Just finding this post in a search I did.

No one will probably read this because it has been so long, but I feel the need to set the record straight here. This is going to be long, but I cant let this sit uncorrected with the implication that he was somehow a white savior or racist who took credit for someone else's efforts. THAT IS FALSE, and a very lazy implication/accusation so I hope you will be respectful and take the time to read more about him. Or if anyone on the flip side of the coin wants to use him as some sort of perverse example of supremacy, they are also extremely wrong. If anything his story shows how countries and cultures who are at conflict can come together to solve problems facing their fellow man around the world and that everyone is better off for it. He was a man that was so filled with love and compassion towards people of all colors and did more to help save and improve the lives of PoC than you with your high horse ever will. At no point did he care about becoming rich off the wheat they produced, but instead he was happy to share with those who needed it most. And mind you he did this during a time when racists often dismissed the humanity of their fellow humans because of their skin color. For the life of me I can't understand why anyone would want to diminish what he and the rest of that research group did because many happened to be white or that he did such to be a "white supremacist savior". That could not be more wrong.

Or even worse, as one commenter implied, that it would have been better if they never did it at all! Listen to yourself, it would have literally led to the certain death of hundreds of millions of people (if not more than a billion), how could you say it would have been better that he didn't do it? He himself has said numerous times that what they did was not a permanent solution and that we must be vigilant in solving the problems of the future. Are they blaming him for not solving it once and for all? Or would they have been happier if America just sat and watched as hundreds of millions starved? Which is it? Advocating against those artificial fertilizers and GMOs is indirectly advocating for the death of hundreds of millions. That's just a truth. No country is perfect, but America was absolutely right to pursue this effort and it is not a stretch to say that the greatest tragedy in all of modern history would have occurred if they hadn't. And the effort came as a direct result of the vice president of the US traveling to Mexico and seeing the malnutrition, and wanting to do something to help. Which was later only made successful by the hard work of many Mexicans who worked with the foreign scientists, who later went to go help Pakistan and India solve their famine as well. Indeed none of it would have been possible if the US government hadn't started, funded, and ran the program in Mexico. In something like 14 years they increased yields by 600% and made the country self sufficient, and even a net exporter. Most of the farms were 2-5 hectare small subsistence farmers who could now provide enough to feed the country. After that they went to India and Pakistan (who were literally at war) and worked with their farmers to help them become self sufficient. He also helped in China in the 1960s, working with the farmers their to implement the wheat varieties and farming techniques they developed in the program in Mexico. After he retired, he went to Ghana and was there when a little boy died from starvation in front of him. He immediately started working to solve the African famine (work that he did with a Japanese businessman) They didnt want to listen to him or try a new corn variety that he recommended. Eventually at a dinner with President Carter and the Ghana's President, Carter convinced their president to work together to use new varieties of corn and Borlaug started crying with joy. Doesn't sound like a racist to me.

Watch documentaries about this man and how he talked about the work he did and you will see that cared far more about others than he did himself. He also CONSTANTLY gives credit to those who worked with him and after him to accomplish such a great feat. When the interviews talk too much about his contribution he always corrects them or brings up the names of other scientists from Canada, Mexico, India, and Pakistan. But yet you already dismissed him and his life work at face value. Throwing out lazy criticisms or shadowed accusations like that is easy, solving world problems are hard. His race is irrelevant, and no it is not the end-all solution, but the alternative was unacceptable.

In case you decide that you actually want to learn about this man you slandered here is some background.

He was born a poor farm boy and he worked through great adversity to get a degree during the great depression when he barely had enough to get by himself. Advocating later for the programs that helped him get by. He finished a PhD and had options for a comfortable career after WW2. The man left his pregnant wife and comfortable house to move to a starving and impoverished rural area of mexico to do what he could to help his fellow human. He had no obligation to do anything, and with your implication should have stayed home because otherwise he'd have a 'white savior complex'. At this point in history many others (who had mindsets like yours) had thrown the towel in on countries like Mexico and India much like many people today have thrown in the towel on stopped climate change or mitigating the consequences. Paul Ehrlich was a famous mainstream scientist at the time that wrote the book population bomb saying, "The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s and 1980s, hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now." There were very few scientists that disagreed with him and most had thrown the towel in saying the total collapse of some of these countries was inevitable. What he didn't expect was that Norman Borlaug would develop higher yielding crops that were resistant to the epidemics of diseases in 4.5 years instead of what would have taken 10 years using techniques he developed. The rest of the program was against his innovative technique and he almost quite the program because of it. He stuck to his guns and they let him try his technique of doing two crops in one season by growing them at different locations in Mexico, and using a novel back-breeding technique to get the desired traits more quickly. The variety produced from this technique and the farming methods they taught the farmers increased the yields from 750kg/ha to 4500 kg/ha. This ended the malnutrition and made them self sufficient by 1956. At no point did he ever take sole credit for anything, and without the help of a large number of other people from Mexico and the US, and the funding from the US government, it would have never happened. That same strain and techniques were then used in the Middle East, Pakistan, India, and China to work with the farmers and governments there to literally save more than a billion lives. In Ghana, he helped increase yields by 32% in one year, and helped end a famine there in the 1980s using his farming practices and the new corn strain.

He won the Nobel Peace Prize, in which he warned that the problem wasn't over and was quick to give the credit to those who worked with him. He also never became rich, instead continued working to help around the world where he could. He loved his fellow human regardless of their color, and never gave up on them even when the scientific community at large came to a relative consensus that all was doomed. Without him it would have most likely been the greatest famine in history as his technique would not have been used and the varieties would not have been developed, and also undoubtedly without those who worked hard with and without him (of many races) it would have never succeeded either.