Norman Borlaug, 1914-2009

Sarad AV jtrjtrjtr2001 at yahoo.com
Sun Sep 13 10:57:25 PDT 2009


The Times of India also ran a story

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/news/india/Norman-Borlaug-Indias-annadaata
-dies-at-95/articleshow/5006489.cms


--- On Sun, 9/13/09, R.A. Hettinga <rah at shipwright.com> wrote:

> From: R.A. Hettinga <rah at shipwright.com>
> Subject: Norman Borlaug, 1914-2009
> To: "Gold Silver Crypto" <gold-silver-crypto at rayservers.com>,
cypherpunks at al-qaeda.net
> Date: Sunday, September 13, 2009, 6:56 PM
> 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.





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