Borlaug the Great

Norman Borlaug, the father of the Green Revolution, has died at 95. Ron Bailey calls him “the man who saved more human lives than anyone else in history.” In an as‐​yet‐​unpublished letter to the New York Times, Don Boudreaux reflects:

By saving millions of people from starvation, green‐​revolution father Norman Borlaug arguably has done more for humanity than has any other human being of the past century (“Norman Borlaug, 95, Dies; Led Green Revolution,” Sept. 13). Yet unlike Sen. Kennedy’s, his death will go relatively unnoticed. He’ll certainly not be canonized in the popular mind.


Alas, in our world, melodramatic loud‐​mouths thunder to and fro in the foreground, doing little of any value while stealing most of the credit for civilization. Meanwhile, in the background, millions upon millions of decent, creative people work diligently at their specialties — welding, waiting tables, performing orthopedic surgery, designing shopping malls, researching plant genetics — each contributing to the prosperity of the rest. Some contributions are larger than others (as Dr. Borlaug’s certainly was), but even a contribution as colossal as his is quickly taken for granted, any notice of it submerged beneath the self‐​congratulation, swagger, and bellicosity of the politicians who pretend to be prosperity’s source. How wrong.

In 1992 the late Senator Kennedy said, “The ballot box is the place where all change begins in America.” I wrote a few years later that he was “conveniently forgetting the market process that has brought us such changes as the train, the skyscraper, the automobile, the personal computer, and charitable or self‐​help endeavors from settlement houses to Alcoholics Anonymous to Comic Relief.”


Some day a history book will describe Bill Clinton as “a scandal‐​ridden president in the age of Bill Gates.” Or maybe “in the age of the Green Revolution.” Either way, the biggest changes in our lives — certainly the biggest improvements — will have come from scientists, inventors, and businesses, not from politicians.


But that’s not the way journalists and historians see it. Just think of the people who have gone down in history as “the Great”: Alexander the Great, Catherine the Great, Charles the Great (Charlemagne), Frederick the Great, Peter the Great — despots and warmongers. Just once it would be nice to see the actual benefactors of humanity designated as “the Great”: Galileo the Great, Gutenberg the Great, Samuel Morse the Great, Alan Turing the Great.


So just for tonight, drink a toast to one of the great benefactors of the poorest people in the world, Borlaug the Great.