640 NORMAN E. BORLAUG 



that the time has come to undertake a major attempt to improve our crop 

 plants or to create entirely new ones through this type of approach. I 

 believe that one or more of the International Research Institutes can be 

 an effective catalyst in exploring the feasibility of such an approach 

 to plant breeding. 



I personally want to live to see what happens when the amphidiploid 

 is produced between wheat and rice. Since rice is the only small grain 

 cereal that does not have its corresponding rust or rusts (Puaainia spp.), 

 will it confer its immunity to the wheat x rice amphidiploid? Or will 

 man by such scientific folly open a Pandora's box and form a bridging 

 species which would open the floodgates to invasion of rice by the wheat 

 disease parasites and vice-versa? Were this to happen, we would have 

 set the stage for the "Death of Grass" as envisioned by novelist John 

 Christopher. 



In the face of the continuing, relentless pressure of population 

 growth, I believe it is absolutely necessary for plant and tree breeders 

 to use more and more imagination and aggressiveness to produce higher 

 yielding plants, and thereby hold the line on the food and fiber produc- 

 tion front. By so doing, agriculturists and foresters can buy an addi- 

 tional 2 or 3 decades in the hope that by then Homo sapiens will wake up 

 to the pending cataclysm of continued, uncontrolled population growth. 

 Social, biological (human) Utopia is a goal we should strive to achieve, 

 but as biologists (and especially as geneticists) we know that at best 

 it can be only a working hypothesis. We must channel, guide and culti- 

 vate our idealism wisely if we are to improve the living standards of 

 the world's masses, and if we are to survive as a species. Unbridled 

 idealism and emotionalism, unguided by reason and common sense, can 

 unfortunately also lead us into oblivion. 



To the ecologists and environmentalists, who are feverishly working 

 to prevent further deterioration of our environment and who are now 

 finally being heard and getting a "big play" in television, radio and 

 the press, I say, beware of conveying an oversimplified, distorted pic- 

 ture of achieving a rapid and permanent solution to this problem, for 

 you are dealing with only one isolated aspect of the larger, complex 

 population problem. To the millions of idealistic students who are 

 actively, and vociferously, concerned with changing governments and 

 building a better world where peace will reign and where the rights of 

 all individuals will be given complete expression, I say, beware of being 

 misled into believing that any kind of government - capitalistic, 

 socialistic, communistic, anarchistic or military dictatorship - can 

 provide such a Utopia while essentially ignoring the underlying, mon- 

 strous, and evergrowing human population problem. We only need to reflect 

 on the degenerative social behavior of rats in overpopulated cages; or 

 on the periodic suicidal migrations of the Arctic lemming, which springs 

 from response to overcrowding and is led by the younger members of the 

 population, to know that we must face up to the population growth 

 problems if we are to survive. The time is late! 



Although I have built the last part of this presentation around a 

 plea for more creative breeding in food crops, I also now challenge all 

 forest geneticists and tree breeders "to think big --- think and act 

 Paul Bunyan!" 



