A few months later the President told me about a dilemma he faced. Mohammad Ayub Khan, the Prsident of Pakinstan, was about to make a State visit to the United States, and the President was worried that he would ask for weapons, something that Kennedy was not willing to do because it would mean he would have to make a like commitment to India, and that would just lead to an arms race. Kennedy then asked me, "Do you know of something we can offer Mohammad Ayub Khan instead of weapons, which would be so important that he would gladly accept it instead?" I did not know much about Pakistan, and had no idea whether or not there was anything that would be an appropriate substitue. Fortunately, I remebered that I was planning to see Dr. Abdus Salam, Ayub Khan's Science Advisor, at a meeting at MIT a few days later, so i told Prsident Kennedy that I would see if Salam had any ideas that we could use.

When we got together I asked Abdus whether there was anything that President Kennedy could offer the President of Pakistan that would be particularly important to their county. I don't think I told Abdus that this was to be a substitute for a weapons request but I may have. At that time, Pakistan was having difficulties with salinization of much of their agricultural land. Salam said they were losing about million aces of land each year, and it was getting harder and harder to feed the people of Pakistan. In fact the country was not able to feed itself, and the difference had to be made up with purchases and gifts of rice from many other countnes, including the United States. We talked a bit about what might be done to alleviate the problem. It seemed very tough, but possible.

That evening I called President Kennedy and told him what I had learned. I asked for his permission to discuss the problem with Roger Revelle to see what he thought could be done. I called Roger and he was very interested in the challenge. This was Roger's normal reaction to a problem, the tougher it was, the more interesting Roger found it. It was quite acceptable for Presidential Assistants like me to use Air Force transportation, so early the next morning, Salam and I went to Washington to meet with Roger. After a few hours of discussion it was clear that with enough pumping, such as the Pakistanis were already doing on a small scales it should be possible to lower the level of the aquifer, and so stop the salting of the soil. I think we even made some estimates of how many millions of dollars the project would cost, but I can't remember what it was. In any event, it seemed to me that we had lucked out, because the problem that Salam told us about was so serious that if Kennedy proposed that we help with this dilemma, instead of agreeing to Khan's request for arms he might be quite satisfied.

The two presidents had a very satisfactory meeting, and the end result was that Roger Revelle and Abdus Salam started working together to alleviate the "water-logging" in the fertile fields of Pakistani.

Roger's first task was to assemble an expert team who knew about agriculture irrigation problems. The team he got from Harvard included Drs. Harold A. Thomas of the Division of Applied Sciences, Ayers Brinser of the Harvard Forest, and Robert Dorfman of Harvard (who is still there). Contributions were also made by the U.S. Geological Sunvey, especially Thomas Maddock, an engineer. I recall an impresive geologist named James Isaacs of the Scripps Institution. There were also many experts from the Department of Interior's Water Resources Laboratories and Geological Survey, and other leading scientists organizations. While Roger was bringing his group together Abdus went back to Pakistan and assembled a briefing team of Pakistani experts who had the job of transferring all the existing knowledge to Roger's team when it went to Pakistan.

The Harvard team did some modeling of aquifers with computers, so for the first time it was possible to show lath a mathematical model what the effect of different spacings and well sizes would be. It turned out that the present wells were too far apart and too small, and their only effect was close to the well, so that most of the land continued to be water-logged. With this information it was possible to design a tube-well system that had some hope of solving the problem.

While this work was going on, Roger had another idea. He decided to look at the total food problem, instead of just the water problem. It was apparentthat given amount of money using a combination of agricultural improvements, as well as tube-wells, would provide morefood. The agicultural practices in Pakistan were unbelievably primative. The farmers did not use water efficiently, they did not sow seeds well nor plough deep. More than that, the farmers had no access to fertilizers or pesticides, and little thought had been given to the proper seeds for the climate and soil.

We went to Pakistan with a charter to investigate water-log and salinization. It took Roger something less than two days to understand (before anyone else did) that that was not the basic problem. The main problem was thoroughly incompetent Culture. The problem with water was the Irrigation Department which was arrogant, and more interested in cumshaw and in keeping the distributaries free of weeds than in delivering water when be farmers needed it. The ignorant extension workers from the Pakistani Agriculture Deparment were nearly as bad. Deliveries of fertilizer and other necessary supplies often arrived after the crop had wilted, if at all.

These were the conditions that deflected Rioger's attention from the tchnical problems of water use (which would not confront the basic issues) to his visionary million-hectare development schemes. In the end, his great schemes proved too difficult; they were never implemented, and that imcompetent government could never have carried them out. But his diagnosis was sound, and led to the brilliantly successful implementation of the many facetted green revolution in the Punjab. Roger virtually single-handedly revealed and led the way out of the horrible, thought unrecognized, mess that the Pakistani agriculture was in. It was a trumph.

After very considerable study and discussion, Roger and his group decided to use a saturation technique emplying the best agricultural methods that could be made to work at the hands of illiterate farmers. They planned to do this on one million acre plots of land, doing one per year as long as needed. The plan called for providing fertilizers and pesticides, roads to make it possible to move produce to market, tube-wells when necessary, some simple educationso that the farmers would use their water, fertilizer and seeds more efefectively, adn would also learn how to store their grain safely from pests.

I watched this exciting project from time to time, as the team of Revelle and Salam, supported by all the hlelp the two presidents could give, moved into high gear. While the program was starting, President Kennedy was assassinated. I dealt with the shock and grief of the President's death, returned to MIT, and lost track of the program.

The task was much more difficult that it had been in Pakistan because many countries in the area did not communicate with each other, due to a combination of Cold Was animosities and local tribal conflicts. In addition to the difficult water and agricultural problems, the political problems made it almost impossibe to see how to proceed. But, in spite of this, the studies began. One of the the by-producets of the first study was the creation of the the African Acdemy of Science, which provided hope that scientists in the various countries could find a way to work together in spite of the deadly politics.

Before it was possible to complete the prelimnary studies, Roger died, and as far as I know the project came to a halt. Before he died, he and I had had preliminary discussions about bringing together Russian and American Scientists who had expertise on the problem to help the African Academy complete the preliminary review, and I also had positive reaction to this. It would be a wonderful memorial to Roger Revelle if we could find a way to finance such a collaborative study with the hope that it would be as successful as the first venture and perhaps prevent reoccurrences of the present famines and spreading desertification.