Norman Borlaug

It's a wonderful thing to see the University of Minnesota's own Norman Borlaug -- father of the Green Revolution -- as today's featured article at Wikipedia. The honor ain't quite as permanent as his 1970 Nobel Peace Prize, but it's much cooler. I doubt that any print encyclopedias have Borlaug articles with this sort of depth and fascination.

I've often parted ways with my environmentalist brothers and sisters (including many Green Party members) about the Green Revolution: I believe quantity and access to food -- actually feeding people -- should always trump issues of organic, genetic, or hydrological purity. Borlaug puts it best in a quote from the article:

"Some of the environmental lobbyists of the Western nations are the salt of the earth, but many of them are elitists. They've never experienced the physical sensation of hunger. They do their lobbying from comfortable office suites in Washington or Brussels. If they lived just one month amid the misery of the developing world, as I have for fifty years, they'd be crying out for tractors and fertilizer and irrigation canals and be outraged that fashionable elitists back home were trying to deny them these things."

Congratulations, Dr. Borlaug, may you remain among us another ninety years...

[UPDATE: You can also listen to the "Norman Borlaug Rap", written by one M.C. Tractor.]