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"The greatest human being who ever lived" has died
31–40 of 54 posts
Re: "The greatest human being who ever lived" has died
#32Ad hominem attack completely unexamined by the article's author: """Of his harshest critics Borlaug stated, "some… 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…
Easy there. It was an obituary. What argument is there supposed to be here exactly?
Re: "The greatest human being who ever lived" has died
#33here is the bullshit feature Penn and Teller did on him: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A2cR2-3Y56U
Re: "The greatest human being who ever lived" has died
#34Unbelievable, I'll take the 'over the top titles' but false economic statements like: "When his seeds were used widely in 1963, Mexico instantly went from famine-prone to a wheat-exporter. Their wheat harvest was six times greater after" I guess that's why Mexico has been a net wheat IMPORTER since the 70's , subsidized and even banned wheat imports to protect the agro industry. Relevant sources without the sensation…
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Re: "The greatest human being who ever lived" has died
#35This is an honest question: How does creating more food prevent these problems? Won't populations grow enough to consume all available food? Haven't populations in 3rd world countries exploded since the "green revolution"?
It turns out that countries with better crop yields per person, require fewer people, resulting in reduced population.
Citation?
Re: "The greatest human being who ever lived" has died
#36There's a whole sub-genre of science fiction written in the late 1950s which took for granted that in the future there would be wars for food and perpetual famine due to an ongoing population explosion. The green revolution and birth control are the two simple but world-changing inventions that staved off that apocalypse, which seemed so inevitable at the time.
Staved = Pushed back the date. .... I'm honestly not sure why people are dazzled by this guy. Partly it was...his specific intention to increase yields, which make him seem like a humanitarian. The Fordson tractor did more for agriculture (and, much much much more for the economy and day-to-day existence) than this guy. Is Henry Ford the greatest human being who ever lived?
Are you kidding me? India's green revolution would have never happened without him, and that saved millions of people from almost certain starvation, death and malnutrition.
He wanted to increase yields in order to feed people - saw a global problem problem, figured out a solution, sold it and made it happen - thats why he's awesome.
Re: "The greatest human being who ever lived" has died
#37If you do believe that his work is worth continuing, I recommend donating to the Borlaugh foundation. My wife & I just did: http://borlaug.tamu.edu/legacy/donors/index.php
Re: "The greatest human being who ever lived" has died
#38Earlier quoted context omitted.
Staved = Pushed back the date. .... I'm honestly not sure why people are dazzled by this guy. Partly it was...his specific intention to increase yields, which make him seem like a humanitarian. The Fordson tractor did more for agriculture (and, much much much more for the economy and day-to-day existence) than this guy. Is Henry Ford the greatest human being who ever lived?
Why so negative? It seems that Europe's population is actually declining, so is japan's, and a lot of advanced countries. If they keep feed themselves right now, they should be so even 100 years from now, given the same condition (unless we have some drastic global climatic change). it is the poor countries, whose economies are based in subsistence agriculture, that are having a huge population increase. So, the othe…
I don't think that population increases are caused purely by poorness. Culture and rural environment are the most important factors, IMHO. The latter because if you're not living in the city you need kids to help you earn money, and you get the payoff from them faster, since they mostly don't go to (expensive) colleges etc.
I hardly know anything about Albania, but I suppose it's far more urbanised than China and its culture is vastly different.
Re: "The greatest human being who ever lived" has died
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
Really? So groundwater, soil, wild fish populations, etc. All that's going to keep scaling nicely? http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/progress/ucs-statement.tx...
It doesn't need to as long as technology keeps scaling. Pointing out that groundwater and soil aren't going to scale reminds me of the people who freaked out over the scalability of x86 in the mid 90s - we're an ingenious bunch, we find solutions. Genetically modified meat grown in vats, compact nutrition rich superfoods/tablets.. there are all sorts of technologically possible creations around the corner.
I LOVE technology (i'm a super geek) but if theres anything I love more then it, it would be food actually it would be eating food. If surviving in the future means i need a tablet to provide all my nutrition... then surviving hardly seems worth it.
Re: "The greatest human being who ever lived" has died
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
It turns out that countries with better crop yields per person, require fewer people, resulting in reduced population.
Citation?
Citation:
http://nue.okstate.edu/crop_information/The_Story_of_Wheat.h...
In particular: "Demographers, who had been watching the exponential rise with alarm, now forecast that the population will peak below ten billion—ten gigapeople—not long after 2050. Such a low forecast would have been unthinkable just two decades ago. Already, in developing countries, the number of children born per woman has fallen from six to three in 50 years. It will have reached replacement-level fertility (where deaths equal births) by 2035.
This is an extraordinary development, unexpected, undeserved—and apparently unnatural. Human beings may be the only creatures that have fewer babies when they are better fed. "