

"The greatest human being who ever lived" has died - kitcar
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/blogs/andrew-steele/the-greatest-human-is-dead/article1293395/
As far as where the title reference comes from - Norman Borlaug on Penn and Teller: BS - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIvNopv9Pa8
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seldo
There's a whole sub-genre of science fiction written in the late 1950s which
took for granted that in the future there would be wars for food and perpetual
famine due to an ongoing population explosion. The green revolution and birth
control are the two simple but world-changing inventions that staved off that
apocalypse, which seemed so inevitable at the time.

~~~
mynameishere
Staved = Pushed back the date.

....

I'm honestly not sure why people are dazzled by this guy. Partly it was...his
specific intention to increase yields, which make him seem like a
humanitarian. The Fordson tractor did more for agriculture (and, much much
much more for the economy and day-to-day existence) than this guy. Is Henry
Ford the greatest human being who ever lived?

~~~
ardit33
Why so negative?

It seems that Europe's population is actually declining, so is japan's, and a
lot of advanced countries.

If they keep feed themselves right now, they should be so even 100 years from
now, given the same condition (unless we have some drastic global climatic
change).

it is the poor countries, whose economies are based in subsistence
agriculture, that are having a huge population increase.

So, the other question is, do you have to bring all these countries up to the
level of western europe/japan/us in order to stop the population boom? if we
have to, then there will certainly not be enough resources for everybody
(especially if everybody has to live like american do)?

I have a good counter example for this. You don't have to be super developed
in order to have a clear stabilization of the population. Even my country's
Albania (which has about 6kUSD gpd), population growth has halted (from 2.2
children per woman in 1990, to 1.7 last year).

So, you don't have to get super developed to have a decline of
'overfertility'. It seems that bringing economies out of rural ones, and into
more mixed (agriculture/services/technology), will help the population not to
increase so much.

It seems that this is a noble goal to achieve for the rest of the world, and
this guy helped on it.

And making crops more durable, and farmers more productive, will make people
move out of villages and go to cities, and redirect economies to towards
services/manufacturing/technologies, where education is more advantage, and
having more kids is very expenvie.

~~~
billswift
The problem is that the declining population is temporary. Every area with
declining population, except perhaps Japan which I don't know enough about to
say, has sub-populations with higher growth. Eventually, those populations are
going to become large enough that the population as a whole will start growing
again, and will continue increasing until it reaches the rate of the high-
growth formerly-sub population. It's just a hiccup. Unless something external
- singularity, war, whatever - intervenes.

~~~
JabavuAdams
Scarcity of resources is also a temporary (but serious) problem.

So, pushing back the date of catastrophe far enough is exactly what's needed.
Conditions are not static. Often buying more time is all that's necessary.

How do you live for ever? Don't die.

~~~
billswift
Currently resources are not scarce except in the economic sense. But a growing
population will eventually surpass ANY POSSIBLE resource base. Robin Hanson's
most recent post on Overcoming Bias
<http://www.overcomingbias.com/2009/09/limits-to-growth.html> discusses this
in some detail.

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petercooper
This guy isn't famous because people who complain about GM food, the
environment (or _whatever_ ) are louder and harder to ignore than scientists
quietly solving those problems. Science and technology have provided most of
the solutions to our most pressing problems, typically quietly, over a long
period of time, and with little fanfare. This noble work will go on even if
"eco-warriors" or anti-GM activists only want to whine and make little impact
except to make people feel bad.

~~~
chez17
Did you care about this guy before he died? Or are you just using his death to
grandstand on some anti-environmentalist rant?

~~~
petercooper
No, I hadn't heard of him - that's sorta my point. World changing scientists
are not, typically, well known. Famous environmentalists are ten a dollar. So,
sure, it's an anti-environmentalist rant because I'm anti-environmentalist but
I consider it a pro-science rant at heart.

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drubio
Unbelievable, I'll take the 'over the top titles' but false economic
statements like: "When his seeds were used widely in 1963, Mexico instantly
went from famine-prone to a wheat-exporter. Their wheat harvest was six times
greater after"

I guess that's why Mexico has been a net wheat IMPORTER since the 70's ,
subsidized and even banned wheat imports to protect the agro industry.
Relevant sources without the sensationalist tones:

[http://docs.google.com/gview?a=v&q=cache%3ApHwA9V6vKXgJ%...](http://docs.google.com/gview?a=v&q=cache%3ApHwA9V6vKXgJ%3Awww.californiawheat.org%2FNews_Info%2FCalifornia%2520Wheat%2520Mexico%2520Fact%2520sheet.pdf+mexico+wheat+import&hl=en&gl=mx&pli=1)

[http://translate.google.com.mx/translate?hl=en&sl=es&...](http://translate.google.com.mx/translate?hl=en&sl=es&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fsubsidiosalcampo.org.mx%2F)

~~~
hughprime
Does any of that contradict the statement: _"When his seeds were used widely
in 1963, Mexico instantly went from famine-prone to a wheat-exporter. Their
wheat harvest was six times greater after"_ ?

The seeds may have been capable of increasing the Mexican wheat crop by a
factor of six, but not capable of making Mexican wheat production price-
competitive with producing it elsewhere and shipping it to Mexico. They may
have been a net importer since the 1970s, but presumably that means they were
in fact a net exporter in the 1960s.

~~~
billswift
In fact, since the 1970s, the almost sole cause of poor crop production has
been political; there have been droughts, but only a small portion of the poor
countries have been affected by them at any given time. The most common causes
have been either the gov't cutting off supplies to "rebels" or politicians
beholden to poor urban masses holding down food prices so much that farmers
can't sell their crops for enough to break even, so they grow only enough for
themselves (or both together, with other stupidities thrown in, like current
Zimbabwe).

------
gcheong
Norman Borlaug on Penn and Teller's Bullshit! program:
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIvNopv9Pa8>

------
b1tr0t
Ad hominem attack completely unexamined by the article's author: """Of his
harshest critics Borlaug stated, "some… 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." """

Logical breakdown: 1) My critics are elitist who have not experienced hunger.
2) Therefore, they are wrong.

Relationship to actual argument: nonexistent.

As a note, I do think Norman Borlaug was a remarkable person. But there are
lots of interesting questions to ask about his work, and it doesn't make
someone an "elitist", or a bad person to ask them. Asking them doesn't mean
they think Norman Borlaug was a bad person either. A few that spring to
mind...

1) How many have died from malnutrition after crop yield booms resulted in
rapidly expanding populations suddenly constrained when the next yield limit
was hit?

2) If education expenditures for the third world matched those given for
improving agriculture and food aid starting in the 1960's, what would the
"third world" look like today? Better? Worse? What if expenditures had been
divvied evenly between the two?

~~~
petercooper
_But there are lots of interesting questions to ask about his work, and it
doesn't make someone an "elitist", or a bad person to ask them._

It didn't say anything to the contrary. Note the phrases _"of his harshest
critics"_ and _"many of them."_ He claimed that many of his _harshest_ critics
were elitists - that does not mean he thought _anyone_ who criticized his
ideas was elitist. I would suggest that he believed his harshest critics to be
those presenting no reasonable basis (from his POV, at least) for their
claims.

------
awt
This is an honest question: How does creating more food prevent these
problems? Won't populations grow enough to consume all available food? Haven't
populations in 3rd world countries exploded since the "green revolution"?

~~~
ghshephard
It turns out that countries with better crop yields per person, require fewer
people, resulting in reduced population.

~~~
ramidarigaz
Citation?

~~~
ghshephard
Citation:
[http://nue.okstate.edu/crop_information/The_Story_of_Wheat.h...](http://nue.okstate.edu/crop_information/The_Story_of_Wheat.htm)

In particular: "Demographers, who had been watching the exponential rise with
alarm, now forecast that the population will peak below ten billion—ten
gigapeople—not long after 2050. Such a low forecast would have been
unthinkable just two decades ago. Already, in developing countries, the number
of children born per woman has fallen from six to three in 50 years. It will
have reached replacement-level fertility (where deaths equal births) by 2035.

This is an extraordinary development, unexpected, undeserved—and apparently
unnatural. Human beings may be the only creatures that have fewer babies when
they are better fed. "

~~~
ramidarigaz
Thanks. I was a bit skeptical, but thats an interesting read.

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req2
This has been covered a few times already.

Here's one:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=819926>

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kingsley_20
If you do believe that his work is worth continuing, I recommend donating to
the Borlaugh foundation. My wife & I just did:
<http://borlaug.tamu.edu/legacy/donors/index.php>

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eru
Compare the treatment by the Economist at
[http://www.economist.com/obituary/displaystory.cfm?story_id=...](http://www.economist.com/obituary/displaystory.cfm?story_id=14446742)

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tybris
Again?

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weegee
here is the bullshit feature Penn and Teller did on him:
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A2cR2-3Y56U>

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thras
Christmas already?

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ecq
voted down for misleading title. i'm still alive.

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skwiddor
instead he's killed us all

700 years ago there were two million people in my country, now 60,000,000+

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riffer
This title made me think Nelson Mandela had passed away

