“Norman Borlaug probably saved more lives than any single person in the history of the world. He probably improved the way more people live than any one in the history of the world.”
—Michael Specter yesterday on NPR (In case you missed it, we covered Norman Borlaug earlier on the blog–KSH)
I caught this one yesterday in the car.
As an agronomist with extensive ag development experience in Latin America, I would agree that Borlaug is right up there with Pasteur (germ theory) in terms of lives saved.
Many of my colleagues on the sustainable and organic end of things absolutely detested him because his hybrids did better with chemical fertilisers. Oh, the horror! It’s why I parted company (a decade ago) from that delusional group of pseudo-agrarians, most of whom live off of government grants, yet wish to confine the rest of the world to some sort of a politically-correct petting zoo, forever frozen in time.
Borlaug made a difference, a huge difference, in the lives of ordinary people around the world … and they never will.