you can see this pressure is very great I think it is a 

 very sad situation. 



(Governor Schwinden): I am fascinated by your 

 hypothesis of the transplanting of the Spanish feudal 

 system on Latin American and the impact it's had Do 

 you draw any parallel at all, Dr Borlaug, to what 

 appears to be a movement in that direction in this 

 country? 



Let me just point out, I guess, my own hypothesis is 

 that, you mentioned that the people who came here in 

 the 17th and 18th century brought with them a whole 

 variety of things, but primarily an interest in acquiring a 

 piece of land and doing their own thing And, as early 

 as 1787, we had already embarked upon an educa- 

 tional process. 



And yet, 200-plus years later, the trend is com- 

 pletely the other way Over the last 60 years, we've 

 lost over 40 percent of our farm units in the State of 

 fvlontana One of the major issues, I think, in every 

 one of our states is the role that private education 

 ought to play 



Do we face a time when the control of food and 

 agriculture in the West is going to follow the same 

 path as energy? Are we going to have the agricultural 

 Exxons and the agricultural Burlingtons, Dick, and 

 Atlantic Richfields, in which, just as the energy of the 

 West IS now under the control of relatively few 

 multi-national corporations, the same thing will happen 

 in a feudal kind of transplantation of the West 



(Dr Borlaug) I am very glad to hear this question 

 posed I must answer it in two different ways because 

 I think the question of time frame is important here 



(Governor Schwinden): You're the politician, then, 

 with two different ways to answer it 



(Dr^ Borlaug): No, it has two different facets For 

 example, one of the great strengths of the agricultural 

 revolution here in the last 40 years has been the 

 inputs of the agribusiness — the whole gamut of 

 things they have contributed — fertilizer production, 

 distribution of technical services, various kinds of 

 seeds, hybrid seed companies, a whole series. 



In most of the countries where I have worked, it is 

 a government monopoly and it's rotten with politics — 

 not politics as much as corruption And, when you 

 get into this kind of a situation, no matter how good 

 the technology, the efficiency of how it is applied is at 

 a very low level. 



Now, let me point out the danger. There's no 

 question in my mind, but what is anachronistic in this 

 case, ownership of large tracts of land in Latin 

 America. A good case in point is Argentina, even 

 today, or Brazil in opening many of these new lands. 



There's many of them that are 50-, 60-, 70-thousand 

 acres or more. And, this poses a real problem down 

 the road because ihere are many who are landless, 

 and there is going to be social or political upheaval 

 unless we can help those who are miserable to at 

 least get the basic ingredients for a decent life. 



So, we've got to balance this. We can go over- 

 board, I think that you political leaders have a real 

 responsibility both at state level and through your influ- 

 ences in federal government to try to permit these 

 changes to take place in an orderly way Certainly, 

 the small fragmated farms are gone, and they weren't 

 such a pleasant way of life either I know from per- 

 sonal expehence. 



But, the one paper that I forgot to point out to you 

 is, "Why Latin America is Poor." It's by Michael 

 Novak and this is one chapter out of his book pub- 

 lished in Atlantic Monthly in fvlarch of this year. Quite 

 curiously, I arrived at the same conclusions In 1965, I 

 gave a series of lectures across Canada that said 

 that Latin America was born 100 years too soon The 

 manuscript got burned by an accident in the office, so 

 it never appeared, but as early as that I could see 

 there were some big obstacles here that were in the 

 transplant. 



And if you look back to the home country, the 

 development has only started taking place in the last 

 30 to 40 years in Spain and Portugal. So, the 

 shackles were late in coming off and it takes a long 

 time to catch up. 



(Governor Lamm): Any other of the panelists like 

 to respond? Governor Ariyoshi? 



(Governor Ariyoshi): I was very interested in some 

 of the comments here about the importance of agri- 

 culture and in our state we happen to feel this is 



Gov Richard Lamm, Colorado, handles queries from the audience 



33 



