"We're going to teach you to be rebels. Not with guns and daggers, but with science and technology."

Dr. Norman Borlaug Died

My favorite scientist of all time is Louis Pasteur, who's innovation and studies on immunization and the spread of germs have probably saved millions if not billions since his discoveries. But my second favorite scientist of all time is Norman Borlaug. A man who is directly responsible for saving somewhere between 250 million and 1 billion lives on this planet. Not too shabby. Dr. Borlaug developed semi-dwarf high-yield, disease-resistant wheat varieties notably in Mexico, India, and then Asia and Africa. He was responsible from turning Mexico into a nation that imported wheat in vast quantities, to a nation that was able to be self sufficient and even export wheat to other countries. In the mid-1960s, the Indian subcontinent was experiencing widespread famine and starvation despite the U.S. making emergency shipments of millions of tons of grain, including over one fifth of its total wheat, to the region. Due to Dr. Borlaug's work India and Pakistan went from dire famine, to being wheat self sufficient by 1974...

He also wrote a hypothesis that was supposed to aid in the fight against deforestation, "increasing the productivity of agriculture on the best farmland can help control deforestation by reducing the demand for new farmland." There's some debate as to whether that holds true or not but it is a pretty powerful thought.

Dr. Borlaug was not without his critics, many dislike his cross-breeding of wheat for one thing, many also dislike that he brought large crop farming industry to countries that had previously relied on smaller subsistence farmers. Also that he helped huge US agribusiness companies make unseemly profits off the need of other nations and that his new farming techniques have led to greater irrigation problems and deforestations. I see both sides of the argument, but let me put it this way, the goal for him was to solve a problem, and for the time being he solved the shit out of that problem. That problem was to stem starvation and increase wheat yields in places in the world where people were quite literally starving to death. His cross-breeding and research have led to some of the largest countries in the world being able to have enough food to feed everyone in their country. The man best says it himself:

"Some of the environmental lobbyists of the Western nations are the salt of the earth, but many of them are elitists. They've never experienced the physical sensation of hunger. They do their lobbying from comfortable office suites in Washington or Brussels. If they lived just one month amid the misery of the developing world, as I have for fifty years, they'd be crying out for tractors and fertilizer and irrigation canals and be outraged that fashionable elitists back home were trying to deny them these things".

He also had further concerns for the future, which are well justified: "Most people still fail to comprehend the magnitude and menace of the 'Population Monster' ... If it continues to increase at the estimated present rate of two percent a year, the world population will reach 6.5 billion by the year 2000. Currently, with each second, or tick of the clock, about 2.2 additional people are added to the world population. The rhythm of increase will accelerate to 2.7, 3.3, and 4.0 for each tick of the clock by 1980, 1990, and 2000, respectively, unless man becomes more realistic and preoccupied about this impending doom. The tick-tock of the clock will continually grow louder and more menacing each decade. Where will it all end?"

How many people can honestly say they left the world a much better place? It's not too often you can stop and say, "Look at what he did, without him the world would be an exponentially worse place." He certainly won't get all the press and accords of a Michael Jackson, but he should.