Norman Borlaug

One of the giants of the 20th century passed away this weekend. His is not a household name, but it should be. Dr Norman Borlaug's work in breeding new crop varieties was directly instrumental in creating food security for countless millions of people, especially on the Indian sub-continent. It is no exaggeration to say that without his work (and the development of the Haber process for manufacturing inorganic fertilisers using atmospheric nitrogen), crop yields would have been insufficient to feed the global population.

Among his numerous achievements, perhaps the most significant was the breeding of dwarf wheat varieties. Through selective breeding, wheat stem length was reduced and thickened, thereby enabling the stem to support higher seed yields without lodging (toppling over). These varieties massively increased crop yields - and the technology has subsequently been transferred to rice varieties with significant yield benefits. Borlaug's work was, especially in its early years, heavily supported by the Rockefeller Foundation, whose philanthropic investments through the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (and, on a very small scale, through African Agricultural Capital), continue to support essential agricultural research and development in the developing world. Borlaug's contribution to food security and, indirectly, to peace was recognised with the award of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970.

Inevitably, Borlaug had his critics, especially among the environmental lobby, which, inter alia, deplored the reduction in biodiversity resulting from large-scale monoculture, opposed the use of inorganic fertilisers and crop protection products, raised doubts about the impact of genetic cross-breeding, and objected to the potential destruction of wilderness to make way for crops. Borlaug responded to this criticism with a robust defence. "Some of the environmental lobbyists ... 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 ...... 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"

And that's the truth. We can look back at the apparent idyll of traditional agriculture - through nostalgia-tinted spectacles - and lament its passing, but we must accept that that time is past, and look to the future. Our planet supports 7 billion people and that figure is expected to rise by a further 2 billion by 2050. Increased agricultural efficiency is the only way in which humankind will feed itself without the desperate consequences of deforestation, climate change and conflict. Without Borlaug's work - and that of the tens of thousands of unsung and unheralded plant breeders around the world who continue to develop new crop varieties - this will be impossible.

The great architect Christopher Wren's epitaph translates as "If you seek his monument, look around you." Norman Borlaug's legacy is much larger.