
Norman Borlaug, Saved Millions from Starvation - Dies Aged 95 - rfreytag
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/14/business/energy-environment/14borlaug.html?_r=2&hp
======
Tangurena
I'd put 2 other names ahead of his:

Stanislov Petrov - who didn't intentionally decide to not start WW3, he just
decided that if it were going to happen, the Americans would have started it
differently. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislav_Petrov>

Fritz Haber - Looking to make money, he came up with a way to make fertilizer
from the nitrogen in the air. This is now the process that underlies about
half of the agricultural fertilizer production. If this hadn't been invented,
the upper limit of human population would be a lot lower than it is now - we'd
have got to about 3 billion people before we reached the point where we
couldn't feed any more people.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fritz_Haber>

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haber_process>

~~~
diN0bot
re: Haber: increasing the limit is both a good and bad thing. maybe it
provides more people to tackle the problem of the limit, and maybe it makes
the problem of the limit even more tragic.

------
asdlfj2sd33
Here's something that bothers me.

The super strains of wheat came from crossing a wide variety of diverse wheat
species, just one example the sturdy stalk came from a Japanese dwarf variety.

But now the further refinement of the vast majority of these original
varieties has stopped. If they still exists, it's only as a curiosity or as
stored seed in vaults.

The new super strains, were bred by moving them up and down the globe to get
more harvests each year. This made them able to grow almost anywhere. That's
fantastic. But why did we stop there? Why not keep going and now refine them
to the location?

Near the equator days are the same length year round and it's hot and humid.
Near the poles in summer you can have almost continuous light. If we have one
variety that can give high yields in both extremes, imagine how yield could be
increased if we refined that variety and adapted it to the extremes?

Why isn't there a massive international effort constantly developing new
better, higher yielding and more disease resistant verities?

It would be difficult to make private investment in this profitable. It takes
a lot of time, a good bit of effort, and improvements are incremental. It's
difficult to make that profitable, especially when you can invest in
fertilizer instead.

~~~
rms
I'm sure there is room for incremental improvement, but we've certainly
reached the point of diminishing returns.

I briefly searched and can't find sources, but I believe the wheat of 1900
used around 12% of its energy to make food and the rest to sustain its own
structure. Now it's something like 90% of the energy the wheat receives goes
towards making food.

~~~
rfreytag
Good points but you could still engineer the plants to: grow in saline
conditions (I think that is being pursued), over wider range, to resist
drought or flood better, defeat pests and blights (rust was mentioned in the
article), and come back from being downed by weather. The goal being to more
frequently achieve maximal yield by increasing the range and durability of the
crop.

The last bit would be to eliminate the need to sow the crop by having wheat be
a perennial. That would greatly reduce the energy input to the crop.

Plenty more to do.

------
crpatino
Love to be the contrarian... this guy was probably good hearted, but he did
not "saved millions from starvation". Worst case he may have enabled other
people to curse billions to starvation.

Overall, grain yields may have grown up. However, one must remember that
"demand" in economics terms is not what you want but what you are willing and
able to pay for. The green revolution technologies have impoverished and taken
out of business small farmers but in the developed and subdeveloped world,
reducing food security overall. Sure, they produce more than never... but they
have gone into debt in order to afford the seeds fertilizers, machinery, etc.
Then prices crash due to over production and those who stay in business do
only so because of the subsides of their governments.

On the other hand, the people who controls the comodities market do not sale
affordable food to the poor. They funnel the extra grain yields into the
production of meat and other highly industrialized food products that can be
afforded by the affluent, and the poor continue to scrap a living with
agrarian methods already known in the dark ages.

So, for my part, I'll let the guy rest in peace. I believe he wanted to do
good, and even did some of that... but such a hero? I don't buy it.

------
RiderOfGiraffes
Much discussion already at: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=819926>

Different item - from the BBC - covering the same ground.

~~~
fnid
A bit off _this_ topic, but related. I clicked on that link and then clicked
on the BBC article, because I knew the NYTimes sometimes makes me log in and
the BBC doesn't. I took extra clicks just to avoid the NYTimes and their
register wall.

It seems restricting access to content is not the best bet. There is someone
else out there who will provide the information more conveniently.

Just like there is some software vendor that will provide it cheaper or some
startup that will provide it for free.

~~~
Tangurena
The NY Times has a malware ad in their rotation, so today there is a high
chance of an attempted drive-by-download, which tries to redirect you to
protection-check07 dot com.

~~~
fnid
Another reason I am glad I block ads.

