Norman Borlaug Quotes

• You can't build a peaceful world on empty stomachs and human misery.

  Norman Borlaug

  Peaceful, World, Misery

  "Penn & Teller: Bullshit! (Eat This!)". TV Series, April 4, 2003.

  77 Copy quote

• There are 6.6 billion people on the planet today. With organic farming we could only feed four billion of them. Which two billion would volunteer to die?

  Norman Borlaug

  Two, People, Volunteer

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• Everything else can wait, agriculture can’t.

  Norman Borlaug

  Agriculture, Waiting

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• Some of the environmental lobbyists of the western nations are the salt of the earth, but many of them are elitists. They have 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 would 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.

  Norman Borlaug

  Home, Years, Office

  Interview with Gregg Easterbrook, The Atlantic Monthly, January 1997.

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• Almost certainly, the first essential component of social justice is adequate food for all mankind. Food is the moral right of all who are born into this world. Yet today 50 percent of the world’s population goes hungry. Without food, man can live at most but a few weeks; without it, all other components of social justice are meaningless.

  Norman Borlaug

  Men, Justice, Desire

  "World Food Day and the Challenge to Solve World Hunger and Protect the Planet" by John Bryant, Dr. Jason Clay, Lisa Moon, www.huffingtonpost.com. October 14, 2016.

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• The green revolution has an entirely different meaning to most people in the affluent nations of the privileged world than to those in the developing nations of the forgotten world.

  Norman Borlaug

  Agriculture, People, Different

  Norman Ernest Borlaug (1971). “Mankind and Civilization at Another Crossroad”

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• Civilization as it is known today could not have evolved, nor can it survive, without an adequate food supply.

  Norman Borlaug

  Food, Civilization, Adequate

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• Food is the moral right of all who are born into this world.

  Norman Borlaug

  World, Food Banks, Ending Hunger

  Norman Ernest Borlaug (1971). “Mankind and Civilization at Another Crossroad”

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• I now say that the world has the technology - either available or well advanced in the research pipeline - to feed on a sustainable basis a population of 10 billion people. The more pertinent question today is whether farmers and ranchers will be permitted to use this new technology? While the affluent nations can certainly afford to adopt ultra low-risk positions, and pay more for food produced by the so-called "organic" methods, the one billion chronically undernourished people of the low income, food-deficit nations cannot.

  Norman Borlaug

  Technology, Pertinent Questions, People

  Norman Borlaug's 30th anniversary lecture at the Norwegian Nobel Institute in Oslo (September 8, 2000), as quoted in Ronald Bailey "Global Warming and Other Eco Myths: How the Environmental Movement Uses False Science to Scare Us to Death" (p. 59), 2002.

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• This is a basic problem, to feed 6.6 billion people. Without fertilizer, forget it. The game is over.

  Norman Borlaug

  Games, People, Problem

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• Almost certainly, however, the first essential component of social justice is adequate food for all mankind.

  Norman Borlaug

  Justice, Essentials, Adequate

  Norman Ernest Borlaug (1971). “Mankind and Civilization at Another Crossroad”

  40 Copy quote

• The forgotten world is made up primarily of the developing nations, where most of the people, comprising more than fifty percent of the total world population, live in poverty, with hunger as a constant companion and fear of famine a continual menace.

  Norman Borlaug

  People, Population, World

  "The Green Revolution, Peace, and Humanity". Norman Borlaug's Nobel lecture in the auditorium of the Nobel Institute, www.nobelprize.org. December 11, 1970.

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• Even if you could use all the organic material that you have--the animal manures, the human waste, the plant residues--and get them back on the soil, you couldn't feed more than 4 billion people. In addition, if all agriculture were organic, you would have to increase cropland area dramatically, spreading out into marginal areas and cutting down millions of acres of forests.

  Norman Borlaug

  Cutting, Animal, Agriculture

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• Without food, man at most can live but a few weeks; without it all other components of social justice are meaningless.

  Norman Borlaug

  Men, Justice, Week

  "Mankind and Civilization at Another Crossroad".

  24 Copy quote

• Man can and must prevent the tragedy of famine in the future instead of merely trying with pious regret to salvage the human wreckage of the famine, as he has so often done in the past.

  Norman Borlaug

  Regret, Past, Men

  Norman Ernest Borlaug (1971). “Mankind and Civilization at Another Crossroad”

  21 Copy quote

• I am but one member of a vast team made up of many organizations, officials, thousands of scientists, and millions of farmers - mostly small and humble - who for many years have been fighting a quiet, oftentimes losing war on the food production front.

  Norman Borlaug

  War, Team, Humble

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• The destiny of world civilization depends upon providing a decent standard of living for all mankind.

  Norman Borlaug

  Fate, Destiny, Civilization

  Norman Ernest Borlaug (1971). “Mankind and Civilization at Another Crossroad”

  23 Copy quote

• Man's survival, from the time of Adam and Eve until the invention of agriculture, must have been precarious because of his inability to ensure his food supply.

  Norman Borlaug

  Men, Agriculture, Survival

  Norman Ernest Borlaug (1971). “Mankind and Civilization at Another Crossroad”

  18 Copy quote

• To this day, I enjoy nature, the luxury of undisturbed wilderness, forests, mountains, lakes, rivers and deserts and their wildlife. But I also know that the greatest danger to their perpetuity is the pressure of human population.

  Norman Borlaug

  Lakes, Luxury, Rivers

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• Therefore I feel that the aforementioned guiding principle must be modified to read: If you desire peace, cultivate justice, but at the same time cultivate the fields to produce more bread; otherwise there will be no peace.

  Norman Borlaug

  Guiding Principles, Gmos, Justice

  Norman Ernest Borlaug (1971). “Mankind and Civilization at Another Crossroad”

  16 Copy quote

• There are no miracles in agricultural production.

  Norman Borlaug

  Agriculture, Miracle, Productions

  Norman Ernest Borlaug (1971). “Mankind and Civilization at Another Crossroad”

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• Man seems to insist on ignoring the lessons available from history.

  Norman Borlaug

  Men, Lessons, Seems

  Norman Ernest Borlaug (1971). “Mankind and Civilization at Another Crossroad”

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• Yet food is something that is taken for granted by most world leaders despite the fact that more than half of the population of the world is hungry.

  Norman Borlaug

  Taken, Leader, Population

  Norman Ernest Borlaug (1971). “Mankind and Civilization at Another Crossroad”

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• We are 6.6 billion people now. We can only feed 4 billion. I don't see 2 billion volunteers to disappear.

  Norman Borlaug

  People, Volunteer, Disappear

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• Plant diseases, drought, desolation, despair were recurrent catastrophes during the ages - and the ancient remedies: supplications to supernatural spirits or gods.

  Norman Borlaug

  Despair, Age, Disease

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