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.
To go fishing is the chance to wash one's soul with pure air, with the rush of the brook, or with the shimmer of sun on blue water. It brings meekness and inspiration from the decency of nature, charity toward tackle-makers, patience toward fish, a mockery of profits and egos, a quieting of hate, a rejoicing that you do not have to decide a darned thing until next week. And it is discipline in the equality of men - for all men are equal before fish.
There are few things that have filled me with such breathless awe as flying in the black of night across oceans and continents and looking out my cockpit window upon the infinite glory of millions of stars.
I think of rivers, of tides. Forests and water gushing out. Rain and lightning. Rocks and shadows. All of these are in me.
All night my heart makes its way however it can over the rough ground of uncertainties, but only until night meets and then is overwhelmed by morning, the light deepening, the wind easing and just waiting, as I too wait (and when have I ever been disappointed?) for redbird to sing
In all my wild mountaineering, I have enjoyed only one avalanche ride; and the start was so sudden, and the end came so soon, I thought but little of the danger that goes with this sort of travel, though one thinks fast at such times.
The birds I heard today, which, fortunately, did not come within the scope of my science, sang as freshly as if it had been the first morning of creation.
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