The greatest humanitarian ever, died last weekend

Norman Borlaug, who died on September 12 aged 95, won the 1970 Nobel Peace Prize for his achievement in promoting the use of more productive cereal strains in order to feed the world’s vast population of the starving; his efforts to introduce hybrid cereal varieties into agricultural production in Pakistan, India, Mexico and other developing countries are estimated to have saved about a thousand million people from dying of hunger. Borlaug spent his life on the borders of traditional agriculture and biotechnology and stood at the centre of the greatest and most dramatic success stories in world farming — the so-called “Green Revolution” of the 1960s. Perhaps more than anyone else, he was responsible for the fact that throughout the postwar era, except in sub-Saharan Africa, global food production has expanded faster than the human population, averting the mass starvations that were once widely predicted. But Borlaug’s “Green Revolution” was not “green” in the modern sense. High yields demanded artificial fertiliser, chemical pesticides and new soil technology. As a result of this he was vilified by many in the environmental movement in the securely affluent West, some of whom argued that higher food production sustains more people and thus poses a threat to the natural environment. More...

Norman Borlaug @ wiki What bothers me most is the criticism this man has received from rich naive misanthropic ecotards in the west. They've always argued that saving the population of the developing countries was a bad thing, because it would destroy the environment with all the extra people and scary chemicals. This is just ridiculous, firstly from a humanitarian standpoint. How can any compassionate person argue that letting people starve and die in inevitable wars that follow hunger is a good thing? But even from a rational ecological standpoint feeding the developing world was and is a good idea. If these people were starving, do you really think that they would have preserved their forests? No, they would cut them down for extra agricultural lands. High yielding agriculture puts less pressure on the environment because it concentrates farming to a smaller area. Furthermore, the only way for these countries to develop is by having a stable food supply. Once there is enough food, less people have to farm, and more people move to the city. Development has always led to reductions in fertility. Just look at the west where some countries even have negative population growth. Once the developing countries are sufficiently developed, then they can start worrying about the environment.