Norman Borlaug: The Most Underrated Man In History

[Ahab]

Quote:July 30, 2007 issue - It's a trifecta much bigger and rarer than an Oscar, an Emmy and a Tony. Only five people in history have ever won the Nobel Peace Prize, the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Congressional Gold Medal: Martin Luther King Jr., Mother Teresa, Nelson Mandela, Elie Wiesel ... and Norman Borlaug.

Norman who? Few news organizations covered last week's Congressional Gold Medal ceremony for Borlaug, which was presided over by President Bush and the leadership of the House and Senate. An elderly agronomist doesn't make news, even when he is widely credited with saving the lives of 1 billion human beings worldwide, more than one in seven people on the planet.

Borlaug's success in feeding the world testifies to the difference a single person can make. But the obscurity of a man of such surpassing accomplishment is a reminder of our culture's surpassing superficiality. Reading Walter Isaacson's terrific biography of Albert Einstein, I was struck by how famous Einstein was, long before his role in the atom bomb. Great scientists and humanitarians were once heroes and cover boys. No more. For Borlaug, still vital at 93, to win more notice, he would have to make his next trip to Africa in the company of Angelina Jolie.

The consequences of obscuring complex issues like agriculture are serious. Take the huge farm bill now nearing passage, a subject Borlaug knows a thing or two about. Because it seems boring and technical and unrelated to our busy urban lives, we aren't focused on how it relates directly to the environment, immigration, global poverty and the budget deficit, not to mention the highly subsidized high-fructose corn syrup we ingest every day. We can blame the mindless media for failing to keep us better informed about how $95 billion a year is hijacked by a few powerful corporate interests. But we can also blame ourselves. It's all there on the Internet (or in books like Daniel Imhoff's breezy "Food Fight"), if we decide to get interested. But will we? Sometimes it seems the more we've got at our fingertips, the less that sticks in our minds.

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.

Borlaug, who launched the prestigious World Food Prize, has little patience for current agricultural policy in the developed world. "The claims for these subsidies today by the affluent nations are pretty silly," he says. So far, Congress isn't listening. The octopus-like farm bill does little to curb the ridiculous corporate welfare payments to a tiny number of wealthy (and often absentee) "farmers" who get more than $1 million a year each for subsidized commodities that make our children obese. (Did you ever wonder why junk food is cheaper than nutritious food? Because it's taxpayer-funded).

Borlaug scoffs at the mania for organic food, which he proves with calm logic is unsuited to fight global hunger. (Dung, for instance, is an inefficient source of nitrogen.) And while he encourages energy-conscious people to "use all the organic you can, especially on high-end crops like vegetables," he's convinced that paying more for organic is "a lot of nonsense." There's "no evidence the food is any different than that produced by chemical fertilizer."

In 1960 about 60 percent of the world's people experienced some hunger every year. By 2000 that number was 14 percent, a remarkable achievement. But as Borlaug cautioned at the ceremony in his honor, that still leaves 850 million hungry men, women and children. They are waiting for the Norman Borlaugs of the future to make their mark, even if they aren't likely to get famous for it.

I find it ironic that people like Mother Teresa are noticed in society for their supposed humanitarian work, yet Mr. Borlaug isn't. I place him as the most underrated man of the 20th century and on. If anyone were half as contributing as he is, world hunger wouldn't even be an issue. Sadly, the man has been criticised countless times by organizations such as Green Peace for his supposed venture into genetic engineering, thanks to propoganda they believe about genetic engineering being a terrible thing thats going to rape civilization of natural food.

I was going to write a tribute to Mr. Borlaug, but I don't think I could be even slightly qualified to do so, and he isn't dead yet.

[SoulRiser]

That dude officially rocks
Lots more interesting detail here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Borlaug

Quote:Some local governments were forced to close school buildings temporarily to use them for grain storage.

[Guest]

Most underrated man? What about Jethro Tull? He invented the seed drill!

[Ahab]

Kirby Wrote:Most underrated man? What about Jethro Tull? He invented the seed drill!

Eh, the British agricultural revolution was something, but Tull didn't quite save a billion people and future generations while keeping some of the largest countries stable and proving the overpopulation ideas at the time to be stupid.

[Guest]

He's mainly awesome because my fave band is named after him.

[Freak]

1. Mother Teresa is a fucking whore D:<

[Darthmat]

why LF?

[Freak]

I dunno.... go to Calcutta and see what they say about her little Missionaries of Charity. (This is the city where she supposedly did so much goddamn good) and the inhabitants will tell you that her shelters suck. The doctors nurses suck.
Do you have any idea how long it took her retarded shelter to stop reusing needles?
In the little orphanges she set up they kids complain about getting beat (esp. the mentally challenged ones) and they're never being any food and it being so fucking unsanitary.
Oh, don't get me started on the missing millions that seemed to have dissapeared. I mean... her shelters were running and little supplies and the NY bank reported like 50-100 million dollars in charity donations.

http://ffrf.org/fttoday/1996/august96/hakeem.html
The Illusory Vs. The Real Mother Teresa
By Michael Hakeem, Ph.D.

http://www.slate.com/id/2090083
Mommie Dearest
The pope beatifies Mother Teresa, a fanatic, a fundamentalist, and a fraud.
By Christopher Hitchens

http://www.newstatesman.com/200508220019
The squalid truth behind the legacy of Mother Teresa
Donal MacIntyre

http://members.lycos.co.uk/bajuu/
MOTHER TERESA : WHERE ARE HER MILLIONS?
by Walter Wuellenweber

http://www.salon.com/sept97/news/news3.html
Saint to the rich
There was less -- and more -- to Mother Teresa than met the eye.



I knew you wouldn't read those, but I put the titles down so you get my point.

[Ahab]

Like Penn Jillette said, Mother Teresa got off to death. Maybe not, but really, she was overrated. So is the Dalai Lama and other supposedly liberal loving people.

[Guest]

People like the Dalai Lama are overrated but they still rate pretty high.

[Ahab]

Far from the holier than thou attitude people place them as.

[Darthmat]

LittleFreak14 Wrote:I dunno.... go to Calcutta and see what they say about her little Missionaries of Charity. (This is the city where she supposedly did so much goddamn good) and the inhabitants will tell you that her shelters suck. The doctors nurses suck.
Do you have any idea how long it took her retarded shelter to stop reusing needles?
In the little orphanges she set up they kids complain about getting beat (esp. the mentally challenged ones) and they're never being any food and it being so fucking unsanitary.
Oh, don't get me started on the missing millions that seemed to have dissapeared. I mean... her shelters were running and little supplies and the NY bank reported like 50-100 million dollars in charity donations.

http://ffrf.org/fttoday/1996/august96/hakeem.html
The Illusory Vs. The Real Mother Teresa
By Michael Hakeem, Ph.D.

http://www.slate.com/id/2090083
Mommie Dearest
The pope beatifies Mother Teresa, a fanatic, a fundamentalist, and a fraud.
By Christopher Hitchens

http://www.newstatesman.com/200508220019
The squalid truth behind the legacy of Mother Teresa
Donal MacIntyre

http://members.lycos.co.uk/bajuu/
MOTHER TERESA : WHERE ARE HER MILLIONS?
by Walter Wuellenweber

http://www.salon.com/sept97/news/news3.html
Saint to the rich
There was less -- and more -- to Mother Teresa than met the eye.



I knew you wouldn't read those, but I put the titles down so you get my point.

ok, she wasn't the best. but atleast she tried.

[Guest]

No, she didn't try. She didn't give people the best treatment because she believed that suffering is a route to god. I think that can be true but it is still wrong to let them suffer when they don't want to.

Quote:Far from the holier than thou attitude people place them as.

Basically. There are many people just as compassionate as them it's just that they are more in the spotlight.

[Freak]

Damnit, I forgot to add that first part. Thanks Kirby.
....how the fuck could I forogt to head the biggest piece of evidence against her? DAMNIT!

[Darthmat]

wow..i had no diea. damn.

[Freak]

Should've read the articles......