55 



area relative to the circumference grows very fast. You piomp out 

 a lot more water, of course, but compared to the amount of water 

 that flows in, it's very much greater. 



Well, the great virtue of doing this was that the farmers 

 got about 40 percent more water. It really did three things. It 

 washed down the salt because they would pump out more water than 

 would evaporate, so some of it would run back, and that water that 

 ran back would carry the salt with it out of the soil into the 

 underground. It would lower the water table because water 

 evaporated at the surface, which it wasn't able to do when it was 

 below the surface. You spread it out on the surface and the water 

 would evaporate and therefore you had less water. The third thing 

 was that they could use that water for irrigation. So all the 

 water went through the crop plants. The plants, of course, just 

 flourished. For the first time in their lives they were getting 

 enough water. It was amazing what a difference it made. 



In addition to that, we thought it was absolutely essential 

 to add fertilizer and to get better seeds. It was just about this 

 time that Norman Bulary was coming up with his improved wheat 

 varieties. He came out there and talked to the Indians about 

 iit^roved varieties, and also to the Pakistanis. 



What these improved varieties did, there was nothing magical 

 about them, they were just very responsive to fertilizer. The 

 reason they were responsive to fertilizer was that they could hold 

 their heads up. They were so-called dwarf varieties. You see, 

 you would get a big head of grain without the plant just falling 

 over on its side, lodging, as they call it. Really what the 

 miracle wheat is all about is that it doesn't lodge, it doesn't 

 lie over on its side, therefore you get much more grain. All the 

 nitrogen that you put on it goes into grain. There are many other 

 things about these improved varieties. The architecture of the 

 plant is such that it gets more sunlight and things like that, and 

 its genes are resistant to disease. A lot of good qualities are 

 built into these grain revolution cereals. 



Anyhow, all of this worked at once. They began to use 

 fertilizer, the farmers dug the tube wells, they got the better 

 wheat varieties. 



The ultimate result was that in about ten years the wheat 

 production doubled in West Pakistan, it went up 7 percent a year 

 for ten years, which means doubling. It was a great success 

 agriculturally during that time. This was, say, from 1963 to, 

 say, 1973. 



Sharp: Did it take a lot of convincing of the local farmers to use 

 so many different new things? 



Revelle: That was one of the interesting things about it, and this was 



where we made our great mistake. We thought that the farmers were 

 a bunch of ignorant slobs! And they were. Most of them couldn't 

 read or write. They were illiterate. But as somebody said, 

 although very few Pakistani farmers can read or write; most all of 

 them can figure, and they could tell whether they were going to 

 make a profit or not. So prices are tremendously inportant to 

 farmers . 



