Word: borlaug
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Some of the broader dangers were cited recently by Norman Borlaug, winner of the 1970 Nobel Peace Prize for his development of wheat strains essential for the famed Green Revolution. "You cannot have political stability based on empty stomachs and poverty," he warned. "When I see food lines in developing countries, I know that those governments are under pressure and are in danger of falling." Shortages or high prices of food have already contributed to the toppling of governments in Ethiopia, Niger and Thailand...
...will double in number within 35 years. India's 2.2% annual growth rate will double the country's current population of 596 million by the year 2000. The apparent inability, or unwillingness, of most poor countries to restrain their profligacy has embittered many agricultural economists. Nobel Laureate Borlaug complains that the higher yields of the miracle seeds were meant to give the underdeveloped nations some time to reduce their population growth and begin upgrading their citizens' nutrition. Instead, he says, "Our efforts to buy time have been frittered away because political leaders in developing nations have refused...
Even the limited policy of triage, however, may be delayed until it is too late for millions of famished people. "It is going to take a tremendous disaster from famine before people come to grips with the population problem," warns Norman Borlaug, the prime mover of the Green Revolution. "The stage is set for such a situation right now." Indeed, in parts of Central America, in ten sub-Saharan nations and in some rural areas of India, the 20-year trend of declining death rates and infant mortality is being reversed. Death rates are rising. This, according to Malthus...
...comments of Norman E. Borlaug [Nov. 22], endorsing the use of DDT and other insecticides "until cheap, safe and efficient substitute pesticides are produced and made easily available," made me wonder what would happen if insecticides worked too well. Hindsight might reveal that an insect species, after the last of its kind had been killed, was valuable or even necessary for some ecological function. What would we do then? Breed another similar species...
...Borlaug has a point. The probable hazards of DDT poisoning are a proper matter of concern for a society like the U.S., which is so well fed that many of its people spend much of their time dieting. But peoples on the borderline of starvation are more interested in simply getting enough to eat, and the possibility of getting poisoned by accumulated DDT is the least of their worries...