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
Interpretation
This quote highlights significant agricultural advancements that helped avert famine in southern Asia.
Norman Borlaug emphasizes the remarkable improvements in food production, particularly wheat, rice, and maize, in southern Asia over a short time period. This transformation not only showcases human ingenuity and scientific progress but also highlights the critical role of agricultural advancements in addressing food security challenges in regions that were once on the brink of widespread famine.
In practice
During a presentation on food security, you could use this quote to illustrate the importance of agricultural innovation.
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.
We are 6.6 billion people now. We can only feed 4 billion. I don't see 2 billion volunteers to disappear.
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.
Africa needs roads. Roads bring know-how and fertilizer to farmers and ideas and business for commerce.
This is a basic problem, to feed 6.6 billion people. Without fertilizer, forget it. The game is over.
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.
How lucky we are to live in this time / the first moment in human history / when we are in fact visiting other worlds
Biology is now bigger than physics, as measured by the size of budgets, by the size of the workforce, or by the output of major discoveries; and biology is likely to remain the biggest part of science through the twenty-first century.
We were staring at the origin of a piece of our own bodies inside this 375-million-year-old fish. We had a fish with a wrist.
What was most significant about the lunar voyage was not that men set foot on the moon but that they set eye on the earth.
Science is the topography of ignorance.
Inside of a living cell there are thousands of proteins that enable it to make more of itself and make your malaria drug, for instance. We don't understand those. We don't understand how they work together.
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