Nixon, Hardin & Borlaug on Agriculture and Foreign Aid

1:03:49People in the field of agriculture, virtually all of us, you know, just are fantastic.
1:03:55And I've seen, well, you're on the Monarch of Dune, Michigan State, places like that, Philippines.
1:04:02There are all sorts of countries where you see these people working abroad, and they do a fantastic job.
1:04:09And it's just something that gets
1:04:18Nobody can complain about it very much.
1:04:20Very good.
1:04:24The decision on the hog had not been made by the Monday night, but a decision had been made to the horse during Calvaster.
1:04:53Oh, I want to offer you money and everything, but you are a friend of the hogs, so I took this off my wall.
1:04:59I thought you wouldn't mind getting a picture with that little dog.
1:05:04That's what you see when you go to the University of Arkansas.
1:05:05The hogs are beautiful.
1:05:06And don't ever forget, I've been raising two and a half times more hogs than the next year's.
1:05:08Don't ever forget the price.
1:05:27Oh, I think it is.
1:05:43Well, Mr. President, I'd be very happy to get out of here.
1:05:50If you would like.
1:05:53I will present this to the President on behalf of the National Court of Justice Council.
1:06:01All right.
1:06:02All right.
1:06:03Let's put it out in the hall there.
1:06:07I'll tell you what.
1:06:21to come to that dinner tomorrow and see it.
1:06:27It's a great picture.
1:06:28I've heard of that.
1:06:29Well, we were just saying that this is a whole deal of all of our foreign activities.
1:06:38President.
1:06:39President.
1:06:40President.
1:06:40President.
1:06:41President.
1:06:42President.
1:06:43President.
1:06:44President.
1:06:44President.
1:06:45President.
1:06:46President.
1:06:46President.
1:06:52You don't want to have a picture taken or a lot of pictures taken.
1:06:54We're not going to follow you down.
1:06:54Even though they don't have a jail date, please.
1:06:55I'm pretty interested.
1:06:56The drug name never caught my attention.
1:06:57I don't think they think about anything.
1:06:58The drug is sick.
1:06:58Well, we're not going to follow you down, are we?
1:06:59No, we're not going to follow you down.
1:07:00Well, we're not going to follow you down, are we?
1:07:01No, we're not going to follow you down.
1:07:20Ha ha ha!
1:07:37Oh, yeah.
1:07:38Yeah, I know.
1:07:38That's right.
1:08:10What a good morning.
1:08:14Hmm.
1:08:15What's that?
1:08:16About how the government will help you?
1:08:38I was saying, if I could open up the
1:09:08four other programs.
1:09:10The one that is just a grant of mine to those of us who have traveled greatly to abroad is what we've done in the field of agriculture.
1:09:18You see these dedicated people.
1:09:21And he was very generous in talking to the press.
1:09:25And also when he received the Nobel Prize, he said that he accepted it for all the people working in this field.
1:09:31But here we are in the United States.
1:09:35We are by far the best producer of agriculture in the world.
1:09:39the world.
1:09:40If we, uh, if we, uh, if we, uh, if we, uh, if we, uh, if we, uh, if we, uh, if we, uh,
1:10:05Northeast Brazil, Mexico, and so forth, they just gotta produce more, right?
1:10:10And so, and they can.
1:10:11And also, the interesting thing is, is they produce more than we like us.
1:10:15We believe more.
1:10:16I mean, the whole point is that it doesn't cut your agriculture exports at all, because it's people who live with us.
1:10:23And here we are with the, I noticed, the amount of beef we have on the table now is, you know, it's gone up about 25% in 10 years.
1:10:32I have a feeling, also, Mr. President,
1:10:36I don't see some light.
1:10:39It's very dim, but if one could change an agricultural production, move it, and therefore generate a whole series of changes in the internal economy, say, of a country such as India, they will never for any long period of time solve their whole agricultural or food production problem.
1:11:04But if it can serve to get an industrialized, they do have a lot of natural resources.
1:11:10I think that they, as Japan has so well demonstrated in the last 20 years, can become a very big purchaser of U.S. agricultural produce in 20 years.
1:11:22And we can have peace and
1:11:23Because at the present time, at the present time, they don't have anything to purchase it with.
1:11:27Because they don't produce enough to take it back to Japan.
1:11:31You know, it's a funny thing.
1:11:33We think Japan, as it is, is a tiny little country in terms of land.
1:11:36It has less air oil than California.
1:11:41The other has enormously strong agriculture.
1:11:44And the Japanese insist on having it.
1:11:47Of course, the Japanese, as we all know, are one of the best farmers in the world, or at least were, and we still are.
1:11:52We would rate them out.
1:11:55The Chinese are regular.
1:11:57Taiwan has become, frankly, an industrial society.
1:12:03But my goodness, what they have done, what they have done, what they have done, they are just bringing all the bloody crops right here.
1:12:10But the thing is that the contribution that's been made, the real contribution that's been made has not been in terms of our immense amounts of foreign aid.
1:12:21That's fine, too.
1:12:22We can give them foreign aid.
1:12:25food for peace, you know, help people advance and all the rest.
1:12:30But the more significant contribution is the technical contributions of people who have gone around the world teaching these people, helping them to develop their own agricultural times.
1:12:42And then, as they develop that process,
1:12:45they may learn to develop the same approach to other things.
1:12:48And that means watching what you learn to run a business.
1:12:55And I think that the US has contributed in many different ways to
1:13:01development of these societies.
1:13:03For example, the land grant colleges and universities have tremendous numbers of students from foreign countries that have studied here and gone back.
1:13:13And then with the U.S. assistance program, whether it's through U.S. aid per se or through the university contract, there's been a continuing and
1:13:24I think, Mr. President, there's one thing, and we were mentioning this just as we came in, that if there could be a way found to relieve some of the
1:13:39people for a longer period of time in the same country area where they're working.
1:13:48I'm talking about technically.
1:13:51Our people?
1:13:52Yes.
1:13:53How long?
1:13:53Five years in an area.
1:13:56The agriculture, it's provinces, it's the culture, and some deal with the language.
1:14:03If you work every two years, it's like the State Department.
1:14:07Which is all right there, but you see for a month of this, they do not.
1:14:13But certainly for everyone, I know this from personal experience.
1:14:18And I have the feeling also, sir, that working, I've spent two and a half years in Mexico, but I'm still very proud of America.
1:14:27Sure.
1:14:28I have a lot of ties to the U.S. Navy.
1:14:29Sure.
1:14:30And, of course, in the military department, because for obvious and other reasons, maybe it is an environment to take them to war, but in technical assistance,
1:14:41to become written about, he should know the country, his property, and other taxes.
1:14:49I think that by here, Santa would be the minister who would get a good tale about how there are two...
1:14:56If you talk to Santa about this, Santa, I believe, as I'm sure, since 19... since the day of the Civil War speech, we've talked about it there.
1:15:07And this has been the continuing problem through all the years.
1:15:11We've never been able to get to Congress.
1:15:15Incidentally, I suppose.
1:15:16Do you understand what that is?
1:15:18Yes, I think you do.
1:15:19I had a long time with that.
1:15:21Oh, I should be able to see you.
1:15:22Oh, sure.
1:15:23This is sort of technical.
1:15:24Thank you.
1:15:32On this point, that's where the private foundations are.
1:15:38But they are in Ford.
1:15:40You probably know Dr. Malone, don't you?
1:15:47since I think he was there for his fourth year.
1:15:50They keep them there longer than we do in our aid program.
1:15:53And I think they do a very effective job.
1:15:55Of course, there's one thing that I think that we should point out.
1:16:00Rockefeller and the Ford Foundation keep their people for a longer period of time.
1:16:04But nevertheless, it doesn't matter once again.
1:16:09What's your point?
1:16:10Tell them next year or your successor has been appointed.
1:16:13So the comfort is maybe formality.
1:16:16So nevertheless...
1:16:23Well, I guess the gist of it is that we have a reason to accomplish everything.
1:16:28It must be qualified people, not the other people that point out that we've done too much of this.
1:16:36Well, we've done too much of the case of the man down in Central America, the unforgotten
1:16:48There was a case of a major director who went down there and bought into the ranch, and as soon as the supplies were coming down, it would be faster than anything else.
1:17:00Yeah, we've got it.
1:17:01Congressman Gross has watched some of these things.
1:17:04There are some horrible examples.
1:17:06But I have to say that most of them, most of them, I'm sure, in one area, it seems to me that the drama that is free of this is in the agriculture area.
1:17:14The guys that I have seen, the men that I have seen,
1:17:17that have worked, you know.
1:17:18I've seen them from all these universities, Michigan State, Ohio State, Purdue, et cetera.
1:17:23You see, what usually happens is that a country, someone, and this is a good idea, is a big university will adopt one particular country.
1:17:31I don't lose any jewelry.
1:17:32I think it's, I don't know, Wyoming?
1:17:37That's right.
1:17:37All right.
1:17:38What you find is you do really find terrific people there.
1:17:41Those people are there.
1:17:42You know, they're really dedicated.
1:17:44The kind of people that are bad that you'll find in these programs, frankly, some of the appointees that we make, the appointments that we make, that are just there, you know, they have a little part, a little broad, and they can be anything.
1:17:59They can even be in the Peace Corps.
1:18:02and other things, but what I mean is if you get a fellow who is really, like I said before, a scientist, or a doctor, or somebody that's a real professional, he wants to go there and do a job, and that's the kind of people we ought to really zero in on, rather than these professionals who go, I mean, not professionals in the sense of a particular task, but professionals in the sense of just trying to live off the country.
1:18:32We dedicated a lot of money to agriculture and to education in Latin America.
1:18:39It didn't work out well either way.
1:18:42Two out of, two out of, I believe it was two out of seven or two out of five finished grammar school in Latin America.
1:18:48A lot of high school dropouts because they don't,
1:18:52They don't get to high school all too often.
1:18:55We took people from the highlands in some of those countries down to the more fertile areas.
1:19:01We were going to make farmers out of them.
1:19:03We transplanted a lot of people.
1:19:05They didn't say they didn't like the climate.
1:19:08They didn't want to fish.
1:19:10And so, in fact, they went to the highlands again.
1:19:14Well, now, these are mistakes.
1:19:15I think you agree with that.
1:19:17What about the missionaries?
1:19:20We should take a look at what the missionaries have been doing through the years, particularly before this aid program came to full throttle.
1:19:28And how long did those people stay?
1:19:29I'm sure they stayed more than two years.
1:19:31Oh, they stayed a lifetime.
1:19:33Yes, a lifetime or many years, at least.
1:19:35And let me tell you a story, Columbia, a good one.
1:19:39I was down here in Michigan State, and I was set up here at one of the colleges in Medellin, and I was a partner of the University in 1952 and 1953 in Southampton.
1:19:49George LeRoy was involved at that time also.
1:19:52In fact, I was there with him.
1:19:56That program ran for about six, seven years.
1:19:59And then we got off the ground, and they accepted through your account and a few other people.
1:20:04We got a lot of students out there who got doctor's degrees or bachelor's degrees.
1:20:09And then in fact, in 1962, the Columbia's came to see me because my association was out in Nebraska at that point.
1:20:15And one was right in, but this time they wanted to start a bulking tie.
1:20:19And you're familiar with that white program there and all the ones that your staff have done.
1:20:24This was a different situation.
1:20:26We didn't have a critical mass of local and federal people.
1:20:30By the 60s, these young men had matured, they'd gotten older, they had more influence, they were more often.
1:20:35And we had that nudges of people to work with.
1:20:38And that program there now at the National University, it didn't take that.
1:20:41is one of the best in the world.
1:20:43And we've got, there are 40 people there at the University of Nebraska, all the faculty in the league now.
1:20:49And what Mr.
1:20:51Gross is talking about is not going to happen because the local people are so well involved.
1:20:55And they're going to be able to, in a year or two or three, within the same time span, to offer a doctorate degree with their own resources, first time in Latin America.
1:21:05You see, Mr.
1:21:06Gross, I think that one of them, I would agree 100% with you on this.
1:21:10that it's a long, difficult struggle to train a core of scientists and educators in an undeveloped country.
1:21:22Take, for example, Mexico.
1:21:23When I went to Mexico 27 years ago on a hospital drive, there wasn't one qualified agricultural research scientist in the whole republic.
1:21:34It took us 18 years of struggling and training
1:21:38using those hymns wherever we could get them, giving them research experience before they were sent out to the U.S., looking for the best, than after they had worked with us in our experiment stations, working with different crops and different kinds.
1:21:53experience, we would pick the best and they would go out and study with the best degree.
1:21:59Come back, we put them then to helping us train other younger Mexicans.
1:22:05This process took from 1943 until 1962 when the whole responsibility was turned over then to a new institution, National Agricultural Research Institute.
1:22:20of Mexico.
1:22:21This was a new generation of scientists.
1:22:23They are very good scientists.
1:22:26Then the second step was taken to start a graduate school in agricultural sciences.
1:22:34Again, it was painfully small.
1:22:36It has just finished 10 years of operations now.
1:22:39They are awarding a good master of science degree, and they are starting this year to award a doctorate.
1:22:46And you said it was a great award.
1:22:48Yes, it could be.
1:22:49As a matter of fact, one of the, if you might like to know this, one of my best
1:22:57battalion commanders of the Corps of Chicken.
1:23:00I said, you want to call them that?
1:23:01So I made an old food production plant in Pakistan.
1:23:05I was one of the first young Mexican scientists that I had the privilege of working with.
1:23:11And he lived and worked in Pakistan.
1:23:16for four years and then two years in Beirut working with a number of other Arab countries.
1:23:21He's just coming back now within a month to get a full extension program in Mexico.
1:23:29So it takes time to bring all of these pieces together.
1:23:32No easy solution.
1:23:33Doctor, is FAO helping out pretty well on this?
1:23:37FAO tends to help, but again, their mandate is
1:23:43a very complicated one.
1:23:45They operate only in an advisory capacity, and this leads a great deal to be desired in many of the developing countries.
1:23:55I should go back now and point out one thing, especially about from here in the Middle East, North Africa, and for that matter, it was that way recently in Latin America, the first important thing.
1:24:05Most of the people with an education, technical education, have no experience with the soil.
1:24:11They have never been on the land.
1:24:13They don't know farming.
1:24:15And so if this is true in these countries,
1:24:22And then if they go over there, just to illustrate the point, doesn't have an action program where they can walk with these young people and put in experiments, or production, or seed multiplication, because then they are just advising somebody whose old background is in theory, not in application.
1:24:39You can get their advice, though.
1:24:42One of the things that we attempt to do as part of our international research effort now in Mexico, we've had about 200 young people in the meat sciences alone in the last 10 years with us.
1:24:57We give them a real indoctrination in this physical exercise also.
1:25:03who are working with their hands as well as with their brain in all of the different aspects of experimentation to make the agricultural sciences function so that when they go back to their countries, they're in a position to do something, if they will,
1:25:23Of course, we can't ask a question right here.
1:25:25I can see you would agree with this, the list of questions.
1:25:33If we didn't have FAO, we'd have to meet and agree it.
1:25:41But in terms of .
1:25:43.
1:25:43.
1:25:43.
1:25:43.
1:25:44.
1:25:44.
1:25:44.
1:25:44.
1:25:44.
1:25:44.
1:25:44.
1:25:44.
1:25:44. .
1:25:51We are just buying some time.
1:25:58If we can get the governments of the developing nations to commit reasonable allocations of, it's got to be good big sum of that, of their resources towards food.
1:26:11We can hold the line for 20 to 25, maybe 30 years.
1:26:16And if we haven't brought some hard-headed, realistic thinking to bear on the whole question of population growth by then, we'll have a kiosk in the world.
1:26:28Vietnam will be just a distant rock in the bucket.
1:26:33I am of the firm belief that people will not die by starvation.
1:26:42badly, peacefully, and gracefully, when there are millions and hundreds of millions of them being built up, and our own way of life in the USA can't remain isolated.
1:26:56But when this is happening in the rest of the world, we will have troubles in our own lives here, because when you pile up too many people, it's the first thing you'll see, it becomes a trap.
1:27:08And it's like a cancer.
1:27:10How do you find your conversations with foreign people?
1:27:18All the intelligent people do, but they have such a terrible time, don't they?
1:27:25I think that one of the great tragedies that I have seen in this whole field was the Yukon experience.
1:27:33Are you going to come on back then, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the,
1:27:59But the tragedy was that I was there about the time when this happened.
1:28:05I used to see him quite frequently.
1:28:08He's one of those nowadays that I have tremendous respect for.
1:28:11He's a great character.
1:28:14You know he has just had another heart attack.
1:28:18He's being operated on in Cleveland.
1:28:20Oh, he's here now.
1:28:21He's in here.
1:28:23And we should re-advise him.
1:28:24You should give him a call.
1:28:26In Cleveland.
1:28:27Yes, sir.
1:28:27Tell him once you find out what's happening.
1:28:28Yes, sir.
1:28:29Right now.
1:28:30He's still got an open heart surgery.
1:28:32I can walk him out.
1:28:33Well, I was just here about 7, 8.
1:28:35I thought he was probably operating on the day right now.
1:28:40Well, go ahead.
1:28:41Yes, sir.
1:28:43When he had decided he was going to step down, he had his first heart attack.
1:28:47And he wondered, and I sincerely believe, a very open election.
1:28:53This was what he lived for.
1:28:55He told me this.
1:28:56He said, I want to see this happen.
1:28:59Then I stepped aside.
1:29:02And then all of the political campaigns started.
1:29:05And he had to, of course, push this population very hard.
1:29:14And there was an outbreak of smallpox in Karachi that started a very active campaign of vaccination in the school system.
1:29:23And some irresponsible and vicious chemical on the extreme left started saying, this is really sterilizing all of our young daughters here.
1:29:37Of course, he ignored it, but it built up to the use of this and that things went from bad to worse.
1:29:42He wouldn't come out to face any of these issues, I don't think, at all.
1:29:48But actually, this was the champion of trying to slow population growth in that whole vast area of Asia to levels where he could hope to give a meeting standard of living to well-being.
1:30:03You know, India, we're just going to trip now, aren't we?
1:30:06We pour a billion dollars a year from this country, 800 million to go pick them up, and use the tractor.
1:30:12And they pour a lot in, and they make some profits, but as far as I ever can tell, it's just in their booth.
1:30:19Until they start stopping their population growth.
1:30:21China, of course, is facing it.
1:30:23We don't know much about it yet.
1:30:26But we heard about this, this is our nation.
1:30:31They die like flies in the streets.
1:30:34uh, Bengal, wherever you get your East Pakistan army.
1:30:38But in China, it's worse.
1:30:40They've got to stop.
1:30:41They've got to stop.
1:30:42They've got to cut it back.
1:30:43We've got to educate them, John.
1:30:45We've got to toughen it.
1:30:45They've got to beat them already.
1:30:47Well, they don't have enough.
1:30:48They don't have much good land.
1:30:49We've got to.
1:30:50But don't agree.
1:30:51We've got to toughen it.
1:30:52Latin America was just in Caracas two weeks ago.
1:30:55Yeah.
1:30:55Half the people of Venezuela are 25 or younger.
1:30:59We've got the worst situation in Mexico.
1:31:02Mexico, yeah.
1:31:03Well, they are half of the 120.
1:31:08So this is our new president.
1:31:11I say new, speaking now as far as international.
1:31:15Sure, sure.
1:31:15It's because of Liz.
1:31:17He's very vigorous, but he was badly countered on his population.
1:31:20What did he say?
1:31:22In his early part of his campaign, he said, there's no population here.
1:31:27What we need to do is to populate Mexico.
1:31:29These vast areas, of course, they're all desert.
1:31:33Notice.
1:31:34And so he's got himself all done at the end of the branch of this one.
1:31:37The situation is that they have a population growth now close to, right close to 3.9%.
1:31:45That's what it's been for the last decade.
1:31:50There are 50 million now.
1:31:52This means that they have to have about a million jobs a year, a day.
1:32:02This is thick.
1:32:05I want you to be sure that he gets a copy of my population.
1:32:10I'll get it to the message.
1:32:12We had a rather strange message from the population here, so.
1:32:20He drove down to the suspect in his hometown, and he drove in in a long evening in a rapid car late in the evening along the street.
1:32:34Okay, pick him up.
1:32:36Pick him up, and I didn't tell him a bit because he displayed a Mexican driver, a Mexican driver.
1:32:44He's like, this is not before this all happened.
1:32:46No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
1:33:04Well, thank you, sir.
1:33:06Thank you.
1:33:21Sir, are you saying you trust me?
1:33:22I bought a nice, nice blue seat here.
1:33:22We had it.
1:33:23We had it.
1:33:23For, uh, for, uh, thanks to everybody.
1:33:24Now we got a sponsor here.
1:33:24Those men?
1:33:24Uh, uh, yeah.
1:33:25That's, that's, that's really funny.
1:33:25They'll use that picture in Des Moines if there's something wrong with the register.
1:33:27Thanks for that.
1:33:28Well, there's something to do.
1:33:28Well, there's something to do.
1:33:42Well, we'll see you tomorrow, I guess.
1:33:46It's fine to have you here.
1:33:49Congratulations personally.
1:33:53Thank you.

Nixon, Hardin & Borlaug on Agriculture and Foreign Aid

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Also recorded on May 6, 1971

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