Norman Borlaug is dead.
Think back to the hungriest you have ever been in your entire life.
Have you ever heard your stomach growl so loudly that it sounded like a rabid dog growling at its prey? Have you ever felt hunger pangs so debilitating that you literally could not move for fear of exhausting the last reserve of energy in your body? Have you ever been so depressed in knowing that not only can you not afford enough food to stay alive, but that there wasn't enough food within a thousand miles to feed those you care about, even if you were willing to beg for it? Have you ever decided that you may have to steal from or kill the neighbor who waves to you every morning just so you will be able to live to the next sunrise?
At one time, nearly half of the entire world sat upon the brink of those prospects including America. There was a brief point in time when the human race faced the largest loss of life as a whole and as a percentage in known history. The naysayers made these predictions in the 1950's when the world population nearly doubled from the 1 billion it had stayed under since civilization began to 2 billion in the span of a century. They say it now as we approach 7 billion just half a century later. But these predictions were averted and are being averted because of one man who passed away on September 12th and the people who followed in his scientific footsteps - Norman Borlaug.
In 1930, the largest and most fertile piece of farmland in the entire world, the Midwest, had its entire layer of topsoil ripped out due to overfarming and extensive droughts creating massive duststorms that raged as far as New York City and Boston and often reduced visibility during the day to a few feet in a fashion most familiar in photos of the Iraqi desert. Before the experts were even talking about a global food shortage, Normal Borlaug left for Mexico with a team of scientists and spent the next 10 years creating a new wheat germ that could resist disease and fungi.
This genetically engineered wheat germ was an important turning point not just in history but the practical standard of living which we have all become accustomed to. It was, however, not entirely new.
We have been engineering and domesticating our crops for millenia through selective breeding and grafting, which allowed us to grow from several million tribal wanderers to 2 billion farmers, factory workers, architects, grocery store owners, train engineers, secretaries, soldiers, statesmen, and yes, even lawyers.
Norman Borlaug's pioneering work saved untold millions of lives in Mexico and likely prevented further political unrest there. Most would be satisfied with this accomplishment and their already significant role in history. However, Borlaug found that as a result of creating 6,000 cross breedings of wheat, that he could also more easily and more quickly create wheat germs that could survive in both colder and warmer areas in the world. Clearly, this new revolution was set to go global.
In 1962, he began sending new strains of wheat to both India and Pakistan, which many experts predicted was on the verge of losing half a million lives to starvation by 1980. Large-scale application of Borlaug's advances finally seemed possible, until war broke out between both countries. Borlaug had to get 500 tons of wheat past Mexican customs, clear a payment from Pakistan with the Mexican bank due to a typo on the check, deal with overfumigation of his stored wheat, and convince 2 countries engaged in all-out war to accept the wheat shipment. Borlaug's efforts were vindicated. Wheat yields nearly tripled by 1970 and by the year 2000, quintupled. By most estimates, this unprecedented increase not only overtook their rise in population but saved one billion lives in the 1960's alone to say nothing of the billions in both India and Pakistan whose lives were saved. At the same time, experts continued to predict the impending mass deaths due to starvation in India.
Norman Borlaug was not done with his so-called Green Revolution. What he and researchers like him did for wheat, they did for rice. Creating new rice cultivars, they managed to introduce its use into Communist China while Beijing and the West traded belligerent barbs of war. China had just lost as much as 20 million of its citizens to starvation due to attempts by the government to exert state control over agriculture and was facing a serious collapse of its ability to grow enough rice and other crops to sustain its population. By the time the first McDonalds opened in China, not only had this been reversed but the production of rice had increased so dramatically that millions of Chinese farmers found themselves unemployed for the first time in thousands of years and moved to the cities for work, which set in motion the great economic transformation we all know China for now.
For these efforts, Norman Borlaug was given the Nobel Prize, not in science but in the field of Peace. It was a message he would spend his life championing, that the first step towards a better world is enough food for the entire world.
He spent the rest of his life doing all he could to make world hunger a thing of the past, this time in areas like South America and Africa. However, when he tried to give away the wheat for free to poorer countries like Zaire, he found the offer refused. Environmentalist groups like Greenpeace, so bent on fighting the spread of genetically engineered crops, had lied, telling many African governments that the grain shipments contained AIDS while untold thousands died of starvation daily. But many countries relented, easing the suffering of many African nations, a goal that Norman worked for by traveling around the world trying to persuade everyone humbly and civilly of one simple point until he passed away at the age of 95 - that the first step towards world peace, social justice, and every lofty goal we talk about is a world that is fed.
This simple and practical point has yet to come true. 16,000 children die every single day of hunger or hunger-related causes. 1 out of every 6 people in the world is hungry, including developed nations like the United States. But things have improved drastically. Genetically modified foods have saved untold billions of lives in hundreds of countries and one acre of farmland now feeds five times the number of people it did in 1950.
This does not mean the fight to end poverty is over but it does mean we have an incredible arsenal of tools, and scientists, to use. But the first step is to remember the great human beings who ensure that your stomach does not growl while you read this and to ensure that their legacy continues on.
Some of you might know who he is but I encourage you to look up his life story and why he's important to pretty much everyone in the world.
Have you ever heard your stomach growl so loudly that it sounded like a rabid dog growling at its prey? Have you ever felt hunger pangs so debilitating that you literally could not move for fear of exhausting the last reserve of energy in your body? Have you ever been so depressed in knowing that not only can you not afford enough food to stay alive, but that there wasn't enough food within a thousand miles to feed those you care about, even if you were willing to beg for it? Have you ever decided that you may have to steal from or kill the neighbor who waves to you every morning just so you will be able to live to the next sunrise?
At one time, nearly half of the entire world sat upon the brink of those prospects including America. There was a brief point in time when the human race faced the largest loss of life as a whole and as a percentage in known history. The naysayers made these predictions in the 1950's when the world population nearly doubled from the 1 billion it had stayed under since civilization began to 2 billion in the span of a century. They say it now as we approach 7 billion just half a century later. But these predictions were averted and are being averted because of one man who passed away on September 12th and the people who followed in his scientific footsteps - Norman Borlaug.
In 1930, the largest and most fertile piece of farmland in the entire world, the Midwest, had its entire layer of topsoil ripped out due to overfarming and extensive droughts creating massive duststorms that raged as far as New York City and Boston and often reduced visibility during the day to a few feet in a fashion most familiar in photos of the Iraqi desert. Before the experts were even talking about a global food shortage, Normal Borlaug left for Mexico with a team of scientists and spent the next 10 years creating a new wheat germ that could resist disease and fungi.
This genetically engineered wheat germ was an important turning point not just in history but the practical standard of living which we have all become accustomed to. It was, however, not entirely new.
We have been engineering and domesticating our crops for millenia through selective breeding and grafting, which allowed us to grow from several million tribal wanderers to 2 billion farmers, factory workers, architects, grocery store owners, train engineers, secretaries, soldiers, statesmen, and yes, even lawyers.
Norman Borlaug's pioneering work saved untold millions of lives in Mexico and likely prevented further political unrest there. Most would be satisfied with this accomplishment and their already significant role in history. However, Borlaug found that as a result of creating 6,000 cross breedings of wheat, that he could also more easily and more quickly create wheat germs that could survive in both colder and warmer areas in the world. Clearly, this new revolution was set to go global.
In 1962, he began sending new strains of wheat to both India and Pakistan, which many experts predicted was on the verge of losing half a million lives to starvation by 1980. Large-scale application of Borlaug's advances finally seemed possible, until war broke out between both countries. Borlaug had to get 500 tons of wheat past Mexican customs, clear a payment from Pakistan with the Mexican bank due to a typo on the check, deal with overfumigation of his stored wheat, and convince 2 countries engaged in all-out war to accept the wheat shipment. Borlaug's efforts were vindicated. Wheat yields nearly tripled by 1970 and by the year 2000, quintupled. By most estimates, this unprecedented increase not only overtook their rise in population but saved one billion lives in the 1960's alone to say nothing of the billions in both India and Pakistan whose lives were saved. At the same time, experts continued to predict the impending mass deaths due to starvation in India.
Norman Borlaug was not done with his so-called Green Revolution. What he and researchers like him did for wheat, they did for rice. Creating new rice cultivars, they managed to introduce its use into Communist China while Beijing and the West traded belligerent barbs of war. China had just lost as much as 20 million of its citizens to starvation due to attempts by the government to exert state control over agriculture and was facing a serious collapse of its ability to grow enough rice and other crops to sustain its population. By the time the first McDonalds opened in China, not only had this been reversed but the production of rice had increased so dramatically that millions of Chinese farmers found themselves unemployed for the first time in thousands of years and moved to the cities for work, which set in motion the great economic transformation we all know China for now.
For these efforts, Norman Borlaug was given the Nobel Prize, not in science but in the field of Peace. It was a message he would spend his life championing, that the first step towards a better world is enough food for the entire world.
He spent the rest of his life doing all he could to make world hunger a thing of the past, this time in areas like South America and Africa. However, when he tried to give away the wheat for free to poorer countries like Zaire, he found the offer refused. Environmentalist groups like Greenpeace, so bent on fighting the spread of genetically engineered crops, had lied, telling many African governments that the grain shipments contained AIDS while untold thousands died of starvation daily. But many countries relented, easing the suffering of many African nations, a goal that Norman worked for by traveling around the world trying to persuade everyone humbly and civilly of one simple point until he passed away at the age of 95 - that the first step towards world peace, social justice, and every lofty goal we talk about is a world that is fed.
This simple and practical point has yet to come true. 16,000 children die every single day of hunger or hunger-related causes. 1 out of every 6 people in the world is hungry, including developed nations like the United States. But things have improved drastically. Genetically modified foods have saved untold billions of lives in hundreds of countries and one acre of farmland now feeds five times the number of people it did in 1950.
This does not mean the fight to end poverty is over but it does mean we have an incredible arsenal of tools, and scientists, to use. But the first step is to remember the great human beings who ensure that your stomach does not growl while you read this and to ensure that their legacy continues on.
Some of you might know who he is but I encourage you to look up his life story and why he's important to pretty much everyone in the world.