The man who wrestled global hunger to the ground

[SVPete]

The man who wrestled global hunger to the ground
By Jarrett Skorup
https://www.mackinac.org/blog/2024/the-man-who-wrestled-global-hunger-to-the-ground

Called “arguably the greatest American in the 20th century,” Norman Borlaug probably saved more lives during his 95 years than any other person. He is one of just six people to win the Nobel Peace Prize, the Congressional Gold Medal and the Presidential Medal of Freedom. And yet Dr. Borlaug, who died in 2009, is scarcely known in his own country.

Born on a family farm in Iowa in 1914, Borlaug spent most of his life in impoverished nations inventing, improving and teaching the Green Revolution. His idea was simple: Make developing countries self-sufficient in food by teaching them how to use modern agricultural techniques that are simple to implement. Borlaug spent most of his time in Mexico, Pakistan and India, and focused on five areas: seeds, irrigation, fertilizers, pesticides and mechanization. His successes were remarkable.
...
The Green Revolution was almost entirely funded by developing countries and private charities (notably, the Rockefeller and Ford foundations), rather than by the governments of prosperous nations. At the time, the overwhelming view of academic, intellectual and political elites in wealthy countries was that it was already too late.

Biologist Paul Ehrlich’s 1968 bestseller “The Population Bomb” typified this attitude.
...
No good deed goes unpunished, so we shouldn’t be surprised that Borlaug was attacked by proponents of the trendy new faith of radical environmentalism, on the grounds that Green Revolution farming requires pesticide and fertilizer. Gregg Easterbrook quotes Borlaug saying the following in the 1990s:

“(Most Western environmentalists) have never experienced the physical sensation of hunger. They do their lobbying from comfortable office suites in Washington or Brussels. If they lived just one month amid the misery of the developing world, as I have for 50 years, they’d be crying out for tractors and fertilizer and irrigation canals and be outraged that fashionable elitists in wealthy nations were trying to deny them these things.”
...
More than 50 years ago Borlaug wrote, “One of the greatest threats to mankind today is that the world may be choked by an explosively pervading but well-camouflaged bureaucracy.”
...
Permission to reprint this blog post in whole or in part is hereby granted, provided that the author (or authors) and the Mackinac Center for Public Policy are properly cited.