Renowned WUR honorary doctor M.S. Swaminathan deceased

Time Magazine named him one of Asia’s twenty most influential people in the twentieth century in 1999. Together with American Norman Borlaugh, he laid the foundation for the “green revolution” through crop breeding. The Green Revolution caused a significant increase in agricultural production in many Asian countries in the sixties and seventies of the last century. But when Borlaugh was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970 for this work, Swaminathan questioned the green revolution’s sustainability. He argued that the excessive use of artificial fertilisers and pesticides threatened the environment and biodiversity. When he was awarded the first World Food Prize in 1987, Swaminathan called for a sustainable “evergreen revolution” to counter the environmental issues caused by intensive agriculture.

Student in Wageningen

In a beautiful tribute, Louise Fresco and Rudy Rabbinge describe in Vork magazine in 2015 how professor M.S. Swaminathan arrived at Ede-Wageningen train station in 1949 as a 24-year-old student to study the genetics of potatoes. He looks around to see if anyone is there to pick him up when a tall man grabs his colossal suitcase. ‘A porter’, the young man thinks, feeling slightly embarrassed because he has just arrived from England and has not yet had an opportunity to exchange his pounds for Dutch guilders. How will he tip the porter? Overcoming his embarrassment, he asks the tall man how he may get to Professor Prakken in Wageningen. The man replies: ‘I am Professor Prakken’. The young man’s embarrassment makes way for bewilderment. In his country of origin, a world-renowned professor picking up his young assistant from the train and even carrying his suitcase is unheard of.

After a year in Wageningen, Swaminathan left for Cambridge in the United Kingdom for his PhD, after which he was offered a post-doc position at the University of Wisconsin, with potato genetics still as his main research topic. Once back in India, his scientific focus shifted to rice and wheat and to increasing the harvest index, the edible part. That is how he met Norman Borlaugh, who was studying wheat. Borlaugh introduced Swaminathan to wheat seed capable of doubling the harvest, eradicating famine in India in record time.

Evergreen Revolution

The Indian professor soon stressed that breeding was only part of the solution to the food issue and that excessive use of water led to salination of the soil, while excessive use of pesticides endangered the environment. He then called for an Evergreen Revolution, which centres on the farming systems approach, which considers the farms within their social, economic, cultural and ecological environment. Swaminathan’s approach was also used and taught in Wageningen.

Swaminathan became the director of the international IRRI research institute and founded the M.S Swaminathan Research Foundation in India. In 1988, he was awarded an honorary doctorate in Wageningen for his excellent work and the significant impact thereof.

In 2014, aged 88, he lectured PhD students and alumni in Wageningen on sustainable agriculture and the conservation of biodiversity. On that occasion, he stated that the production per hectare must be increased in large areas of the world in order to produce sufficient food on scarce farming acreage.