It has been said with more than a grain of truth that if
you want to win the Nobel Peace Prize start killing loads of people
quickly. Once you have murdered enough
then make peace. This, it would appear
is the quickest way to win the Noble Peace Prize. It is perverse because it is also so true and many previous
winners fall into this category. But,
the hardest way to win this prize is to actually believe in a noble principle and
work with backbreaking intensity all your life to achieve it.
An example of some one who falls in to the latter category
is Norman Borlaug. He grew up a farm
boy in Iowa and saw at first hand the poverty of the depression years and it
instilled in him a conviction that it was impossible “to build a peaceful world
on an empty stomachs”. This fuelled a
lifetime commitment of almost a century during which this determined man did
more than anyone else during the 20th century to help the world feed
itself and the fruit of his labour was the saving of hundreds of millions of
lives.
Now, that is the way to win a Noble Peace Prize! It was typical of the man that when his wife
told him he had won the prize he was working in a wheat
field outside Mexico City and he responded by telling her someone was pulling
her leg. When persuaded of the truth of
the prize he did not leave the field but kept working commenting that he could
celebrate later. It was this sense of
urgency that stayed with him and his knowledge that every second two more
people into the world crying to be fed.
By 2050 he predicted that the world would need to double its food supply
of 2005.
He specialized in
plant breeding and left a good job to go to Mexico in 1944 and started experimenting with wheat to help people who were starving
there. Mexican farmers faced soils
which were depleted, crops ravaged by disease, low yields and were not even
able to feed themselves, much less sell surplus for profit. For ten years he persevered even ploughing
by hand and, thanks to his efforts, by 1956 Mexico’s wheat production had
doubled and it had become self sufficient.
It did not stop there, he then went to India and, while the war between
Pakistan and India raged around him, began planting until it too became self-sufficient
in producing cereal grains. He even
came out of retirement, in 1984, to take his seed and techniques to
Africa.
When the Nobel
committee presented him with the Peace Prize they commented “More than any
other single person of this age, he has helped provide bread for a hungry
world”
Isn't it sad, and a sign of the poverty of our education system, that hardly anyone even has heard of this amazing character?
“The fundamental basis of the community is agriculture,
tillage of the soil.”
Baha’i Writings
