Death of a Food Innovator

Last week the world lost one of its greatest innovators, Norman Borlaug. I am sure to most that name is unfamiliar but to billions of people he is an unsung hero. He is the unofficial father of the Green Revolution. The Green Revolution is not the modern day movement to go green but rather a scientific breakthrough in the 1940's. Many of the world's nations including Mexico and India were starving. Their crops were not sturdy and were not producing enough yield to feed their people. Borlaug, a plant pathologist, engineered dwarf wheat that was disease resistant. It was dwarf wheat so that the stalk wouldn't fall over from the weight of the plant. The Rockefeller Foundation commissioned Borlaug to work in Mexico and engineer sturdier wheat. The Revolution began with wheat but then expanded to rice and corn.

Borlaug's work undoubtedly changed the world's agricultural system. However, his work is very controversial. On the one hand he has supporters who thank him for quite literally feeding the world and saving lives. On the other hand he has critics who claim that his innovations led to overpopulation, increased use of pesticides, a shift away from family farms, explosion of monocultures (which lead to the need for pesticides), and the popularization of industrial agriculture.

I am usually a critic of anyone who promotes monocultures and anything that enhances factory farming (both of grains and animals). However, in this case I think Norman Borlaug was a hero. He responded to the naysayers by saying "some of the environmental lobbyists of the Western nations are the salt of the earth, but many of them are elitists. They've never experienced the physical sensation of hunger." The people of Mexico and India were starving and it wasn't really the place or time to experiment with alternative farming methods. They needed food as fast as possible and they needed to become self sufficient. The Green Revolution taught the world to feed themselves. Sometimes, a non-ideal situation calls for non-ideal solutions.
Here is an obituary from the New York Times, that is more like a tribute.