I’ve always deeply admired Borlaug, and (years ago) read extensively about his work.

It was in fact Borlaug who debunked Malthusian theory and threw in the final monkey wrench which stopped the juggernaut of the 1970s’ neo-Malthusians (as they called themselves) such as Paul Ehrlich and John Holdren. Their theory was that mankind and the Earth could never ever support any additional population growth, based on Malthus’ flawed 200-year-old assumptions. Borlaug came along and proved that we could quadruple and even octuple food output with just a little genius (which he supplied) and entrepreneurialism among the hard-working farmers of the second-world nations like Mexico and India.

Note also that Borlaug saw the necessaity of good old fashioned capitalism to solve humanity’s problems. From the linked article:

“Borlaug was no innocent scientist: he knew that science could feed the world only when political conditions were right. In the case of India and Mexico, the semi-dwarf wheat and rice worked marvels because the farmers owned their own land. As private owners, they had a vested interest in using more expensive seeds that would produce a higher yield. Local authorities provided the water for irrigation: both the Mexican and Indian governments did it right, later followed by Indonesia, Thailand, and the Philippines. But without private entrepreneurs, the Green Revolution would not have taken place. While touring the world, Borlaug always stressed that seeds by themselves could not eradicate hunger. Private property, entrepreneurship, and reliable governments were essential prerequisites.

Borlaug’s pro-market advocacy did not please everyone in the Third World. The Indian Left always saw the Green Revolution as an engine of injustice, and it attacked Borlaug for generating a social divide. It’s true that the most dynamic farmers in India did become wealthy, but the poor became poorer only relative to the new bourgeoisie.”

His pro-humanity approach infuriated the Left, who were banking on a food/starvation crisis to spur either a great social revolution, or a “de-development” of the industrialized world. Sorry, John and Paul — maybe next time.

A scientist who did good for poor people, who didn’t buy into the claptrap of the Socialist narrative, and who was modest and selfless — a very worthy man indeed.

Note also that his work was fundamentally based on evolutionary theory and Mendelian genetics — without his artificially evolving new strains of grains over many generations, his “green revolution” could never have happened. (This “green revolution” predated the current fad-based “green revolution” by many decades, and is unrelated to it.)

Norman Borlaug was one of the few last great non-politicized scientists.