

Father of Green Revolution, Norman Borlaug, Dies - healsdata
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8253005.stm

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rms
It is debatable whether or not Nobel Peace Prize winner Norman Borlaug was the
greatest human being who ever lived. It comes down to definitions. If you
define greatest as saving more human lives than any other one person, he is
indeed the greatest human being who ever lived. He is certainly greater than
your average religious prophet.

As a social movement, Borlaug's Green Revolution saved hundreds of million of
people. It is an astounding achievement in the history of humanity. He
deserves so much more recognition and I hope the media doesn't forget about
him. I only heard of him because of a Penn and Teller TV show. Voters, at this
time you may want to consider voting this story up if you haven't already.

Previous discussion: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47348>

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Borlaug>
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Revolution>

~~~
ckinnan
It was also "Green" in terms of the environment, saving millions of acres of
rain forest and wilderness from agricultural cultivation.

~~~
pmorici
Hardly. Part of the Green revolution was the heavy use of chemical pesticides
which is horrible for the environment.

[http://www.hulu.com/watch/67878/the-future-of-food?c=News-
an...](http://www.hulu.com/watch/67878/the-future-of-food?c=News-and-
Information/Documentary-and-Biography)

~~~
glymor
You can't feed 6 billon people on organic farming.

<http://www.reason.com/blog/show/132479.html>

~~~
dagw
Is anybody arguing that you can? Is anybody championing organic farming
because they think it will feed the world?

~~~
robotrout
Sure they are. Any progressive, liberal, green, whatever, person who corners
you in a coffee shop and laments how evil farmers are for not doing organic
farming. That guy, you know him. He better think it's going to feed the world.
I'd rather believe he's stupid than believe he's genocidal.

~~~
dagw
Maybe the progressive, liberal, green people I've met are more nuanced. Most
realize that organic farming is inherently less efficient (in calories per
acre farmable land) and aren't putting forward as a solution to world hunger.

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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>

~~~
rms
Ah, Petrov very well may win.

As for Haber, his comparable achievements in the science of waging war and of
providing the technology to enable to German war machine makes his
achievements more morally ambiguous. Also, someone else would have invented
his process. Borlaug's achievements were as social as scientific, he got out
in the fields and got the farmers to grow the new higher yielding crops.

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masomenos
Way too early to evaluate the green revolution. It may have just allowed us to
temporarily overshoot the earth's carrying capacity, which wouldn't be much
fun on the ride down.

~~~
fburnaby
If the practices can be sustained, then we've increased the carrying capacity.
To revert to traditional practices could decrease it again. The bigger the
difference between our population size and carrying capacity, the worse that
ride down will be. Of course, how these practices can be made/kept sustainable
is an issue.

~~~
masomenos
I'd say that the sustainability of the practices is _the_ issue. Depleting
groundwater, eroding topsoil, reducing crop genetic diversity, and changing
the climate may all be reducing the long-term carrying capacity.

------
known
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_World> is greatly indebted to Norman
Borlaug.

------
rmason
We should all make as big a differnce in our lives as Norman Borlaug, he is a
large source of inspiration to me.

