The Man Who Fed the World summary

Borlaug was highly committed to his goal of eradicating world hunger, but he was no perfectionist.

Although he wanted to constantly improve on what he viewed as potential solutions to the problem, what motivated him was making an immediate difference – putting his ideas to the test – as the threat of hunger waits for no one.

Changing agricultural practices that date back decades – or even centuries – is no easy task.

Since most societies have their roots in agriculture, any massive-scale change requires the backing of the whole society. This sort of change can only be achieved through aggressive grassroots campaigning combined with governmental cooperation.

In the 1940s, the green revolution had its early beginnings in Mexico, where Borlaug was working on high-yielding wheat varieties, funded by the Rockefeller Foundation.

The work was to profoundly change Mexican agriculture. At this time, however, these agricultural changes weren’t yet known as a green revolution, but rather as just a wheat and corn revolution.

You may be wondering why Borlaug won the Nobel Peace Prize, considering that his mission was ending hunger, not war.

The argument the Nobel Prize committee used was that by helping avert hunger and famine, Borlaug simultaneously furthered the cause of world peace, as famine can be an incentive for going to war. It was this logic that made Borlaug a Nobel laureate.

As the Nobel Prize committee stated, Borlaug had the brain of a scientist. But he was also a very practical man who disdained the pride and complacency that he saw in many scientists.

He was constantly worried about new plagues and pests that could wipe out entire crops. He felt strongly that it was the duty of the scientific community to stay one step ahead of such developments, growing alternative crop varieties as contingencies.

Although Borlaug was a man of action, he also knew that he could not do everything by himself. This is why he saw himself primarily as a teacher.

In the field of agricultural science, there has always been a shortage of trained and motivated personnel. Borlaug knew this was a problem he had to address if he truly wanted to effect worldwide change.

When Borlaug started the green revolution, the danger of famine around the world was very real. And though his work helped avert disaster, it was only a temporary victory and not a permanent solution.

Support for agricultural research has decreased sharply since the late 1980s. Because it takes relatively long to turn any research findings into concrete farming solutions, it could be that we’re already running out of time to address the next hunger crisis. This was a major source of concern for Borlaug.

One famously controversial area in agricultural research is the use of biotechnology. But for Borlaug, it was not controversial at all: he was a staunch advocate of using it to feed the world.

Borlaug knew that to feed a growing global population, more food would be needed. Some could come from cultivating crops on previously unused land, such as in Brazil or Russia. These areas can now be exploited for food production, thanks to salt-resistant plants, for example.