Norman Borlaug, 1914-2009

[Robert X. Cringely]

I didn't know Norman Borlaug.  I do know Tom Brokaw, who is a fine  
person, a hard worker, and quite without the ego that afflicts many in  
his profession.  If you think Tom Brokaw represents a "moral sewer"  
then I think you are a very poor judge of character.  Either that or  
you simply like to insult people you don't know.


Bob Cringely


At 9:26 AM -0400 9/13/09, R.A. Hettinga wrote:
> 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.