in sub-Saharan
Africa."
As President of the Sasakawa Africa Association, Borlaug
collaborates with President Jimmy Carter's Global 2000 program to
spread the Green Revolution to sub-Saharan Africa. He also
serves as a consultant to the International Maize and Wheat
Improvement Center in Mexico. At Texas A&M University,
where he is a Distinguished Professor in the Soil and Crop Sciences
Department, Borlaug--a very modest man--works out of a small
windowless office in the university's agricultural complex and still
occasionally teaches classes.
Borlaug is no stranger to the Shoals area, having served as a member
of the IFDC Board of Directors since 1994 and having held a
long-time appreciation for TVA. In fact, he has stated,
"If high-yielding varieties were the catalyst, fertilizer was
the fuel for the Green Revolution." Borlaug recognizes
that without chemical fertilizer, the full potential of the
high-yielding varieties would not have been realized and millions of
people could have starved to death. He appreciates the fact
that the Shoals area--because of the outstanding advances produced
by TVA and IFDC--has made a significant contribution to global
agricultural development.
The day--March 14, 2003--has special significance for IFDC, in that
26 years ago on that day, President Jimmy Carter, designated IFDC as
a nonprofit, public, international organization. IFDC--An
International Center for Soil Fertility and Agricultural
Development--was founded in 1974 to assist in the quest for global
food security. The nonprofit Center's mission today is to
increase agricultural productivity through the development and
transfer of effective, environmentally sound plant nutrient
technology and agricultural marketing expertise
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