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Norman Borlaug- Enabling Farmers to Fight Hunger

Quotes from Norman Borlaug Almost certainly, however, the first essential component of social justice is adequate food for all mankind.

	Civilization as it is known today could not have evolved, nor can it survive, without an adequate food supply.
	Contrasting sharply, in the developing countries represented by India, Pakistan, and most of the countries in Asia and Africa, seventy to eighty percent of the population is engaged in agriculture, mostly at the subsistence level.
	Spectacular progress has been made in increasing wheat, rice, and maize production in several of the most populous developing countries of southern Asia, where widespread famine appeared inevitable only five years ago.
	Food is the moral right of all who are born into this world.
	For, behind the scenes, halfway around the world in Mexico, were two decades of aggressive research on wheat that not only enabled Mexico to become self-sufficient with respect to wheat production but also paved the way to rapid increase in its production in other countries.
	I am but one member of a vast team made up of many organizations, officials, thousands of scientists, and millions of farmers - mostly small and humble - who for many years have been fighting a quiet, oftentimes losing war on the food production front.
	Man's survival, from the time of Adam and Eve until the invention of agriculture, must have been precarious because of his inability to ensure his food supply.
	The destiny of world civilization depends upon providing a decent standard of living for all mankind.
	There are no miracles in agricultural production.
	Therefore I feel that the aforementioned guiding principle must be modified to read: If you desire peace, cultivate justice, but at the same time cultivate the fields to produce more bread; otherwise there will be no peace.
	Without food, man can live at most but a few weeks; without it, all other components of social justice are meaningless.

Borlaug- Basic values and our economic system: Joseph E Stiglitz
The recent death of Norman Borlaug provides an opportune moment to reflect on basic values and on our economic system. Borlaug received the Nobel Peace Prize for his work in bringing about the “green revolution,” which saved hundreds of millions from hunger and changed the global economic landscape.

Before Borlaug, the world faced the threat of a Malthusian nightmare: growing populations in the developing world and insufficient food supplies. Consider the trauma a country like India might have suffered if its population of a half-billion had remained barely fed as it doubled. Before the green revolution, Nobel Prize-winning economist Gunnar Myrdal predicted a bleak future for an Asia mired in poverty. Instead, Asia has become an economic powerhouse.

The green revolution may, of course, prove to be only a temporary respite. Soaring food prices before the global financial crisis provided a warning, as does the slowing rate of growth of agricultural productivity. India’s agriculture sector, for example, has fallen behind the rest of its dynamic economy, living on borrowed time, as levels of ground water, on which much of the country depends, fall precipitously.

But Borlaug’s death at 95 also is a reminder of how skewed our system of values has become. When Borlaug received news of the award, at four in the morning, he was already toiling in the Mexican fields, in his never-ending quest to improve agricultural productivity. He did it not for some huge financial compensation, but out of conviction and a passion for his work.

What a contrast between Borlaug and the Wall Street financial wizards that brought the world to the brink of ruin. They argued that they had to be richly compensated in order to be motivated. Without any other compass, the incentive structures they adopted did motivate them — not to introduce new products to improve ordinary people’ lives or to help them manage the risks they faced, but to put the global economy at risk by engaging in short-sighted and greedy behaviour. Their innovations focused on circumventing accounting and financial regulations designed to ensure transparency, efficiency, and stability, and to prevent the exploitation of the less informed.

There is also a deeper point in this contrast: our societies tolerate inequalities because they are viewed to be socially useful; it is the price we pay for having incentives that motivate people to act in ways that promote societal well-being. Neoclassical economic theory, which has dominated in the west for a century, holds that each individual’s compensation reflects his marginal social contribution — what he adds to society. By doing well, it is argued, people do good.

But Borlaug and our bankers refute that theory. If neoclassical theory were correct, Borlaug would have been among the wealthiest men in the world, while our bankers would have been lining up at soup kitchens.

Of course, there is a grain of truth in neoclassical theory; if there weren’t, it probably wouldn’t have survived as long as it has (though bad ideas often survive in economics remarkably well). Nevertheless, the simplistic economics of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, when neoclassical theories arose, are wholly unsuited to twenty-first-century economies. In large corporations, it is often difficult to ascertain the contribution of any individual. Such corporations are rife with “agency” problems: while decision-makers (CEOs) are supposed to act on behalf of their shareholders, they have enormous discretion to advance their own interests — and they often do.

Bank officers may have walked away with hundreds of millions of dollars, but everyone else in our society — shareholders, bondholders, taxpayers, homeowners, workers — suffered. Their investors are too often pension funds, which also face an agency problem, because their executives make decisions on behalf of others. In such a world, private and social interests often diverge, as we have seen so dramatically in this crisis.

Does anyone really believe that America’s bank officers suddenly became so much more productive, relative to everyone else in society, that they deserve the huge compensation increases they have received in recent years? Does anyone really believe that America’s CEOs are that much more productive than those in other countries, where compensation is more modest?

The skewed incentives distorted our economy and our society. We confused means with ends. Our bloated financial sector grew to the point that in the US it accounted for more than 40% of corporate profits.

But the worst effects were on our human capital, our most precious resource. Absurdly generous compensation in the financial sector induced some of our best minds to go into banking. Who knows how many Borlaugs there might have been among those enticed by the riches of Wall Street and the City of London? If we lost even one, our world was made immeasurably poorer.

Courtesy-Economic Times, 12 Oct 2009
(The author, University Professor at Columbia University and winner of the 2001 Nobel Prize, served as chairman of the Commission on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress. )