ITHACA, N.Y. -- "The whole issue of sustainability is a difficult one, because it's sustainability for how many and at what standard of living? This we should never forget," said Nobel Peace Prize laureate Norman Borlaug, speaking April 29 as part of the closing centennial observance of the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences (CALS) at Cornell University.

Borlaug, whose work to improve wheat yields throughout the developing world launched Asia's green revolution of the 1960s and 1970s, spoke at the Golden Age of Innovation Symposium, which also featured Per Pinstrup-Andersen, the H.E. Babcock Professor of Food, Nutrition and Public Policy and a professor of applied economics at Cornell, and Maxine Singer, former president of the Carnegie Institution in Washington, D.C., and a molecular geneticist during a three-decade research career at the National Institutes of Health. Pinstrup-Andersen was the 2001 recipient of the World Food Prize, a $250,000 award conceived by Borlaug in 1985.

Opening the symposium, Cornell President Jeffrey Lehman noted 80 years of CALS involvement in international agriculture and the college's central importance in Cornell's role as a transnational university. His remarks were punctuated by protests from students opposing Cornell's plans to locate a parking lot on West Campus.

The students left without hearing Borlaug, who has been credited with saving more lives than anyone else in history. The 90-year-old activist prefaced his lecture by recalling his association in Mexico with famed Cornell agronomist Richard Bradfield and successive generations of CALS scientists, saying, "Cornell has played an outstanding role in international agricultural development in helping to alleviate world food problems."

Borlaug pointed out that world cereal production nearly tripled between 1950 and 2000, while the amount of land used to grow those crops increased by only 10 percent. Without advances in technology, he asked, "What would the chances of sustainability have been? How many people would have starved to death? High-yield technology, properly applied, saves land for many other purposes."

One alternative land use that is taking hold in impoverished regions is agroforestry, an estimated $500 million industry that Borlaug said is expected to double in value in the next few years. He also sees the benefits of land-sparing technology reflected in the return of several wildlife species to areas of the United States, including the farming community in Iowa where he grew up.

As for the use of nitrogen fertilizer, Borlaug said, "We need to get some common sense back" and recognize the complexities of feeding a world population that is increasing by 80 million per year. "Most of our privileged people haven't the vaguest concept of what it takes to feed 6.3 billion people," he remarked. He then warned, "There won't be peace and tranquility in this country if nothing is done to relieve the poverty and misery in many other parts of the world."

Pinstrup-Andersen agreed with the need to preserve natural resources by using land better, calling for more rapid technological progress and "precision farming to get more out of each unit of input, whether fertilizer, pesticides or labor." He criticized policymakers for their lack of action, pointing out the huge disparities between the improvements promised in the goals of the World Food Summit and the continually rising numbers of hungry people in western Asia, northern Africa and especially in sub-Saharan Africa.

He also reviewed the priorities he recently helped set as chair of the Science Council of the Consultative Group for International Agricultural Research and provided a list of suggestions for Cornell, such as making patented technologies available for humanitarian purposes, as well as commercialization. Addressing CALS Dean Susan Henry, who moderated the event, he proposed doing more to partner with recent Ph.D. graduates who have returned to help their own countries by sharing funding and increasing opportunities to collaborate in research.

Singer closed the symposium by examining the remarkable collaboration of three famous CALS graduate students -- Marcus Rhoades, George Beadle and Barbara McClintock -- and their mentor, plant geneticist Rollins Emerson. All influenced genetics research in profound and lasting ways, and Beadle and McClintock won separate Nobel Prizes. Singer expressed doubt that such a group could flower in a modern research university and recommended a return to Emerson's insistence on collaboration, sharing and independent research accountability.