Kao što znate, nije mi običaj da pišem prečesto blogove - ali još jedna vest mi je privukla pažnju i mislio sam da bi bilo korisno da je podelim sa vama.
Kaže vest:
Norman Borlaug, who died on September 12 aged 95, won the 1970 Nobel Peace Prize for his achievement in promoting the use of more productive cereal strains in order to feed the world's vast population of the starving; his efforts to introduce hybrid cereal varieties into agricultural production in Pakistan, India, Mexico and other developing countries are estimated to have saved about a thousand million people from dying of hunger.
Videli smo na ovom mestu toliko puno blogova koji su govorili o smrti - ratovima, zločinima, diktaturama. Ali verovatno kad se te sve smrti saberu zajedno - to nije ni petina onoga što je pokojni Norman Borlag uspeo da spasi. Stotine miliona umrlih od gladi. Članak na Vikipediji daje cifru od 245 miliona spasenih života, četiri puta manje nego ova vest (ne bih znao koja je procena bolja) - ali čak i to je 3 puta broj poginulih u 2. svetskom ratu!
Čovek se prosto zapita kako je moguće da pored sveg svog obrazovanja, istorije pune ratova, generala i predsednika država, zločinaca, heroja i žrtvi, prvi put sazna za nekoga ko je spasio stotine miliona života - u trenutku kada taj umre, i to slučajno prelistavajući novine na Internetu.
Toplo preporučujem čitanje cele vesti, može se mnogo toga interesantnog i iznenađujućeg saznati, na primer:
The opposition to Borlaug's intensive farming methods was exacerbated by the negative publicity surrounding genetic engineering. Borlaug's work was not, properly speaking, in genetic modification. He used so-called natural methods of plant breeding and was wary of the monopolistic agenda of big agribusiness.
But he saw genetic modification as only a refinement of old plant breeding methods and became a strong advocate of its possibilities, both to enable more mouths to be fed and to help the environment. By producing more food from less land, Borlaug argued, high-yield farming would help preserve Africa's wild habitats from further depletion by slash-and-burn subsistence agriculture. The battle over biotech products, he reflected bitterly, was being fought mainly in the rich West, where "governments collectively subsidise their very small farming populations to the tune of $350 billion a year and where many of the major problems of human nutrition are related to obesity".
