The Man Who Saved Billion Lives

Who else but Norman Borlaug? - Here:

"Norman Borlaug isn’t a household name by far. Yet, in his lifetime, he was credited to saving over a billion people, in a very literal sense. For this, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970, a frank defeat of the doomsaying Malthusians and ‘Population Bomb’ adherents. Thomas Malthus, a British economist, had predicted in 1798 that exponential population growth would outstrip global food output, which was limited by the efficiency of the land. Now deceased, Norman Borlaug’s legacy lives on in the technology he tirelessly distributed across the globe. This is the legacy of agricultural technology, specifically of genetically modified organisms. Yet, it is amongst the most malignedscientific achievements of the past decades; the ‘Franken-Foods’ have been spurned in favor of a return to the ‘natural’ processes of the ‘organic’ food movement.


In a BBC radio interview, ecofeminist and noted critic of Norman Borlaug’s ‘Green Revolution’ Vandana Shiva remarked- “In the process new health and ecological hazards are being forced on Third World people through dumping of genetically engineered foods and other hazardous products.”
 Prince Charles of the United Kingdom has consistently denounced genetic modification of crops, insisting that to do so is to intrude to the realm of ‘God and God alone’.


Unsurprisingly, the two are substantial supporters of ‘organic’ food. Borlaug’s opinion was summed up during an television appearance prior to his death, where he responded to the position that all food should be processed according to the practices of the ‘organic’ movement: “We are 6.6 billion people now. We can only feed 4 billion. I don’t see 2 billion volunteers to disappear.”.


Indeed, the disappearances should not go unnoticed. While Vandana Shiva may have applauded Zambia’s decision to stop the donations of genetically modified (GM) corn from the United States on the advice that such products were ‘toxic’ (this corn is identical to that consumed by Americans on a daily basis), but the consequences were lethal. Unable to meet with the demands of the population by methods of ‘traditional’ agriculture, there was mass starvation."