Isn't it amazing that someone who has impacted pretty much every person on the planet and significantly reduced the scourge of starvation isn't known to most of us? Here he is, Norman Borlaug:
Born poor in Iowa and turned down at first by the University of Minnesota, Borlaug brought his fingertips and mind together in rural Mexico in the 1940s and 1950s to develop a hybrid called "dwarf wheat" that tripled grain production there. Then, with the help of the Rockefeller Foundation, he brought agronomists from around the world to northwest Mexico to learn his planting and soil conservation techniques. "They [academic and U.S. government critics] said I was nutty to think that it would work in different soil," Borlaug told me last week. The resulting "nuttiness" led to what was arguably the greatest humanitarian accomplishment of the 20th century, the so-called Green Revolution. By 1965 he was dodging artillery shells in the Indo-Pakistan War but still managed to increase Indian output sevenfold.
The experts who said peasants would never change their centuries-old ways were wrong. In the mid-1970s, Nobel in hand, Borlaug brought his approach to Communist China, where he arguably had his greatest success. In only a few years, his ideas—which go far beyond seed varieties—had spread around the world and disproved Malthusian doomsday scenarios like Paul Ehrlich's 1968 best seller "The Population Bomb." Now the Gates Foundation is helping extend his innovations to the one continent where famine remains a serious threat—Africa.
Funny,
I've come to know of Fritz Haber and the Haber process by which ammonia for nitrogen fertilizer is made, but never before of this Norman Borlaug.
The story of Haber tends to get discussed in terms of how unknown the consequences of an invention can be. Haber wanted to make it possible to alleviate world hunger and did, but he also made it possible for Germany to cut its reliance on other nations for food and so be able to go to war in WWI and WWII.
Haber's story is often contrasted with that of Alfred Nobel who invented dynamite for mining and then had things go from there to weapons.
Another story that gets thrown into the mix is than of the manufacture of the nuclear bomb which was intended first and foremost for war. To date nuclear blasts have killed about 200,000 but many credit the invention of the nuclear bomb with saving life mostly because it has become a deterrent to global armed conflict.
The study of the interaction of history and science would probably be very interesting, but it is hardly given a thought by historians or scientists.
Posted by: Alvin | July 28, 2007 at 07:27 AM
What Borlaug started, the "Green Revolution", is not without controvery though.
The revolution created large agri-businesses that patented certain grains and wheats. The new seeds had to be purchased and couldn't be reused from year to year. New strains constantly have to be created to fight off disease that mutates. All that research costs money and increases the costs that small farmers have to pay. It also has caused the death of many strains of indigenous grains. The amount of pesticides has also skyrocketed.
There is two sides to every story - including this one. Here's one quick link I found - http://www.silentkillerfilm.org/green_revolution.html
Also take a look at the Wikipedia entry for it.
I wonder if Borlaug ever invisioned all the changes that came about from his work - good and bad.
Posted by: William Cox | July 28, 2007 at 05:00 PM