remarkable advancements for humanity in the Green Revolution that
saved millions of lives.
Thanks to the green revolution, world food production more than
doubled between 1960 and 1990. In Pakistan and India, two of the
nations that benefited most from the new crop varieties, grain yields
more than quadrupled over the period.
The Nobel committee honored Borlaug in 1970 for his contributions to
high-yield crop varieties and bringing other agricultural innovations
to the developing world. Many experts credit the green revolution with
averting global famine during the second half of the 20th century and
saving perhaps 1 billion lives.
Borlaug began the work that led to his Nobel in Mexico at the end of
World War II. There he used innovative breeding techniques to produce
disease-resistant varieties of wheat that produced much more grain
than traditional strains.
He and others later took those varieties and similarly improved
strains of rice and corn to Asia, the Middle East, South America and
Africa.
"We got this thing going quite rapidly," Borlaug told The Associated
Press in a 2000 interview. "It came as a surprise that something from
a Third World country like Mexico could have such an impact."
His successes in the 1960s came just as books like "The Population
Bomb" were warning readers that mass starvation was inevitable.
"Three or four decades ago, when we were trying to move technology
into India, Pakistan and China, they said nothing could be done to
save these people, that the population had to die off," he said in 2004.
