Borlaug's legacy leaves lasting lessons

By Brian Reinhart     9/17/09 7:00pm

When we think of great humanitarians, we often think of saints. We think of doctors, political activists and retired software tycoons. Many of these people grace the covers of our magazines and promote their causes on talk shows.But the greatest humanitarian to ever live did not sell microchips, did not appear on our televisions and, indeed, never became famous for his work. His name was Norman Borlaug, and he died last Saturday in Texas at the age of 95.

Borlaug was a food scientist, born on an Iowa farm in 1914 and educated at the University of Minnesota. After a brief stint in corporate business, Borlaug decided to devote his life to tackling our global food shortage. In Mexico he developed new techniques to increase yields of wheat and corn. Through careful breeding and endless experimentation, Borlaug first found ways to make the crops more resistant to disease, then ways to increase the productivity of seeds.

Over the following years he took his high-yield wheat and corn on the road to India and other underdeveloped nations in Asia and Latin America. In 1994, the government of Ethiopia launched a program to spread Borlaug's farming practices and high-yield seeds across the country, and the result was the best harvest in that nation's recorded history.

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Statisticians have attempted to quantify Borlaug's achievement, in terms of the number of human lives he rescued from starvation. The baseline estimate is about 245 million people. Most calculations, however, start at one billion. Moreover, according to The New York Times, the Rockefeller Foundation estimates that three billion people have eaten a breed of wheat, corn, maize or cassava produced by Borlaug's research.

Borlaug won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970, but accepted it only after his wife convinced him the message of congratulation was not a prank. He did not think himself a genius or a man worthy of a Nobel Prize, but merely a scientist doing his best to make the world a better place. He had been lucky enough to be a well-fed American child and to get a stellar education, and wanted to use those advantages to help the billions of people who did not receive them.

Perhaps this is not your idea of a humanitarian. Many of our most famous givers, such as Albert Schweitzer and Mother Teresa, sacrificed their own comforts and Western lifestyles to live among the poor and change lives one by one. Borlaug, by contrast, was a scientist who used fields as his laboratory. Indeed, for the last 25 years of his life he was a professor at Texas A&M University. His life story tells us that even at home in America, and even on a college campus, we have the power to change millions of lives.

The philosopher Walter Kaufmann once described a scenario called "the problem of the beautiful garden." The problem is, roughly, this: Suppose you live happily and comfortably in a beautiful garden, but most of the people in the world live outside the garden, in poverty and hunger. You are not any better than the people trapped outside, but thanks to a trick of fate you live in luxury while they starve. If you choose to stay in the beautiful garden, should you feel guilty about your good fortune? If that is the case, should you simply leave?

Schweitzer left the garden to become a doctor in rural Africa. Mother Teresa left the garden to serve the ill in Kolkata. They are among the greatest humanitarians of the last century. Kaufmann, however, advises us to stay in the garden. He suggests that if we can use our fortunate circumstances to do more good for more people, we should not hesitate to do so.

Borlaug traveled through the most destitute parts of the world for his research, but he lived and taught in that beautiful garden until the end of his life. In so doing, he set an example for each of us to follow. At Rice we are all students in a very beautiful garden indeed. How can we use the advantages we have been given and the luxurious education we are receiving to change the world?

Borlaug knew there would not be room in our garden for everyone, but he chose not to leave. Instead, he used his knowledge to enlarge the garden. This week Borlaug is no longer with us. But the seeds he has sown will live on forever.

Brian Reinhart is a Wiess College junior and Thresher calendar editor.

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