The Man Credited to Saving the Most Lives

by Anna Nguyen
​
“Norman Borlaug is the man who saved the most lives in the history of humanity”(Josette Sheeran, https://www.bbvaopenmind.com/en/science/environment/the-man-who-saved-the-most-lives/_ ). A humble man who spent hours breeding grain varieties, he single-handedly made his name known in the Green Revolution.

In the 1960s and 1980s, environmentalism became a popular movement and became concerned over overpopulation. In “The Population Bomb”, Paul Ehlich suggests a bleak prediction where due to past population booms, population growth may increase exponentially and, therefore, deplete resources. He warns that overpopulation not only leads to famines and disease, but also environmental crises plaguing the world.

As of today, food production has boosted significantly since 1960. So, theories of overpopulation causing all sorts of issues such as mass starvation were not exactly true, as crop yields increase from agricultural innovations. The Green Revolution, a period of implementing agricultural innovations such as plant breeding across the world, was a key factor to increasing food production and to provide better food. It led to developing countries to receive proper nourishment.

Borlaug, an agricultural scientist, played a crucial role in the Green Revolution, so much so, that he was considered the father of the Green Revolution. Since he was an influential person in the 20th century, he won the Nobel Prize for his efforts. He conducted his studies using wheat varies in Mexico He bred wheat and selected traits so that it can handle various types of climates, fertilizers, become disease resistant, and produce more grain through his methods, which was more efficient than what was done traditionally.

One of his innovations was shuttle breeding. He cut time on the breeding process by taking advantage of the two growing seasons in Mexico and planted the wheat at different times. He would let the summer crop grow up to harvest its seeds and then plant them at the other area in winter, and vice versa. Before, people would usually plant wheat and then wait to see which ones survived. It was thought that seeds needed to sleep after being harvested, so then stored energy can be used for germination. The theory has been disproved after Borlaug came up with shuttle breeding.

Thanks to shuttle breeding, he was able to cross breed lots of wheat varieties in half the amount of time compared to the traditional method. He would cross breed the wheat with disease-resistant genes with similar phenotypes to ensure yield did not drop, and he would further develop a cross breeding method to produce various disease-resistant genes, so wheat would not have succumbed to diseases like rust.

With the previous methods, he also made the wheat insensitive to the length of day or night. Plants have a biological clock to tell how long or short the day has been to plan when to flower, so they end up flowering on different times. With disease-resistant wheat that can be bred quickly and can tolerate in various conditions, the problem with fertilizer occurred when the stalks of the tall wheat fall from the weight of grain. The heavy grain got its nutrients from the fertilizer, so the stalk cannot support the weight of the grain. Borlaug came up with a solution, and so he crossed a shorter variety of semi-dwarf wheat. As a result, it doubled the yields with shorter stalks and fat grain. Though having taller wheat looks cool, less energy was needed to grow shorter stalks. Usually, wheat grew tall because those varieties can get more sunlight than the shorter ones, so it was a competition for limited resources in nature.

​With all these major accomplishments in agricultural science, Borlaug must have fed millions of people around the world. Though, it would be difficult to quantify how many people he saved because it is difficult to keep track of who eats good food. Overall, his remarkable discoveries lessened mass starvation and poverty, and crop productivity marginally improved worldwide. To this day, Borlaug’s discoveries still matter as it has improved the lives of many people on average.

References
​https://www.scienceheroes.com/borlaug https://michiganintheworld.history.lsa.umich.edu/environmentalism/exhibits/show/main_exhibit/origins/-environmental-crisis--in-the- https://www.bbvaopenmind.com/en/science/environment/the-man-who-saved-the-most-lives/