Quotes from Norman Borlaug

One of the greatest threats to mankind today is that the world may be choked by an explosively pervading but well camouflaged bureaucracy.

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.

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.

I like the back country, wildlife and all of that, but it's wrong to force poor people to live that way.

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.

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.

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.

Unless there is one master gene for yield, which I'm guessing there is not, engineering for yield will be very complex. It may happen eventually, but through the coming decades, we must assume that gene engineering will not be the answer to the world's food problems.

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.

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

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.

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

Roads are essential to any type of agricultural development.

If the world population continues to increase at the same rate, we will destroy the species.

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

Africa needs roads. Roads bring know-how and fertilizer to farmers and ideas and business for commerce.

If people want to believe that the organic food has better nutritive value, it's up to them to make that foolish decision. But there's absolutely no research that shows that organic foods provide better nutrition.

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.

Supplying food to sub-Saharan African countries is made very complex because of a lack of infrastructure.

If some consumers believe that it's better from the point of view of their health to have organic food, God bless them. Let them buy it. Let them pay a bit more.

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

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.

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

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.