Dr. Norman Borlaug

Two articles on this little-known pioneer in high-yield farming here and here From the first article in Tech Central Station: bq. Borlaug took that mission to Mexico in the 1940s when he became director of a wheat program. There he developed crops that were able to grow in a wide variety of climates and more quickly. Combined with fertilizer and irrigation, Borlaug's new wheat was the answer to a problem that not many people were thinking about in the years after the Second World War. The world's population was growing quickly and many third world nations faced the prospect of perpetual famine. bq. In 1965, India and Pakistan were two of those nations. The famines were so extreme that the institutional resistance to Borlaug's technology disappeared. The results spoke for themselves. Just three years later Pakistan became self-sufficient in wheat product. Despite a prediction by Paul Ehrlich in 1968's "The Population Bomb" that it was a "fantasy" that India would ever do the same, it managed the feat for all cereals by 1974. In 1967, the average Indian consumed 1,875 calories a day. That same average Indian consumed 2,466 calories a day in 1998 even while the population of India doubled during that period. And one paragraph from the second link - an article in The Atlantic bq. The African continent is the main place where food production has not kept pace with population growth: its potential for a Malthusian catastrophe is great. Borlaug's initial efforts in a few African nations have yielded the same rapid increases in food production as did his initial efforts on the Indian subcontinent in the 1960s. Nevertheless, Western environmental groups have campaigned against introducing high-yield farming techniques to Africa, and have persuaded image-sensitive organizations such as the Ford Foundation and the World Bank to steer clear of Borlaug. Environmental groups are campaigning against an agricultural method that reduces soil loss and dramatically increases yield. Talk about being out of touch with reality...