Norman Borlaug: the face of evil biotech

[gravity]

and the greatest humanitarian of all time. Just watch this video.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=EU_2-NBwmhQ

That greedy bastard, destroying humanity for corporate profits. :sarcasm:

Instead of listening to people who only experienced hunger when they failed their diet rant about biotechnology, listen to someone who has saved more lives than any other human being in history.

Nobel Institute
Oslo, Norway
September 8, 2000

THE GREEN REVOLUTION REVISITED AND THE ROAD AHEAD

Norman E. Borlaug
1970 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate

Introduction

It is a great pleasure to be here in Oslo, nearly 30 years after I was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. I wish to thank the Nobel Institute and the U.S. Embassy in Norway for arranging this lecture. Today, I am here to take stock of the contributions of the so-called "Green Revolution," and explore the role of science and technology in the coming decades to improve the quantity, quality, and available of food for all of the world's people.

Although I am an agricultural scientist, my work in food production and hunger alleviation was recognized by the Nobel Peace Prize because there is no Nobel prize for food and agriculture. I have often speculated that if Alfred Nobel had written his will to establish the various prizes and endow the Nobel Foundation in the 1850s, the first prize he would have established would have been for food and agriculture. However, by the time of his death in 1895 the horrors of the widespread potato famine that had swept across western Europe in 1840-45, taking the lives of untold millions, had been forgotten. The subsequent migration of millions of western Europeans to the Americas during 1850-60 restored a reasonable, yet still tenuous balance in the land-food-population equation. Moreover, the European food supply was further greatly increased during the last three decades of the 19th century through the application of improved agricultural technology developed earlier in the century (i.e., restoration of soil fertility, better control of diseases, and use of improved varieties and breeds of crops and animals). Hence, when Alfred Nobel wrote his will at the end of the 19th, there was no serious food production problem haunting Europe.

I am now in my 56th year of continuous involvement in agricultural research and production in the low-income, food-deficit developing countries. I have worked with many colleagues, political leaders and farmers to transform food production systems. Despite the successes of the Green Revolution, the battle to ensure food security for hundreds of millions of miserably poor people is far from won.

Mushrooming populations, changing demographics and inadequate poverty intervention programs have eaten up many of the gains of the Green Revolution. This is not to say that the Green Revolution is over. Increases in crop management productivity can be made all along the line -- in tillage, water use, fertilization, weed and pest control, and harvesting. However, for the genetic improvement of food crops to continue at a pace sufficient to meet the needs of the 8.3 billion people projected at the end of the quarter century, both conventional breeding and biotechnology methodologies will be needed.

More: http://bangkok.usembassy.gov/services/irc/gmo34.htm