1 hectare were planted. The results were promising and the anxieties of the farmers reduced. More modifications were made to the grain in the laboratory to better suit Indian conditions. The new wheat varieties were sown and in 1968 production went to 17 million tonnes, 5 million tonnes more than the last harvest. Just before receiving his Nobel Prize in 1970, Norman Borlaug wrote to Swaminathan: Notable contributions were made by Indian agronomists and geneticists such as Gurdev Khush and Dilbagh Singh Athwal. The Government of India declared India self-sufficient in food production in 1971. India and Swaminathan could now deal with other serious issues of access to food, hunger and nutrition. He was with IARI between 1954 and 1972. Administrator and educator In 1972, Swaminathan was appointed as the Director-General of the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) and a Secretary to the Government of India. In 1979, in a rare move for a scientist, he was made a Principal Secretary, a senior position in the Government of India. The next year he was shifted to the Planning Commission. As Director-General ICAR, he pushed for technical literacy, setting up centres all over India for this. Droughts during this period led him to form groups to watch weather and crop patterns, ultimately with the aim of protecting the poor from malnutrition. His shift to the Planning Commission for two years resulted in the introduction of women and environment with respect to development in India's five year plans for the first time. In 1982, he was made the first Asian Director General of the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) in the Philippines. He was there until 1988. One of the contributions he made during his tenure here was conducting an international conference "Women in Rice Farming Systems". America based Association for Women in Development gave Swaminathan their first award for "outstanding contributions to the integration of women in development" based on this. As Director General, he spread awareness among rice growing families of making value of each part of the rice crop. His leadership at IRRI was instrumental in the first World Food Prize being awarded to him. In 1984 he became the President and Vice-President of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (ICUN) and World Wildlife Fund respectively. In 1987 he was awarded the first World Food Prize. The prize money was used to set up the M.S. Swaminathan