The man who fed the world

You can't build a peaceful world on empty stomachs and human misery. — Dr. Norman Ernest Borlaug (1914-2009)

One man is credited with saving more lives than any other person in world history. Born to Norwegian migrant parents in his grandparent’s Iowa farmhouse, Dr. Norman Ernest Borlaug grew up during the Great Depression and the hunger he witnessed had a profound effect on him.

He devoted his life to ending the human misery of famine in destitute third world countries, often living and working in harsh, squalid conditions in remote regions of Mexico to Africa. He also understood that large numbers of miserable, hungry people contributes to world instability. He didn’t seek fame and fortune for himself, and few people outside of the scientific field have even heard of him.

Through his pioneering scientific work in plant pathology, developing fungus and disease-resistant crops, drought-resistant farming methods, and increasing crop yields, he saved an estimated one billion people from starvation. As the father of the Green Revolution, through this work, world food production doubled between 1960 and 1990, and quadrupled in India and Pakistan. He continued his work on world hunger well into his 90s and won the Nobel Peace Prize, the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Congressional Gold Medal.

Dr. Borlaug died tonight at the age of 95. He embodied kindness, compassion, and a conviction to save the lives of fellow human beings, regardless of their race, creed and religion. No other man in human history can compare to his legacy of service to mankind.

“He made the world a better place,” said close friend Dr. Ed Runge, retired head of Texas A&M University's Department of Soil and Crop Sciences. "A much better place."

The above post was made on September 13, 2009. (The USDA has since removed his bio.)

Addendum:

A biography of his life and his life's work can be found at the Norman Borlaug Foundation with information on his boyhood home in Iowa. Through his scientific research and understanding of plant breeding and food production, he developed strains of subsistence food grains with exponentially higher yields and disease resistance. As the Father of the Green Revolution, his modern agricultural methods meant enough food could be grown to feed the world's people, especially life-saving for third world nations.

He is widely recognized as saving the lives of 1 billion people around the world and for the greatest decline in starvation, malnutrition and hunger in human history.

Nostalgia about small, boutique organic farming and indigenous subsistence farming was sentencing developing countries to mass starvation, civil unrest, and environmental destruction. Modernized agricultural methods and farming equipment utilizing fossil fuels, meant more food could be produced more efficiently using less land and water, less soil erosion, lowered use of harmful chemicals, and pave the way for economic prosperity and higher standards of living for much of the world's poorest. Between 1950 and 1984, world grain production increased 160%; child mortality plummeted in 37 countries; and U.S. farmers have doubled food production since 1970 using 16% less land. Dr. M.S. Swaminathan worked with Borlaug to transform India from a food-deficient nation to being self-sufficient and able to feed its people. Since the 1960s, food production in India and Pakistan have increased faster than the rate of population growth, while preventing an estimated 100 million acres of virgin land from being converted to farming in India, alone.

The extraordinary successes of Borlaug's work were seen, by the 1980s, to be at odds with the globalists at the United Nations, along with environmental activists – who followed the Malthusian religion that believed the poor of the world deserved to starve to save the world from "over population." While Malthusian theories were long ago proven false, they and the work of Rockefeller's Population Council (the same group behind the abortion pill) were embraced by the United Nations and environmental activists and would go into hyper drive. The World Food Bank and the Rockefeller Foundation collaborated on the UN Sustainable Development Goals to reduce "greenhouse gas emissions." They launched the Global Energy Alliance for People and the Planet (GEAPP) at COP26 and major funding for climate change projects. Subsequently, the globalists would no longer support Borlaug's efforts to save the world's poorest people from widespread famine.

"I now say that the world has the technology - either available or well advanced in the research pipeline - to feed a population of 10 billion people. The more pertinent question today is whether farmers and ranchers will be permitted to use this new technology? Extreme environmental elitists seem to be doing everything they can to stop scientific progress in its tracks…. While the affluent nations can certainly afford to adopt elitist and positions, and pay more for food produced by the so-called "natural" methods, the one billion chronically undernourished people of the low-income, food-deficit nations cannot. It is access to new technology that will be the salvation of the poor, and not, as some would have us believe, maintaining them wedded to outdated, low-yielding, and more costly production technology. Most certainly, agricultural scientists and leaders have a moral obligation to warn the political, educational, and religious leaders about the magnitude and seriousness of the arable land, food and population problems that lie ahead, even with breakthroughs in biotechnology. If we fail to do so, we will be negligent in our duty and inadvertently may be contributing to the pending chaos of incalculable millions of deaths by starvation." – Borlaug, March 21, 2000