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This progress started with the intellectual Enlightenment of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, when we began to examine the world with the tools of empiricism, rather than being content with authorities, traditions and superstition.
Frightened people do not ask for opportunities, but for protection. They don’t vote for openness and freedom, but for the strongman who promises them security and
‘What has been the most important technical invention of the twentieth century?’ asks Vaclav Smil in Enriching the Earth. He rejects suggestions like computers and aeroplanes, going on to explain that nothing has been as important as the industrial fixing of nitrogen: ‘the single most important change affecting the world’s population – its expansion from 1.6 billion people in 1900 to today’s six billion – would not have been possible without the synthesis of ammonia.’
‘During peace time a scientist belongs to the World, but during war time he belongs to his country.’
A hundred and fifty years ago it took twenty-five men all day to harvest and thresh a ton of grain. With a modern combine harvester, a single person can do it in six minutes.
In the mid-nineteenth century, the average daily calorific intake in western Europe was between 2,000 and 2,500 – below what it is in Africa today.
Borlaug also convinced many governments to pay their farmers world market prices for their grain, rather than forcing them to sell at a fixed, low price.
Dr. Norman Borlaug is the first person in history to save a billion human lives. But he must also get credit for saving the wild creatures and diverse plant species on 12 million square miles of global forest that would long since have been ploughed down without the high-yield farming he pioneered. The two accomplishments combined make him dramatically unique.
Strange as it sounds, democracy is one of our most potent weapons against famine. As the economist Amartya Sen has pointed out, there have been famines in communist states, absolute monarchies, colonial states and tribal societies, but never in a democracy.
The freedom to choose one’s work, and to reap the rewards, made all the difference.
