Norman Borlaug, 1914-2009

[R.A. Hettinga]

A moral giant died yesterday, the greatest humanitarian of the 20th
century.

A man who directly saved more people (245 million) from starvation
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Borlaug
 > than Lenin and Stalin & Co. (61,911,000), Hitler (20,946,000), Mao
& Co. (77,277,000), and Pol Pot (2,035,000) killed altogether
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democide
 >.

If I were to guess, I'd figure there are at least a billion people
standing on the planet right now who would not be alive if this man
had not lived.

Borlaug delivered not mere bags of surplus gruel shipped by guilty
consciences in the "developed" world. Or, much worse, precious food
stolen from the mouths of other starving people in communist countries
and used as some kind of demented political weapon. Food left to rot
on the docks for the rats to eat.

Borlaug delivered *better* food, developed for local conditions,
*grown* locally, and *sold* locally by farmers in a free market -- a
condition which Borlaug personally demanded for the use of his hybrid
seeds.


Because of Norman Borlaug there is no famine in all the places haunted
by starvation when I was a child: Mexico, India, East Asia, Africa,
even China. The only places where people face wholesale starvation now
are places where democidal politicians deliberately *cause* famine:
North Korea, Burma, Congo, Zimbabwe, Haiti, Cuba and the Sudan. And
the only people who face starvation in the future will be those
subject to democidal thugs and fools.

A moral monument of a man. A inspiration to free human beings
everywhere. A man who now belongs to history.


Cheers,
RAH
Who, quite by accident, saw Borlaug get yet another honorary degree at
a nephew's graduation a while back -- along with Tom Brokaw, who
actually did the commencement address. Talk about going from a moral
sewer to a towering skyscraper in the space of a single dais...


--------

<http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090913/ap_on_re_us/us_obit_borlaug/print>

Nobel Prize winner Norman Borlaug dies at 95

By MATT CURRY and BETSY BLANEY, Associated Press Writers
September 13, 2009

DALLAS  Agricultural scientist Norman Borlaug, the father of the
"green revolution" who won the Nobel Peace Prize for his role in
combating world hunger and saving hundreds of millions of lives, died
Saturday in Texas, a Texas A&M University spokeswoman said. He was 95.

Borlaug died just before 11 p.m. Saturday at his home in Dallas from
complications of cancer, said school spokeswoman Kathleen Phillips.
Phillips said Borlaug's granddaughter told her about his death.
Borlaug was a distinguished professor at the university in College
Station.

The Nobel committee honored Borlaug in 1970 for his contributions to
high-yield crop varieties and bringing other agricultural innovations
to the developing world. Many experts credit the green revolution with
averting global famine during the second half of the 20th century and
saving perhaps 1 billion lives.

Thanks to the green revolution, world food production more than
doubled between 1960 and 1990. In Pakistan and India, two of the
nations that benefited most from the new crop varieties, grain yields
more than quadrupled over the period.

"We would like his life to be a model for making a difference in the
lives of others and to bring about efforts to end human misery for all
mankind," his children said in a statement. "One of his favorite
quotes was, 'Reach for the stars. Although you will never touch them,
if you reach hard enough, you will find that you get a little 'star
dust' on you in the process.'"

Equal parts scientist and humanitarian, the Iowa-born Borlaug realized
improved crop varieties were just part of the answer, and pressed
governments for farmer-friendly economic policies and improved
infrastructure to make markets accessible. A 2006 book about Borlaug
is titled "The Man Who Fed the World."

"He has probably done more and is known by fewer people than anybody
that has done that much," said Dr. Ed Runge, retired head of Texas A&M
University's Department of Soil and Crop Sciences and a close friend
who persuaded Borlaug teach at the school. "He made the world a better
place  a much better place. He had people helping him, but he was the
driving force."

Borlaug began the work that led to his Nobel in Mexico at the end of
World War II. There he used innovative breeding techniques to produce
disease-resistant varieties of wheat that produced much more grain
than traditional strains.

He and others later took those varieties and similarly improved
strains of rice and corn to Asia, the Middle East, South America and
Africa.

"More than any other single person of his age, he has helped to
provide bread for a hungry world," Nobel Peace Prize committee
chairman Aase Lionaes said in presenting the award to Borlaug. "We
have made this choice in the hope that providing bread will also give
the world peace."

During the 1950s and 1960s, public health improvements fueled a
population boom in underdeveloped nations, leading to concerns that
agricultural systems could not keep up with growing food demand.
Borlaug's work often is credited with expanding agriculture at just
the moment such an increase in production was most needed.

"We got this thing going quite rapidly," Borlaug told The Associated
Press in a 2000 interview. "It came as a surprise that something from
a Third World country like Mexico could have such an impact."

His successes in the 1960s came just as books like "The Population
Bomb" were warning readers that mass starvation was inevitable.

"Three or four decades ago, when we were trying to move technology
into India, Pakistan and China, they said nothing could be done to
save these people, that the population had to die off," he said in 2004.

Borlaug often said wheat was only a vehicle for his real interest,
which was to improve people's lives.

"We must recognize the fact that adequate food is only the first
requisite for life," he said in his Nobel acceptance speech. "For a
decent and humane life we must also provide an opportunity for good
education, remunerative employment, comfortable housing, good clothing
and effective and compassionate medical care."

In Mexico, Borlaug was known both for his skill in breeding plants and
for his eagerness to labor in the fields himself, rather than to let
assistants do all the hard work.

He remained active well into his 90s, campaigning for the use of
biotechnology to fight hunger and working on a project to fight
poverty and starvation in Africa by teaching new drought-resistant
farming methods.

"We still have a large number of miserable, hungry people and this
contributes to world instability," Borlaug said in May 2006 at an
Asian Development Bank forum in the Philippines. "Human misery is
explosive, and you better not forget that."

Norman Ernest Borlaug was born March 25, 1914, on a farm near Cresco,
Iowa, and educated through the eighth grade in a one-room schoolhouse.
"I was born out of the soil of Howard County," he said. "It was that
black soil of the Great Depression that led me to a career in
agriculture."

He left home during the Great Depression to study forestry at the
University of Minnesota. While there he earned himself a place in the
university's wrestling hall of fame and met his future wife, whom he
married in 1937. Margaret Borlaug died in 2007 at the age of 95.

After a brief stint with the U.S. Forest Service, Norman Borlaug
returned to the University of Minnesota for a doctoral degree in plant
pathology. He then worked as a microbiologist for DuPont, but soon
left for a job with the Rockefeller Foundation. Between 1944 and 1960,
Borlaug dedicated himself to increasing Mexico's wheat production.

In 1963, Borlaug was named head of the newly formed International
Maize and Wheat Improvement Center, where he trained thousands of
young scientists.
Borlaug retired as head of the center in 1979 and turned to university
teaching, first at Cornell University and then at Texas A&M, which
presented him with an honorary doctorate in December 2007.

"You really felt really very privileged to be with him, and it wasn't
that he was so overpowering, but he was always on, intellectually
always engaged," said Dr. Ed Price, director of A&M's Norman Borlaug
Institute for International Agriculture. "He was always onto the
issues and wanting to engage and wanting your opinions and thoughts."

In 1986, Borlaug established the Des Moines, Iowa-based World Food
Prize, a $250,000 award given each year to a person whose work
improves the world's food supply. He also helped found and served as
president of the Sasakawa Africa Foundation, an organization funded by
Japanese billionaire Ryoichi Sasakawa to introduce the green
revolution to sub-Saharan Africa.

In July 2007, Borlaug received the Congressional Gold Medal, the
highest civilian honor given by Congress.

He is survived by daughter Jeanie Borlaug Laube and her husband Rex;
son William Gibson Borlaug and his wife Barbie; five grandchildren and
six great-grandchildren.

They asked that in lieu of flowers, donations be sent to the Borlaug
International Scholars Fund. It helps students from developing
countries pursue graduate studies or short-term experiential learning
activities at Texas A&M or other land grant universities in the U.S.

Plans for a memorial service to be held at Texas A&M were pending.