Tim Harford
Tim Harford’s long-running column in the Financial Times, “The Undercover Economist,” reveals the economic ideas behind everyday experiences. His first book, The Undercover Economist, was published in 30 languages and sold…
Join Pushkin+
Gain access to ad-free versions of 20+ podcasts from the Pushkin library along with exclusive bonus episodes and other member benefits.
Comrade Lysenko has seized control of Soviet agriculture with his radical ideas about genetics. He disdains traditional scientists who learn everything from books and nothing from the land, and those who question his methods soon find themselves in trouble with Stalin. Across the world, the abrasive Iowan farmer’s son Norman Borlaug is also annoying experts with his big ideas. Both men are sure they can end starvation, but their approaches couldn’t be more different.
See the show notes at timharford.com
Click here for details on how to preorder Tim’s new book, The Measure of Everything: How Numbers Shape Us.
Pushkin. Hello. I have a new book coming out. It's called The Measure of Everything. How numbers shape us. It's a book about a deceptively simple idea. The fate of our societies has often belonged to those who understand the numbers behind them. It's a story of obsessives and revolutionaries. Medieval merchants who helped invent modern capitalism. Scientists who learned to predict the spread of disease. pioneers who taught machines to think, and dangerous ideologues who twisted data into a tool of control. Because the story of power is the story of data. And that's the story I tell in The Measure of Everything. The book is published on the 25th of March in the UK, Ireland, Australia and much of the rest of the world. If you're in the US or Canada, your publication date is the 8th of June. I'll also be going on a UK book tour from the 22nd of March to the 12th of April, and I would be delighted to meet you at one of the events. You can pre-order the book and get tickets for the tour through the links in the show notes. Thank you for listening, and I do hope you enjoy the book. Pravda has unearthed a new hero of Soviet science. It's 1927. The state newspaper is reporting excitedly from a remote experimental farm in what's now Azerbaijan, where a brilliant young agronomist, the son of a peasant, has, apparently, solved the problem of fertilizing the fields without fertilizers. Big, if true. Who is this ingenious young man from humble origins? This outdoor scientist? This barefoot professor? His name is Trofim Lysenko. Pravda describes him as skinny, with prominent cheekbones, stingy with words and unremarkable in features. A sullen look. They don't believe in bigging up their heroes, do they? This Lysenko gives one the sensation of a toothache. God grant him health, he is of doleful appearance. Doleful or not, Lysenko has, apparently, turned the barren fields of the Transcaucasus green in winter. Again, big if true. Ten years into the Bolshevik Revolution... the Soviet Union teeters constantly on the brink of famine. But specialists in academia don't seem focused on the plight of the peasant. Take the internationally renowned geneticist Nikolai Vavilov, director of the prestigious Lenin All-Union Academy of Agricultural Sciences. He seems to spend all his time swanning off to foreign conferences and adding to his seed collections. the agricultural commissar tells the academics to shape up. Yields must double. Maybe this toothache of a man, this peasant's son Lysenko, has got the answers. Vavilov reads the article in Pravda and sends an assistant to investigate. Lysenko, the assistant reports back, is undoubtedly talented, but also intelligent. uneducated and extremely egotistical. Still, the agricultural commissar clearly likes him. So when Vavilov chairs a conference to launch Stalin's five-year agricultural plan, it feels politically wise to let Lysenko give a talk. The conference slogan is Spread the achievements of science among the masses. Lysenko talks about vernalisation. the idea of chilling seeds of winter varieties before planting them in spring. It's an old idea. There's a literature on it, which Lysenko clearly hasn't read. When asked what he makes of Lysenko's work, one academic replies, a little too honestly, the results obtained by Comrade Lysenko do not represent anything new in principle. They are not a scientific discovery. Lysenko is furious. These sneering, supercilious academics in their ivory towers, what do they know about hard work and hunger? Stalin agrees. He gives a speech pointedly saying that practice is better than theory. In 1933, a British biologist visits the Soviet Union to see his friend Nikolai Vavilov. He also has a conversation with Trofim Lysenko and quickly concludes that Lysenko is blazingly ignorant of the elementary principles of both plant physiology and genetics. He tells Vavilov later, it was like discussing the differential calculus with a man who did not know his 12 times table. Vavilov smiles wearily. Lysenko is an angry species, he tells his British guest. But all progress in the world has been made by angry men. So let him go on working. He does no harm. and may someday do good. Oh, Comrade Vavilov, if only you knew. I'm Tim Harford, and you're listening to Cautionary Tales. Fourteen-year-old Norm Boy Borlaug is coming to the end of his education. Eighth grade is all you need in Iowa farming country in the 1920s. Norm Boy's already been helping out for years, feeding the chickens, hauling the hay, splitting the firewood. At harvest time, stripping the husks off corn until his arms are raw and bleeding. Norm Boy's father looks forward to the day his son can finally stop traipsing the mile and a half to school and back and work on the farm full time. But then, a bombshell. Norm's teacher tells the family that he should go to high school. He's got grit, she says. The nearest high school is in a town 14 miles away, too far to walk every day. Not only will the Borlaugs lose their only son's labour on the farm, they'll have to pay for him to lodge somewhere during the week. They're tempted to say no, but it's awkward. Norm's teacher is also his cousin. Then Grandad weighs in. Education puts power into a man, Norm boy, he says. If you've got a good education, no one can take that from you. OK, the Borlaug sigh. Norm can go to high school. At high school, there's a new teacher, fresh from college. He wants the students to learn about fertiliser. Norm is unimpressed. His dad's never seen the need for fertiliser. Aren't Iowa's soils famously fertile already? But the teacher has them divide a field carefully into plots... and add different amounts of fertiliser to each. At harvest time, Norm is amazed. The best fertilised plot is yielding 50 bushels of corn per acre, twice as much as the unfertilised control plot, twice as much as they get on the Borlaug family farm. Norm draws two lessons. Fertiliser works... And controlled experiments are how you find out what works. The year is 1929. On the other side of the world, Nikolai Vavilov is chairing his big conference. Spread the achievements of science among the masses. Stalin issues an ultimatum. Agricultural research... has to speed up. The academics say they need 10 or 12 years to breed improved varieties of crop. He wants them to do it in four or five years. It's impossible, the scientists say. It takes time to do experiments. You have to grow lots of varieties, see which one are best, crossbreed them, grow them again next year, and so on. There's no shortcut. Or is there? Trofim Lysenko announces that he's produced an improved variety of wheat in just two and a half years. How has he done it so quickly? Lysenko didn't need to bother with any of the tedious experiments that the academic scientists insist on. All he needed was some flowerpots in the corner of a greenhouse. His theory of stages in plant development allowed him to choose which varieties of wheat to cross with each other and predict in advance what results he would get. But his claims of an improved variety rest on one plant in a flowerpot. Wouldn't it be wise to test it in actual fields before rolling it out to the peasants? Of course not, says Lysenko. People are hungry right now. Do we have the right to lose two or three years in preliminary testing at several breeding stations? No, we don't have the right to lose a single year. Lysenko has now been given his own academic journal, the Journal of Vernalization, a word which he's expanded far beyond its original definition. He's now using it to mean just what he chooses it to mean. One analysis of his muddled writing picks out at least seven distinct senses. Lysenko urges peasants to soak their seeds before planting. That's not a new idea, say the academics. It can help, but it can also cause more trouble than it's worth. In a speech in 1935, Lysenko attacks his critics. Comrades, the class enemy whispers into the peasants' ears, don't soak the seeds, it will ruin them. A class enemy is always an enemy, whether he is a scientist or not. A Shout comes from the audience. Bravo, comrade Lysenko! Bravo! It's Stalin. Lysenko suggests another new strategy to improve potato crops in the south of the country. Plant in summer. 500 farms are told to follow Lysenko's advice and fill in a questionnaire about how it goes. They all know that Lysenko is Stalin's protégé. they must feel pressure to report that it went well. Still, Lysenko publishes results from just 50 questionnaires. He says many farms had a successful experience, which fully proves the possibility of doubling yields. This is, of course, ridiculous. Try any different technique in 500 places and and you'll likely have some successes by random chance. You can't then just ignore the failures. But that's what Lysenko did. In his view, the successes proved that success was possible, so the farms that failed must have done something wrong. They must be lazy, or incompetent, or wreckers. On it went. Lysenko announced one big agricultural idea after another, based on confusing theories or inadequate experiments. There'd be headlines in Pravda about what a great success it had been, and there'd be no obvious improvement in the actual availability of food. Lysenko denounced his critics as bourgeois class enemies. Stalin had them dismissed. Imprisoned or shot. Nikolai Vavilov pleaded for an end to the irresponsible name-calling. He even secured a personal meeting with Stalin. It did not go well. So, said Stalin... You are the Vavilov who fiddles with flowers and other botanical nonsense instead of helping agriculture, as is done by academician Lysenko. Vavilov began to suspect that his days were numbered. In 1940, on a field trip to a wheat farm, he was bundled into a car by Stalin's secret police. Portionary Tales will be back after the break. Norman Borlaug's cousin was right. He had grit. Borlaug went on from high school to the University of Minnesota. He earned a PhD in plant pathology and genetics... In 1944, he was working for DuPont when his old supervisor recommended him for a job with the Rockefeller Foundation. They were setting up a new agricultural program in Mexico where crops of wheat were being devastated by a fungal disease called rust. Borlaug's colleagues said he'd be mad to leave DuPont. He had a good salary, great career prospects. Why throw all that away when DuPont Who knew what he'd find in Mexico? But Borlaug liked the idea of helping agriculture. He took the job. What he found in Mexico was 160 acres of tangled scrub and two bulldozers that didn't work. Borlaug hired a village mechanic who cannibalised the parts to create one working bulldozer. He levelled the land. and dug water channels. At harvest time, he roamed the fields of nearby farms, collecting seeds from every different type of wheat he could find, over 8,000. He was shocked by the state of many Mexican farms. The crops were diseased. People were hungry. Borlaug had now acquired two assistants. Freshly graduated from Agricultural College... They turned up for work in smart suits and shiny shoes. Borlaug chuckled. How do you think we're going to plant these seeds? We have no tractor, not even an ox. Borlaug harnessed himself to the plough and began to heave it up and down the field. The graduates protested. Dr Borlaug, we don't do these things. Borlaug said... If we don't do things ourselves, how can we advise anyone? The task of breeding better wheat would take years. They'd have to see which of these seeds grew best, crossbreed them, grow them again next year and so on. There was no shortcut. Or was there? Borlaug had an idea. The Rockefeller Foundation was based in Mexico City, but northwest Mexico had a different climate and growing season. What if he established a second base there? He could fit two growing seasons in one year, and run his experiments twice as fast. His boss said no. The foundation didn't have permission to work in the northwest, and anyway, The agronomy textbooks say you're supposed to develop new crop varieties near to where farmers will grow them. Borlaug knew that. He'd read the textbooks. But why not take a risk? People are hungry right now. The boss relented, but made clear to Borlaug that the Foundation couldn't help. He'd be on his own. In northwest Mexico, Borlaug persuaded a local research facility to let him take over an abandoned research station. The place was a mess. Fields full of weeds, buildings with shattered windows, no sanitation. It would have to do. Borlaug swept dead rats from the floor to make a place to sleep. He made a fire from corn husks and heated a can of beans. At night... Live rats scurried around. He began to hoe the field. After a month of interrogation by the Soviet secret police, Nikolai Vavilov confessed to the slippery crime of being a wrecker. He was sentenced to 20 years' hard labour. His friends in other countries tried to help. Scientists in Britain elected him to membership of the Royal Society, and Winston Churchill, by now a wartime ally, appealed personally to Stalin to set Velazquez free. But Vavilov died in prison from starvation. Trofim Lysenko now had Vavilov's old job as director of the Lenin All-Union Academy of Agricultural Sciences. The big ideas kept coming. Lysenko urged farmers to warm seed before planting it. Hadn't he previously advocated chilling seed before planting it? Perhaps it wasn't wise to ask too many questions. Lysenko had developed ambitions beyond agriculture. He decided that the entire field of genetics was bourgeois. Take the work of Gregor Mendel, the Austrian monk who found that peas inherit traits in predictable patterns. Or Thomas Hunt Morgan, the American biologist who proved that genes were located on chromosomes. Lysenko mocked the idea that there were little pieces of heredity. If he wanted to insult you, he'd call you a Mendelist Morganist. There was even a popular song... Let me sing of the eternal glory of Academician Lysenko. He protects us from being duped by Mendelist Morganists. If Lysenko really wanted to insult you, he'd call you a Weissmanist Mendelist Morganist. The German biologist August Weissman had shown that changes during an organism's lifetime tend not to be passed on to its offspring. Suppose you cut the tail off a mouse, for example. Will the mouse's babies be born without tails? Obviously not. Well, I say obvious, but Weissman actually did this experiment. After five generations, the baby mice were still being born with tails as long as ever. Lysenko deplored Weissmanism. He believed that if he did something that made a plant grow better, chilling the seed or maybe warming it, then the plant would pass on its propensity for stronger growth to the next generation. He said you could shatter the heredity of plants and get them to behave in new ways. You could even turn them into different species, he said. In the body of a wheat plant organism, under the influence of appropriate conditions of life, granules of a rye body are born. Yes, you could turn wheat into rye. You see, Lysenko explained, he'd once heard of rye seeds being found in harvested wheat. You could turn hornbeams into hazelnut trees. You could even turn rabbits … into chickens. After the Second World War, two foreign biologists visited Russia and met Lysenko. Sometimes, recalled one, he appears ignorant of scientific facts and principles. Sometimes he misunderstands them. Sometimes he counters them with bare assertions of his own beliefs. They listened to Lysenko describe his understanding of sexual reproduction as mutual digestion. The egg digests the sperm, and at the same time, the sperm digests the egg. Outside the meeting, the two foreigners looked at each other, put their hands on each other's shoulders, and burst out laughing. This was, however... no laughing matter for actual biologists in the Soviet Union. They were clearly deeply embarrassed, said one foreign guest. But it wasn't clear to them whether Stalin's support for Lysenko in agriculture extended across the whole field of biology. Matters came to a head at a conference in 1948. Lysenko's acolytes gave impassioned speeches... Weissmanist, Mendelist, Morganist genetics is a spawn of bourgeois society. They demanded a complete rout of the Mendelist-Morganists. A few participants were brave enough to point out the obvious. The transformation of animals and plants, observed one, cannot be achieved merely as a result of our wish to Another wanted to know why everyone was attacking Mendel. All he did was make some observations about peas. Then Lysenko gave his presentation. The question is asked, what is the attitude of the Central Committee of the Party? I answer, the Central Committee of the Party has examined my report and approved it. Stalin was doubling down on Lysenko. Historians are still puzzled about why, but the upshot was clear. Biology textbooks were rewritten, institutes dissolved, researchers sacked. Work on genetics would no longer be allowed in the Soviet Union. Buenos dias, senor. Norman Borlaug looked up from his hoeing. You wouldn't guess that Borlaug had a PhD. He looked like a madman, a lone gringo in the boondocks in northwest Mexico, digging an abandoned field. Borlaug saw a man wearing a sombrero, his Sunday best, and dusty work boots. The man introduced himself. I live there, he pointed to a farm across the road. What is it you do here? Why do you work on the Lord's Day? Borlaug explained. He was trying to breed wheat with greater resistance to disease. The foundation that employed him didn't have permission to work in this part of the country, but hunger wouldn't wait. So he was here on his own, working every hour he could. I see, said the man. Would you like to borrow my tractor? Later, as Borlaug drove the tractor, a Chevrolet pulled into the driveway of the old research station. A middle-aged woman got out. Another gringo. You must be the crazy American I've been hearing about. I'm heading to town for groceries. Care to ride along? Cautionary Tales will be back in a moment. Norman Borlaug now had help in northwest Mexico from friendly neighbors, a farmer with a tractor, and a middle-aged widow originally from Connecticut. She invited him over for meals and showers, did his laundry, and made him practice his Spanish. She kept me sane, Borlaug later recalled. I couldn't have survived without her. Still, life was hard. Borlaug was spending half of every year away from his wife and young children who stayed at home in Mexico City. The twice-yearly journey between Mexico City and the Northwest was arduous too. At first, Borlaug tried crossing into the States to drive through Texas, New Mexico and Arizona, but he'd reckoned without U.S. customs. Why was he trying to import a threshing machine and sacks for seed? I'm not importing them, Borlaug protested. They'll be back in Mexico in a couple of days. The bureaucracy was such a hassle, Borlaug never tried it again. That left the route through Mexico, where paved roads didn't always yet exist, or bridges. When it rained, you could only guess if it was safe to ford the river. One time, Borlaug misjudged how quickly the water was rising. The engine stalled. Water was spurting in through cracks around the door. Borlaug could see a road-building camp on the far bank, with machinery that might be able to tow them out. He left his colleague in the pickup and tried to wade across. One foot slipped, and I went tumbling. In that powerful tide, there was no chance of swimming. By pure good fortune, the current dumped Borlaug on the far bank. He persuaded the road builders to drive their machine into the river, where Borlaug's colleague was now clinging desperately to the pickup's roof. He managed to attach the winch. The old Ford looked like some sea creature being yanked from its natural habitat, brown fluids spurted from every pore. Then there were the birds. It's no use growing improved kinds of seed if the birds eat the seed before you can collect it. Borlaug hired young boys to chase the birds away for five pesos a week. Most were shy, but one walked boldly up to him. Mi nombre es Reyes Vega. He had bright eyes, Borlaug thought. What a shame his family needed him to earn pennies chasing birds instead of sending him to school. Breeding better wheat was hit and miss. One variety might resist rust, the fungal disease, but its grain made bad bread. Another might make good bread but fall over in the wind. All you could do was cross-pollinate varieties with different traits you wanted and hope that the genes would shuffle in such a way that one of the cross-breeds combined those traits. The cross-pollination was intricate, painstaking work. Borlaug sat on a stool in the field, carefully slicing into the wheat's floret with a sharp, hooked knife and removing the tiny sacks of pollen one by one with tweezers. What are you doing? Borlaug looked up from his tweezers. It was Reyes Vega, the bird-scaring boy. Borlaug explained in Spanish as best he could. Can I try? If Reyes Vega had asked that question of anyone else with a PhD, he might have been told with an indulgent smile, that it was highly skilled work that needed special training. Borlaug shrugged and said, sure, why not? Reyes-Vega was soon wielding the tools more adeptly than Borlaug himself. Later, Reyes-Vega said, wouldn't it be quicker if you did it like this? The boys showed Borlaug how you could cut open the wheat so all the tiny pollen sacks could be pulled out with a single motion. Borlaug was amazed. He later said, Reyes-Weiger's discovery saved us man-years of effort. By 1951, after six years but 12 growing seasons, Borlaug's work was... was paying off. With the right amount of fertiliser, his new varieties of wheat were doubling, trebling, quadrupling yields of grain. When Borlaug called at one impoverished farm to ask how the harvest had gone, the farmer ran up to him and wrapped him in a bear hug, tears rolling down his cheeks. This year, the man explained, My family have enough to eat. But the work wasn't finished. Little specks of red and orange began to dot the leaves of Borlaug's new wheats. A new strain of rust. He'd have to step up his experiments, do thousands more cross-pollinations, shuffle the genes yet again, and hope. In the Soviet Union in the 1950s, no biologist dared to work openly on genetics. If there was any risk that their research might get them accused of Weissmannism, Mendelism, Morganism, they disguised it in journals of chemistry, physics or maths. Trofim Lysenko might be the country's top authority on biology, but he still didn't grasp basic principles of science. An account of a visit to his experimental farm has him showing off a plot where crops were growing well with a new mix of fertilizer he'd come up with. The visitor asked to see other plots, where the same seeds were being grown with different kinds of fertilizer. Lysenko frowned. There were no such plots. Then the visitor noticed a field where crops were growing poorly. But a sign said the new mix of fertilizer had been applied. Lysenko explained that the worker who applied the fertilizer must have done it wrong. By now, Stalin was no longer around. An academic journal took the risk of publishing an article that criticized Lysenko. The government promptly fired its editors for breaching the rules of etiquette and good order. why were the new leaders still so unwilling to open discussion of ideas in biology? The historian David Juravsky blames cognitive dissonance. It was very hard for them to admit that they'd made a losing bet on the militant ignoramuses. But by the early 1960s, reality was knocking ever more loudly on the door. For three decades, Lysenko had been promising big leaps forward in agricultural productivity. But the Soviet Union was now having to import wheat from America. Even after the discovery of the double helix structure of DNA, Soviet journals of biology still insisted the assertion that there are in an organism cells Some minute particles, genes, responsible for the transmission of hereditary traits. It's pure fantasy. Critical articles began to get past the censors. We do not talk of bourgeois physics or bourgeois chemistry, said one. We follow carefully the work done abroad and use all that is new and interesting. Only in biology... certain people still try persistently to draw a line between Soviet and world science. Lysenko's supporters decried these attempts of the Weissmannist Morganists to disguise their ideas. But at last, the tide turned. In 1964, Soviet leaders eased Lysenko aside He was allowed to keep tinkering on his experimental farm, but no longer able to influence anything. When Norman Borlaug arrived in Mexico in 1944, he was shocked by the poor crops and widespread hunger. Less than 20 years later, Mexico was exporting wheat. It had more than it needed. Borlaug wondered if the varieties he'd developed would grow as well elsewhere in the world, where yields were still stubbornly low. He'd travelled across North Africa and Asia, visiting farms and meeting academic researchers to tell them about his work. Their lack of interest appalled him. Half of humanity was going to bed hungry. But the senior scientists were so ineffectual, many were merely holding down a job, wasting their time on scientific sideshows, chasing academic butterflies. Borlaug came up with a plan, a fellowship scheme. Bring young scientists from around the world to northwest Mexico to see how things should be done. By now there was a brand new research station, where scientists and farmers worked together. The scientists developing new varieties, the farmers giving feedback on how they grew. Borlaug called his international trainees the Wheat Apostles. In charge of their training was the new research station's master technician, a young man called Reyes-Weiger. The wheat apostles spread Borlaug's methods. Global crop yields began to rise. In 1970, Borlaug was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. By some estimates, his work saved a billion people from starvation. Still, that work is controversial. The change in agriculture that Borlaug sparked became known as the Green Revolution. As well as better varieties, it relied on greater use of fertiliser, pesticides and irrigation. That stored up problems for the future. Soil degradation, pollution, Water shortages. Borlaug was unrepentant. Sure, he'd say, these are real problems. They need solutions. Would you rather a billion people had starved? In 1971, an American writer found himself sitting next to Trofim Lysenko at a lunch table. Lysenko, too, was unrepentant and bitter. Vavilov came from a wealthy family. When I was a boy, I walked barefoot in the fields. My knowledge came from working in the fields. Their knowledge came from books and laboratories. Books and laboratories. Imagine. But Lysenko wasn't wrong in his diagnosis of the problem. Borlaug shared it. Sometimes academic researchers really do get too comfortable in their ivory towers, too detached from the real-world problems they should be using their skills to solve. Sometimes smart young people with no formal education really can spot things the academics have missed. Smart young people like Reyes Vega. But when scientists are ineffectual, the problem is not were the basic tools of science. Observe, be curious, measure, compare. Those are tools that anyone can learn to use. In his frustration with scientists, Lysenko cast aside the tools of science. Borlaug took those tools and used them better. Cautionary Tales is written by me, Tim Harford, with Andrew Wright, Alice Fiennes and Ryan Dilley. It's produced by Georgia Mills and Marilyn Rust. The sound design and original music are the work of Pascal Wise. Additional sound design by Carlos San Juan at Brain Audio and Dan Jackson. Ben-Nadaf Hafri edited the scripts. It features the voice talents of Melanie Guttridge, Genevieve Gaunt, Stella Harford, Masaya Munro, Jamal Westman and Rufus Wright. The show also wouldn't have been possible without the work of Jacob Weisberg, Greta Cohn, Eric Sandler, Carrie Brody, Christina Sullivan, Keira Posey and Owen Miller. Cautionary Tales is a production of Pushkin Industries. If you like the show, please remember... to share, rate, and review. It really does make a difference to us. And if you want to hear it ad-free and receive a bonus audio episode, video episode, and members-only newsletter every month, why not join the Cautionary Club? To sign up, head to patreon.com slash cautionary club. That's patreon, p-a-t-r-e-o-n dot com slash cautionary club.
The Host
