SAM LIPSKI

“Anyone who saves a single soul, it is considered as if he has saved an entire world.”(The Rambam in Hilchot Sanhedrin 12:3, thus following the Talmud Yerushalmi’s reading 4:1[22a].)

“Blessed is He who has given of His wisdom to humanity.”(The Jewish blessing to God on meeting a great non-Jewish scholar.)

A VERY great and blessed man died this week in Dallas, Texas. Indeed, I regard him as the greatest man of our time. He did not save one soul, but a billion of them. And those of countless generations to come. Entire worlds indeed.

Had it been up to me in 2000, I would have ranked him alongside Albert Einstein, who Time Magazine nominated as its person of the century. No argument that Einstein revolutionised the way we understood the universe. But, Norman Ernest Borlaug revolutionised the way we fed -– and feed -– the world’s population.

Yet, Time didn’t even consider Borlaug – a remarkable agricultural scientist born to Norwegian immigrant parents on an Iowa farm in 1914 – worthy of mention among the 20th century’s 100 most important people. By any thoughtful measure, however, Borlaug, who died on Sunday aged 95, deserved such recognition. And so much more.

If your immediate reaction was “Norman who?”, that’s understandable. Borlaug’s death barely received a paragraph in most Australian newspapers and the electronic media paid it even less attention. As in death so it was in life for Borlaug. He was largely unknown outside a small circle, either in his native United States, or beyond.

Unknown, that is, as measured by that evanescent false god, fame. But for those who were aware of what Borlaug had wrought, and for many farmers in India, Pakistan and Mexico, to name but three countries, and in Israel for other reasons, he was the greatest of heroes.

And even if media fame eluded him, something that from all accounts didn’t bother him that much, he died knowing that he had saved more people from starvation than any man in history.

That was already the judgement of the Nobel committee in 1970 when he was honoured for his contributions to high-yield crop varieties and agricultural innovation. His monumental achievement as the father of the “Green Revolution” was to conquer stem rust in wheat.

In the 1960s, Borlaug was credited with averting global famine and enabling India and Pakistan to double their wheat yields within a year. Within eight years, they were to become self-sufficient wheat producers.

The Nobel committee has made some very doubtful awards in its time. But its judgement was of the highest order when it said of Borlaug: “More than any other single person of his age, he has helped to provide bread for a hungry world. We have made this choice in the hope that providing bread will also give the world peace.”

That was almost 40 years ago. But almost to the end, Borlaug, the very opposite of those environmental doomsayers preaching the end of the world, was once more leading the international campaign to combat stem rust’s recent re-emerging threat to global food supplies.

Already having done damage in Uganda, Kenya, Ethiopia, the Sudan, Yemen and Iran, the newer, more virulent strain is again endangering the hitherto strong yields in India and Pakistan.

As Melbourne science-writer Elizabeth Finkel reported in Cosmos magazine (06-07/2009), this indefatigable scientist, then aged 91, convened wheat experts from 40 countries to create the Borlaug Global Rust Initiative and speed up the development of new varieties of resistant wheat.

And then earlier this year, not satisfied with the urgency governments were showing at what he saw as an impending crisis of mass starvation, Borlaug convened “a second council of war in Mexico” just as he celebrated his 95th birthday.

Dr Finkel, a former biochemist whose new book Gene World is due in 2010, was at the Mexico conference and wrote of Borlaug: “[He] is revered for many things; his skill as a wheat breeder, his pragmatic humanism, his unwavering focus on feeding the world, his internationalism. But not for his saintly disposition. A college wrestling champion, Borlaug is tough. His success in fomenting the Green Revolution was as much due to bull-headed determination as to his skills as a breeder. And he is fearless about wading into policy and politics. Which is just what this global battle needed.”

Now that Borlaug has died, the courage, intellect and scientific leadership he displayed throughout his life will be needed more than ever. And while he mightn’t have been known in life for his “saintly disposition”, in death Borlaug can take his place as a tzaddik, a truly righteous man. Yehi zichro baruch. May his memory be a blessing. Shanah tovah.

Sam Lipski is the chief executive of The Pratt Foundation and a former  editor-in-chief of The AJN.