It's not hard for Borlaug to keep himself motivated, though, as he can state his central passion in clear terms: "I hate suffering and human misery," Borlaug said.
By now, human misery has learned to hate Norman Borlaug.
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Sunday, September 13, 2009
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You know, there is a current of thought out there that the explosion of human population was caused by increasing crop yields, and not that increasing crop yields were made necessary by an exploding population.
In other words, the idea that "we need to feed a growing population" may be something of a canard. If we didn't grow more food, what would the people be made of?
This is a good point. I believe that the hungry people did come first, however, and the green revolution then begot the problem that population once again catches up and will undoubtedly surpass food production.
Do you think that the problem really comes down to this? If human beings cannot discipline their tendency to over-breed their resources, people like Borlaug may be simply putting off the inevitable overpopulation calamity.
In the meantime, there's the moral issue about having millions dying when there''s a technology that could save them at the moment. This is where Mr. Borlaug wins his laurels. His work did save those millions, for now.
But hunger persists, as it has throughout all of human history.
Are you suggesting that, absent the exponential growth in the ability to grow food, we would still have 7 billion people? What would they have been made of?
Perhaps the great victory here is that food production now takes a smaller and smaller slice of the labor pool, freeing people to do lots of other important, productive things. But let's not pretend that population growth is an inevitable given, and untied to our capacity to produce food.
Basic biology says that when you increase the available food, you get an increase in the population of the species that eats it. And we've seen that with people on Earth.
I'm not saying it's a bad thing -- but I am saying that ADM, Monsanto and Dow have created their own bit of mythology, and it's good to be aware of that.
This kind of dialogue drives people like me crazy!! Now see what you've done. Does it really matter which comes first the chicken or the egg? Smart and compassionate people like Borlaug will come along to help us. In the mean time the selfish greedy beings will always be there to take away everything that isn't nailed down. (re: Scot's blog about insurance price increases).
I'm not sure Scot and I are in any disagreement.
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