Blue Revolution

Just south of the U.S. border along Mexico's west coast lies a swath of the Sonoran Desert that defies expectation. It was here, almost 50 years ago, that the green revolution was born when agricultural scientist Norman Borlaug bred a bountiful and scrappy form of wheat that was eventually adopted the world over, earning him the Nobel Peace Prize because it staved off famine and dramatically increased harvests. Thanks to sturdier hybrids and water diverted from nearby rivers, wheat and corn have replaced stands of cacti and made portions of this bone-bleaching desert as lush and verdant as the American Midwest. And now the Sonoran is looking even less like a good desert should. It is turning blue. Last October, Stanford University economist Rosamond Naylor spent four hours flying over the southern part of the state of Sonora, which is half desert, half Sierra Madre mountains, in a crop-dusting plane ...