Norman Borlaug (1914-2009)

[WMS]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Borlaug

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/14/business/energy-environment/14borlaug.html?_r=1&adxnnl=1&ref=obituaries&adxnnlx=1253117290-y526nMSJX6d203s0s7k+aw

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8253005.stm

And, for the most edgy part: http://tierneylab.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/05/19/greens-and-hunger/?pagemode=print

I did a search and found no threads mentioning his passing, which I find astounding (and more than a little depressing). If there is one somewhere, never mind this part.

I admit I did not know who he was or why he was important until far too recently (thank you, Hunger Site, for letting me know), but I think most of us know what he did: the Green Revolution.

Truly one of the greatest individuals in human history, he may have saved more lives than anyone. If you'll check out the edgy link, you will see just what type of person opposed him. And I fully agree with Borlaug's comments in that piece, and that reminds of me of something nasty the EU did to IIRC Namibia - they refused to send food aid to assist with a drought unless Namibia returned all the GM food that the U.S. had supplied them for the same drought. A bit of a soapbox point here of mine, but it's nice that someone of the stature of Borlaug would have agreed with me.

Go on, read and find out about him. My eyes were opened, to be sure...

*Not a guarantee I'm sticking around, but since I saw no one had mentioned this, I decided someone had to.

[WMS]

Hmm, oh yeah...

Ah, exhausting lands, growing poor crops (poor from a nutrition viewpoint), spreading a Western model of agriculture...
Well...
He may have contributed to save many lives in the short term and contributed to waste many others in the long term...

I wasn't expecting you to be the voice in opposition, I was expecting someone more like Hashemite.

"“Some of the environmental lobbyists of the Western nations 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.” "

WMS!!!!!! *hughughughughughughughughughug* Somaliland update NAO!!!!

...

Uh, also, RIP

*hughughughughughug* From what scraps of news I get, Somailiand's got problems. The upper house of tribal elders refuses to allow another selection for themselves by continuously extending their terms, they did the same thing to the President's term, the three clans in the country are increasingly hostile to each other, the Puntland part of the TNG has a simmering border dispute with them, and the Islamists are threatening them over their ties to Ethiopia. Not going so well.