Borlaug Dies: The Man Who Fed a Billion

Norman Borlaug died at 95, having saved more lives than any other person in history through his development of high-yield, disease-resistant wheat strains that averted mass famine across Asia and Latin America. His Green Revolution fed over a billion people who would have otherwise starved, earning him the Nobel Peace Prize and the unofficial title "Father of the Green Revolution." Borlaug spent two decades in Mexico starting in 1944, working in fields under the hot sun to breed wheat varieties that produced dramatically higher yields while resisting the stem rust fungus that had devastated harvests for centuries. His semi-dwarf wheat, which put energy into grain rather than tall stalks, doubled and tripled yields across Mexico, then India and Pakistan. When India faced imminent famine in 1965, Borlaug personally supervised the planting of his new varieties, overcoming government bureaucracy, a war between India and Pakistan that held up seed shipments at the port of Bombay, and farmers' skepticism about foreign seeds. The results were immediate and extraordinary: India went from importing millions of tons of grain to self-sufficiency within five years. Pakistan followed the same trajectory. Borlaug received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970, one of only a handful of scientists to receive the honor. Critics argued that the Green Revolution favored large landowners, increased dependence on chemical fertilizers, and reduced crop diversity. Borlaug acknowledged these concerns but maintained that the alternative was mass starvation on a scale the world had never seen. He continued working on African crop yields into his 90s, often lamenting that the continent had been left behind by the revolution he started.