Top 33 Norman Borlaug Quotes

Words matter. These are the best Norman Borlaug Quotes, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.

Contrasting sharply, in the developing countries repres

Contrasting sharply, in the developing countries represented by India, Pakistan, and most of the countries in Asia and Africa, seventy to eighty percent of the population is engaged in agriculture, mostly at the subsistence level.
Norman Borlaug
Some of the environmental lobbyists of the Western nations are the salt of the earth, but many of them are elitists.
Norman Borlaug
Civilization as it is known today could not have evolved, nor can it survive, without an adequate food supply.
Norman Borlaug
Central African farmers don’t have any animal power because sleeping sickness kills all the animals – cattle, the horses, the burros and the mules. So draft animals don’t exist, and farming is all by hand, and the hand tools are hoes and machetes.
Norman Borlaug
As far as plants are concerned, they can’t tell whether that nitrate ion comes from artificial chemicals or from decomposed organic matter.
Norman Borlaug
In my Nobel lecture, I suggested we had until the year 2000 to tame the population monster, and then food shortages would take us under. Now I believe we have a little longer.
Norman Borlaug
Roads are essential to any type of agricultural development.
Norman Borlaug
Supplying food to sub-Saharan African countries is made very complex because of a lack of infrastructure.
Norman Borlaug
There are no miracles in agricultural production.
Norman Borlaug
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
For, behind the scenes, halfway around the world in Mexico, were two decades of aggressive research on wheat that not only enabled Mexico to become self-sufficient with respect to wheat production but also paved the way to rapid increase in its production in other countries.
Norman Borlaug
Food is the moral right of all who are born into this world.
Norman Borlaug
There can be no permanent progress in the battle against hunger until the agencies that fight for increased food production and those that fight for population control unite in a common effort.
Norman Borlaug
Unless progress with agricultural yields remains very strong, the next century will experience sheer human misery that, on a numerical scale, will exceed the worst of everything that has come before.
Norman Borlaug
It’s amazing how often campaigners in rich countries think poor people don’t get backache.
Norman Borlaug
Nevertheless, the number of farmers, small as well as large, who are adopting the new seeds and new technology is increasing very rapidly, and the increase in numbers during the past three years has been phenomenal.
Norman Borlaug
When wheat is ripening properly, when the wind is blowing across the field, you can hear the beards of the wheat rubbing together. They sound like the pine needles in a forest. It is a sweet, whispering music that once you hear, you never forget.
Norman Borlaug
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
I like the back country, wildlife and all of that, but it’s wrong to force poor people to live that way.
Norman Borlaug
The lack of roads in Africa greatly hinders agriculture, education, and development.
Norman Borlaug
During the past three years spectacular progress has been made in increasing wheat, rice, and maize production in several of the most populous developing countries of southern Asia, where widespread famine appeared inevitable only five years ago.
Norman Borlaug
We must recognize the fact that adequate food is only the first requisite for life. For a decent and humane life, we must also provide an opportunity for good education, remunerative employment, comfortable housing, good clothing, and effective and compassionate medical care.
Norman Borlaug
Almost certainly, however, the first essential component of social justice is adequate food for all mankind.
Norman Borlaug
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
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
Without food, man can live at most but a few weeks; without it, all other components of social justice are meaningless.
Norman Borlaug
Clearly, we need to rethink our attitudes about water and move away from thinking of it as nearly a free good and a God-given right.
Norman Borlaug
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
We will be guilty of criminal negligence, without extenuation, if we permit future famines.
Norman Borlaug
It’s a free society. But don’t tell the world that we can feed the present population without chemical fertilizer. That’s when this misinformation becomes destructive.
Norman Borlaug
Most people still fail to comprehend the magnitude and menace of the ‘Population Monster.’
Norman Borlaug
Man can and must prevent the tragedy of famine in the f

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
Cereal production in the rain-fed areas still remains relatively unaffected by the impact of the green revolution, but significant change and progress are now becoming evident in several countries.
Norman Borlaug