Norman Borlaug, International Hero

Via Reason comes the news that agronomist Norman Borlaug died yesterday at age 95.  Borlaug was a great humanitarian, a Nobel Prize winner whose work to reduce hunger and malnutrition was unparalleled.  And yet many have never heard of this man who developed high-yield agricultural techniques to save a billion people from the ravages of famine.

Just think about it for a moment.  One billion lives saved.

Borlaug’s innovations in the breeding of wheat, rice, and corn enabled countries like Pakistan and India to become agriculturally self-sufficient.  The Los Angeles Times reports:

In 1960, the world produced 692 million tons of grain for 2.2 billion people. By 1992, largely as a result of Borlaug’s pioneering techniques, it was producing 1.9 billion tons for 5.6 billion people — using only 1% more land.

But Borlaug faced stunning challenges in his efforts to address hunger in developing nations, particularly those in Africa.  For decades, full-bellied, misanthropic environmentalists have campaigned against Borlaug’s use of genetic modification, inorganic fertilizers, and controlled irrigation to improve crop productivity.  He responded to the criticism by saying, “It appears that many of the most rabid crop biotech opponents are driven more by a hate of capitalism and globalization than by the actual safety of transgenic plants.”

Environmentalists also condemned his work for allegedly poisoning the water supply, threatening biodiversity, and contributing to overpopulation of the planet.  In the 1980s, buckling under pressure from environmental lobbyists, the International Maize and Wheat Center where Borlaug conducted much of his groundbreaking work lost the support of the World Bank and the Rockefeller and Ford Foundations. Borlaug observed:

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.

Ultimately, Borlaug was able to return to his efforts to bring high-yield farming techniques to several African nations with the assistance of Ryoichi Sasakawa, Japanese fascist turned philanthropist, and former United States president Jimmy Carter.  Today, the fruits of his research can be seen in the prevalence of the high-yield dwarf wheat that helps much of the world’s population live beyond the grip of starvation.

There are still more than 800 million undernourished people in the world.  Norman Borlaug’s legacy can change that, but only if we make it a priority.

Update: Common ground for the left and right?  Far left commenter Eclectic Radical is also honoring Norman Borlaug. (Yes, he insists on throwing a “David Duke:conservatives as misanthropic environmentalists:liberals” analogy into the comments below, but, you know, baby steps.)

September 13, 2009 · Filed Under Environment

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Dreaming of a Green Christmas

Looks like Santa’s dreaming of a green Christmas this year, or so one “author” would have your kids believe. Apparently he’s at his workshop with the elves raiding his stash of last year’s hoarded wrapping paper in preparation for regifting the old toys he’ll be refurbishing just for you.

“They arrived back at the North Pole and Santa had a grand idea,” the book reads. “He leaned in toward Swift [the head elf] and told him his new plan. ‘We will collect all of the old toys, Swift, and make them new again. We will reuse last year’s wrapping paper. And we will harness the great North Pole wind to help power up the toy shop.’”

Hey Santa: thanks, but no thanks. I’ll stick with the slightly more traditional lump of coal in my stocking. Or will that be replaced with vials of ethanol?

I hope the new and improved eco-Santa won’t be too upset with 4-year-old cancer patient Hannah Garman for asking for a ton of Christmas cards this year. Using all that paper to fulfill a dying child’s wish might not fit into his green agenda.

December 23, 2008 · Filed Under Environment, Liberal Absurdity

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