South of Cresco, Iowa, you will find a small farmstead with quite a story.
“By the time they came to live in this house, which was 1922, Norm was about eight years old or so and they had just bought the farm a year or two before that. It was 56 acres,” says Tom Spindler, with the Norman Borlaug Heritage Foundation.
Spindler is speaking of young Norman Borlaug. Next to the home you will find the school Norm attended as a boy. Both Norman’s father and grandfather attended the very same school. They ended their formal education without going to high school. The story would be different for Norman.
“They saw in him that he had a spark. I remember Charlotte, his younger sister, said the family always felt even when he was a teenage boy this guy had something in him that was something special,” Spindler says.
The family drove Norman 14 miles into Cresco where he would board for the week, then come home on the weekends to help on the family’s farm. Norman’s agriculture teacher and wrestling coach encouraged him to go to college. His grandfather, Nels, helped make that happen.
“As Norm decided to go to the University of Minnesota, he gave him 11 silver dollars and he said to Norm, ‘Norm boy you take this and pay your tuition for the first quarter. Feed your head now so you can feed your belly later,’ Spindler says.
Norman would go on to feed much more than his own belly. Borlaug helped develop wheat varieties in Mexico, and later in Pakistan, India and other locations that helped feed and save the lives of millions of people. His work led many to call him the father of the green revolution. Today, the farm where Borlaug was raised continues his mission.
“We do lots of educational programming here,” Spindler says. “We host two inspire days. We call them inspire days because Norman Borlaug was a very inspiring person. We target mostly fifth grade, and we have fifth graders from probably a dozen different schools that come.”
Borlaug’s work was recognized by many around the world. Notably, he won the 1970 Nobel Peace Prize and later the Presidential Medal of Freedom among many awards in his lifetime. But as Spindler shares, Borlaug was always a teacher at heart – a mission they carry on today – and a story that shows the impact one farm boy can have on the world.
“Look what he did in his lifetime — from being a farm kid feeding his horses, the cows and the chickens and farming that land with horses and then he is credited with saving hundreds of millions of lives,” he says.
