Father of the Green Revolution dies

On Saturday Norman Borlaug died. Mr. Borlaug was an agronomist who’s development of semi-dwarf, high-yield, disease-resistant wheat varieties are estimated to have saved the lives of at minimum 250 million, and as many as a billion people at risk of starvation. Although his accomplishments have hardly gone unnoticed (Norman is one of five people to have won the Noble Peace Prize, the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Congressional Gold Medal), his later years were marked with criticism by some who believe his methods of pesticides and genetically altered crops create dependency on monoculture crops and environmental degradation in poor countries.

Yet the father of the “Green Revolution” continued to be a dogged advocate for the use of science in agriculture into his 90s. His simple but persuasive argument against organic activists, who warned of the looming elimination of bio-diversity, was if we really want to promote bio-diversity the most important thing is to keep the most bio-diverse regions intact. That is to say, rainforests, the most bio-rich regions on earth, should not be deforested, yet with a growing population and an unchanging amount of farmland simple math tells us the only answer is to increase food production—which has the added convenience of bringing more food and more profits to those in the world who most need it.

However Borlaug’s arguments have done little to change the minds of those who believe the costs of using such technology in crop production outweigh the benefits. Indeed the man who went to Mexico’s desperately poor Yaqui Valley in 1944 to dig in the dirt and toll in a lab and who’s work would by 1950 double Mexico’s wheat production, a phenomenon that spread like wildfire to Pakistan, India and throughout Asia, has become a lightning rod for environmentalists.

To give Borlaug’s critics their due, we do need to be aware how genetic mutations and pesticides can alter an ecosystem, especially when incentive structures develop where agro-businesses can extract a profit from an unsustainable product. But more dangerous is the instinct to draw upon first world values to deal with the developing world’s problems. The growing environmental awareness of Americans and Europeans has created the opportunity for global progress on issues such as climate change and renewable energy—topics that have a profound impact on those in the poorest countries. Yet it is nothing short of a tragedy when such interests are taken as more important than they are. Quite simply, when the choice is as Norman Borlaug faced, between more single strain crops and more starving children dying in the sun, the moral calculus is unequivocally weighted towards the latter.

Norman Borlaugh saved the lives of millions of the world’s most needy. For that he will forever in my mind remain one of the greatest Americans of the 21st century.