• Norman Borlaug: A great man
    6 replies, posted
Borlaug (March 25, 1914 – September 12, 2009) Was An American agronomist and humanitarian. [IMG]http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/ba/Norman_Borlaug.jpg[/IMG] [quote]At the time of his death Borlaug was one of six people to have ever won the Nobel Peace Prize, the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Congressional Gold Medal. He was also rewarded with Padma Vibhushan, which is Indias second highest civilian honor. Borlaug received his Ph.D. in plant pathology and genetics from the University of Minnesota in 1942. He took up an agricultural research position in Mexico where he developed semi-dwarf, high-yield, disease-resistant wheat varieties. During the mid-20th century, Borlaug led the introduction of these high-yielding varieties combined with modern agricultural production techniques to Mexico, Pakistan, and India. As a result, Mexico became a net exporter of wheat by 1963. Between 1965 and 1970, wheat yields nearly doubled in Pakistan and India, greatly improving the food security in those nations. These collective increases in yield have been labeled the Green Revolution, and [B]Borlaug is often credited with saving over a billion people worldwide from starvation.[/B] He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970 in recognition of his contributions to world peace through increasing food supply. Later in his life, he helped apply these methods of increasing food production to Asia and Africa.[/quote] You can read the rest of the wikipedia entry here: [url]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Borlaug[/url] After reading about Borlaug i just felt like making a thread about him, the things this man did are just amazing, he changed the world. Even after all he did, many still criticized his work saying that crossbreeding plants was unnatural, to which he responded: [quote]"Some of the environmental lobbyists of the Western nations are the salt of the earth, but many of them are elitists. They've 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 fifty years, they'd be crying out for tractors and fertilizer and irrigation canals and be outraged that fashionable elitists back home were trying to deny them these things"[/quote]
he was a bit quite at parties but yeah he was a fun guy
I remember when he died and I was all like :smith:
Norman Borlaug: The Unsung Hero Of Mankind Honestly they should teach kids about people like him. Then the world would be a better place.
How have I never heard of this guy?
[QUOTE=:v:;24945023]How have I never heard of this guy?[/QUOTE] Because the world takes way too many things for granted :smith:
Oh yeah, I remember him from Penn & Teller, hippies trying to deny starving countries food because it isn't "organic", and they even succeded in convincing some countries that the food is bad.
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