Who's for DDT?

Dr. Norman E. Borlaug is a onetime Iowa farm boy who probably knows as much about growing food as anyone else in the world. He won the 1970 Nobel Peace Prize for his contribution to the development of "miracle" high-yield strains of wheat, which produced up to four bushels where only one bushel had grown before, and which have helped make India, West Pakistan and Mexico nearly self-sufficient for their cereal supply.

Last week Dr. Borlaug gave the keynote speech at a meeting of the U.N.'s Food and Agricultural Organization in Rome. To the bemusement of the assembled notables, he violently attacked "the current vicious, hysterical campaign against the use of agricultural chemicals being promoted today by fear-provoking, irresponsible environmentalists." Today's greatest danger, Borlaug pointed out. is the pressure put on food supplies by the world's rapidly growing population. Fully 50% of mankind is undernourished, perhaps another 15% is malnourished. To make matters worse, the soil in many developing nations is worn out, and crops are ravaged by ravenous insects. The need for chemical fertilizers and pesticides is not only clear, Borlaug said, but imperative.

In stark contrast, he continued, "the so-called environmentalist movement" is endemic to rich nations, where the most rabid crusaders tend to be well-fed urbanites who sample the delights of nature on weekend outings. Borlaug feels that campaigns to ban agricultural chemicals--starting with DDT--reveal a callous misordering of social priorities. If such bans become law, he warned, "then the world will be doomed not by chemical poisoning but by starvation."

Borlaug has a point. The probable hazards of DDT poisoning are a proper matter of concern for a society like the U.S., which is so well fed that many of its people spend much of their time dieting. But peoples on the borderline of starvation are more interested in simply getting enough to eat, and the possibility of getting poisoned by accumulated DDT is the least of their worries.

Nonetheless, many U.S. environmentalists remain skeptical about the Green Revolution precisely because it depends so heavily on agricultural chemicals. Those chemicals boost harvests, but they also have unpredictable side effects that may not show up for years. In recent Philippine experience with new strains of rice, for example, farmers were delighted to reap bumper crops. But so many chemicals were needed that the fish in the paddylields and nearby waterways died. Result: more rice but less protein in the local diet--a net loss in food values.

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