"The greatest human being who ever lived" has died

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/blogs/andrew-steele/the-greatest-human-is-dead/article1293395/

by kitcar • 17 years ago

186 49 17 years ago

As far as where the title reference comes from - Norman Borlaug on Penn and Teller: BS - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIvNopv9Pa8

drubio• 17 years ago

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://translate.google.com.mx/translate?hl=en&sl=es&...

hughprime3• 17 years ago

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.

billswift3• 17 years ago

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).

req2• 17 years ago

This has been covered a few times already.

Here's one:

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

seldo2• 17 years ago

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• 17 years ago

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• 17 years ago

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.

seldo2• 17 years ago

My use of "staved off" was entirely intentional. I'm sure we'll hit apocalypse somehow...

(P.S. "staved" by itself means "crushed inwards" ;-))

kingsley_202• 17 years ago

Are you kidding me? India's green revolution would have never happened without him, and that saved millions of people from almost certain starvation, death and malnutrition.

He wanted to increase yields in order to feed people - saw a global problem problem, figured out a solution, sold it and made it happen - thats why he's awesome.

ecq• 17 years ago

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

gcheong• 17 years ago

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

skwiddor• 17 years ago

instead he's killed us all

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

awt• 17 years ago

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"?

hughprime3• 17 years ago

I think the assumption is that eventually the world's population will stabilize as third-world folks start breeding at bare replacement levels like rich folks do. If we (as a species) can keep producing enough food right up to that point, then we're fine. The alternative is that we hit the point where a massive worldwide famine (like, hundreds of millions of deaths) is required to get things back in balance. I'd rather avoid this if at all possible.

As far as I know, ever since the discovery of agriculture we as a species have never really been at the point (except on local and temporary scales) where the population was limited by available food. Reaching that point would get extremely ugly.

immad• 17 years ago

Why does it have to be a "massive worldwide famine" rather than a general slow starvation that forces an overall balance?

I get why some human issues lead to catastrophe like, global warming, but I never get why all issues will lead to catastrophes rather than gradual equilibrium.

socratees• 17 years ago

That will NEVER happen. We already have enough food to feed 7 billion people over multiple years. The problem we face now is more related to "distribution of food to the right people" rather than production. What if the population explodes? Earth can sustain more human beings than you can imagine. The only thing we need to be careful about is polluting the atmosphere.

webwright• 17 years ago

Really? So groundwater, soil, wild fish populations, etc. All that's going to keep scaling nicely?

http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/progress/ucs-statement.tx...

ghshephard2• 17 years ago

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

ramidarigaz2• 17 years ago

Citation?

petercooper8• 17 years ago

More food leads to better health (up to a limit), leading to lower mortality and increased wealth, which means fewer children born. Note that the countries with the most ready access to food have the lowest local population growth.

Couple this with improving sexual education (as tends to occur in wealthier countries) and you end up with population growth going through the floor, not up.

riffer• 17 years ago

This title made me think Nelson Mandela had passed away

thras• 17 years ago

Christmas already?

eru• 17 years ago

Compare the treatment by the Economist at http://www.economist.com/obituary/displaystory.cfm?story_id=...

b1tr0t• 17 years ago

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?

petercooper8• 17 years ago

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.

sunir• 17 years ago

Easy there. It was an obituary. What argument is there supposed to be here exactly?

petercooper8• 17 years ago

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.

lupin_sansei• 17 years ago

"people were inclined to believe the very worst about anything and everything; they were immune to contrary evidence just as if they'd been medically vaccinated against the force of fact. Furthermore, there seemed to be a bizarre reverse-Cassandra effect operating in the universe: whereas the mythical Cassandra spoke the awful truth and was not believed, these days "experts" spoke awful falsehoods, and they were believed. Repeatedly being wrong actually seemed to be an advantage, conferring some sort of puzzling magic glow upon the speaker."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon-Ehrlich_wager

chez17• 17 years ago

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

petercooper8• 17 years ago

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.

weegee• 17 years ago

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

kingsley_202• 17 years ago

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

tybris• 17 years ago

Again?

"The greatest human being who ever lived" has died

Related Stories