Norman Borlaug died

Norman Borlaug shuffled off this mortal coil.

The guy was simply one of the greatest men of all time. How many people can claim to have saved a billion lives? It makes Fleming look second rate (and Fleming saved my own life at least twice).

He did it with years of hard grinding test-plot and lab work; I can remember watching my father do the same thing, using a toothpick to ferry pollen from one plant to another. My dad was part of the whole Green Revolution thing, a foot-soldier in it perhaps. He didn't do much of the research, though he did some; mostly he was interested and pretty much dedicated his life to education, to assisting the third world in developing their own capacities. To building the intellectual plumbing necessary to make things possible. Making things possible for other people; that is what he was about; and in my own small way, it is what I have been about these last 20 years or so. I think he probably got it from his mom, a Depression era school-teacher; anyway, I certainly got it from him.

Idiotic Greens love to criticize industrial farming; what they don't understand was that one of Borlaug's issues was to contain farming, in order to protect forests and unblemished wilderness. The more industrial your farming, the less likely you will be to clear-cut and plant unsustainable crops in formerly wilderness areas. Industrial farming has worked out pretty good so far; much as it gets dumped on, and should certainly be kept under a lot of scrutiny, I do remember that dad, like Borlaug, was pretty high on GM. It should not be rejected out of hand.

What dad was working on, before he lost the capability to work on much of anything, was dry-lands agriculture. He was pretty sure that there were going to be serious water issues in the future, and that was pretty prescient, because Global Warming wasn't even on the horizon yet. He thought high tech, chemical intensive, zero tillage was pretty much going to be the way to go in the future, if we were going to keep everybody fed. (Never forget this about the Green Revolution guys: they weren't advocates for industrial farming per se, they were deeply concerned about keeping everybody fed. You have no idea how strongly that thought was on top of their minds.)

Now I am enough of a lefty/progressive/hippie to think that chemicals and food are a bad mix in principle, and to be deeply suspicious of industrialization of our food supply, and every time I hear about 'intensification' I get worried. But we can all learn alot from what Borlaug did: he saved something like up to a billion's people's lives, through hard science, years in the field, and extremely tedious lab & field work. (And, I am very very sure, my dad would want to add, training other people.)

God said: (Matthew 25: 35 For I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in: 36 Naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me.) I think I am pretty much on my dad's line, with what I have done with my life. More on the taking in part than the feeding part; and it looks like my son will probably beat me out on the visiting the sick thing.