When wheat is ripening properly, when the wind is blowing across the field, you can hear the beards of the wheat rubbing together. They sound like the pine needles in a forest. It is a sweet, whispering music that once you hear, you never forget.
Interpretation
This quote describes the unique and unforgettable sounds created by ripening wheat in the wind, likening it to nature's music.
Norman Borlaug's quote emphasizes the beauty and tranquility of nature, specifically focusing on the auditory experience of a wheat field in the wind. By comparing the sound of the wheat to the whispering music of pine needles, he highlights the deep connection humans can have with the natural world, suggesting that such moments of serenity leave a lasting impression on our memories.
In practice
Use this quote in a speech about the importance of nature conservation.
During the past three years spectacular progress has been made in increasing wheat, rice, and maize production in several of the most populous developing countries of southern Asia, where widespread famine appeared inevitable only five years ago
We must recognize the fact that adequate food is only the first requisite for life. For a decent and humane life, we must also provide an opportunity for good education, remunerative employment, comfortable housing, good clothing, and effective and compassionate medical care.
We are 6.6 billion people now. We can only feed 4 billion. I don't see 2 billion volunteers to disappear.
Nevertheless, the number of farmers, small as well as large, who are adopting the new seeds and new technology is increasing very rapidly, and the increase in numbers during the past three years has been phenomenal.
Africa needs roads. Roads bring know-how and fertilizer to farmers and ideas and business for commerce.
This is a basic problem, to feed 6.6 billion people. Without fertilizer, forget it. The game is over.
The sound universe is also spectacular around here. In the evenings there's a cricket orchestra with frogs providing the bass line. In the dead of night the dogs howl about how misunderstood they are. Before dawn the roosters for miles around announce how freaking cool it is to be roosters.
Nature gave us pain as a messaging device to tell us that we are approaching, or that we have exceeded, our limits in some way.
I want us to know our world. If I lived in North Georgia on up through the Appalachians, I would be just as crazy about the mountain laurel as I am about [Texas] bluebonnets.
Gardening is not a rational act.
It is imperative to maintain portions of the wilderness untouched so that a tree will rot where it falls, a waterfall will pour its curve without generating electricity, a trumpeter swan may float on uncontaminated water - and moderns may at least see what their ancestors knew in their nerves and blood.
A river, though, has so many things to say that it is hard to know what it says to each of us.
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