Norman Borlaug
Norman Borlaug
Norman Ernest Borlaug was an American biologist, humanitarian and Nobel laureate who has been called "the father of the Green Revolution", "agriculture's greatest spokesperson" and "The Man Who Saved A Billion Lives". He is one of seven people to have won the Nobel Peace Prize, the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Congressional Gold Medal and was also awarded the Padma Vibhushan, India's second highest civilian honor...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionScientist
Date of Birth25 March 1914
CityCresco, IA
CountryUnited States of America
Plant diseases, drought, desolation, despair were recurrent catastrophes during the ages - and the ancient remedies: supplications to supernatural spirits or gods.
There are no miracles in agricultural production.
Food is the moral right of all who are born into this world.
Without food, man can live at most but a few weeks; without it, all other components of social justice are meaningless.
Even if you could use all the organic material that you have--the animal manures, the human waste, the plant residues--and get them back on the soil, you couldn't feed more than 4 billion people. In addition, if all agriculture were organic, you would have to increase cropland area dramatically, spreading out into marginal areas and cutting down millions of acres of forests.
Almost certainly, however, the first essential component of social justice is adequate food for all mankind.
This is a basic problem, to feed 6.6 billion people. Without fertilizer, forget it. The game is over.
The forgotten world is made up primarily of the developing nations, where most of the people, comprising more than fifty percent of the total world population, live in poverty, with hunger as a constant companion and fear of famine a continual menace.
I am but one member of a vast team made up of many organizations, officials, thousands of scientists, and millions of farmers - mostly small and humble - who for many years have been fighting a quiet, oftentimes losing war on the food production front.
Everything else can wait, agriculture can’t.
I now say that the world has the technology - either available or well advanced in the research pipeline - to feed on a sustainable basis a population of 10 billion people. The more pertinent question today is whether farmers and ranchers will be permitted to use this new technology? While the affluent nations can certainly afford to adopt ultra low-risk positions, and pay more for food produced by the so-called "organic" methods, the one billion chronically undernourished people of the low income, food-deficit nations cannot.
Civilization as it is known today could not have evolved, nor can it survive, without an adequate food supply.
You can't build a peaceful world on empty stomachs and human misery.
Almost certainly, the first essential component of social justice is adequate food for all mankind. Food is the moral right of all who are born into this world. Yet today 50 percent of the world’s population goes hungry. Without food, man can live at most but a few weeks; without it, all other components of social justice are meaningless . . . If you desire peace, cultivate justice, but at the same time cultivate the fields to produce more bread, otherwise there will be no peace.