S2250DEC8

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Week Ending December 8, 2006

S.2250 A bill to award a congressional gold medal to Dr. Norman E. Borlaug.

Iowa Born Dr. Borlaug spent twenty years after WW II in the poor rural areas of Mexico where he developed a strand of wheat that increased yield and resisted disease. The discovery uplifted hundreds of thousands of poor rural Mexicans and saved hundreds of million from famine and outright starvation in India and Pakistan, the Resolution preamble explained.

He received a Nobel Prize in 1970 and today, at age 91, he is president of the Sasakawa Global 2000 Africa Project seeking to extend agricultural development to the 800 million poverty stricken sub-Saharans.

His accomplishment have qualified him for the congressional gold medal, the highest honor this country can provide to a private citizen.

Duplicate bronze medals are to be coined to help pay for the gold medal labor, materials and other overhead.

Sponsor: Rep. Chuck Grassley (R-IA)

Vote: Passed Senate October 2006. Passed House December 6, 2006 by voice vote.

Cost to the taxpayers: Funds will come from and existing account at the US Mint called the Public Enterprise Fund. Such sums as are necessary are authorized.

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Congress finds as follows:

(1) Dr. Norman E. Borlaug, was born in Iowa where he grew up on a family farm, and received his primary and secondary education.

(2) Dr. Borlaug attended the University of Minnesota where he received his B.A. and Ph.D. degrees and was also a star NCAA wrestler.

(3) For the past 20 years, Dr. Borlaug has lived in Texas where he is a member of the faculty of Texas A&M University.

(4) Dr. Borlaug also serves as President of the Sasakawa Africa Association.

(5) Dr. Borlaug's accomplishments in terms of bringing radical change to world agriculture and uplifting humanity are without parallel.

(6) In the immediate aftermath of World War II, Dr. Borlaug spent 20 years working in the poorest areas of rural Mexico. It was there that Dr. Borlaug made his breakthrough achievement in developing a strand of wheat that could exponentially increase yields while actively resisting disease.

(7) With the active support of the governments involved, Dr. Borlaug's `green revolution' uplifted hundreds of thousands of the rural poor in Mexico and saved hundreds of millions from famine and outright starvation in India and Pakistan.

(8) Dr. Borlaug's approach to wheat production next spread throughout the Middle East. Soon thereafter his approach was adapted to rice growing, increasing the number of lives Dr. Borlaug has saved to more than a billion people.

(9) In 1970, Dr. Borlaug received the Nobel Prize, the only person working in agriculture to ever be so honored. Since then he has received numerous honors and awards including the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the Public Service Medal, the National Academy of Sciences' highest honor, and the Rotary International Award for World Understanding and Peace.

(10) At age 91, Dr. Borlaug continues to work to alleviate poverty and malnutrition. He currently serves as president of Sasakawa Global 2000 Africa Project, which seeks to extend the benefits of agricultural development to the 800,000,000 people still mired in poverty and malnutrition in sub-Saharan Africa.

(11) Dr. Borlaug continues to serve as Chairman of the Council of Advisors of the World Food Prize, an organization he created in 1986 to be the `Nobel Prize for Food and Agriculture' and which presents a $250,000 prize each October at a Ceremony in Des Moines, Iowa, to the Laureate who has made an exceptional achievement similar to Dr. Borlaug's breakthrough 40 years ago. In the almost 20 years of its existence, the World Food Prize has honored Laureates from Bangladesh, India, China, Mexico, Denmark, Sierra Leone, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

(12) Dr. Borlaug has saved more lives than any other person who has ever lived, and likely has saved more lives in the Islamic world than any other human being in history.

(13) Due to a lifetime of work that has led to the saving and preservation of an untold amount of lives, Dr. Norman E. Borlaug is deserving of America's highest civilian award: the congressional gold medal.

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