By Alicia Singh
October 16 is World Food Day. World Vision Canada explores how it is using agricultural innovations—like those developed by scientist Norman Borlaug—to feed the hungry.
With very little fanfare, the man who saved more lives than any other person in human history quietly passed away in September.
And yet, many of us have never heard of Norman Borlaug before.
About Norman Borlaug
Borlaug was an American scientist and Nobel Peace Prize winner who’s revolutionary agricultural innovations—such as high-yield, disease-resistant wheat varieties—are credited with saving up to one billion people from starvation.
Known as the father of the "Green Revolution," Borlaug’s developments more than doubled global food production in just three decades, starting in the 1960s when experts were warning of a global famine.
World Vision Training Farmers
Borlaug’s invention acted as a catalyst for the creation of other high-yield crops, like the protein-enriched, drought-tolerant maize seeds World Vision uses today.
The need for these crops is great in places like Ethiopia, where World Vision works. In this nation, 31 million people live on just 45 cents a day. Poverty is largely due to a dependence on crops like maize, which require rainfall to flourish. Since drought is so common here, farmers often produce very little food.
In the Jeju community in Ethiopia, World Vision is training farmers on how to harvest protein-enriched, drought-tolerant maize. Training is necessary because it teaches farmers improved techniques for growing healthy maize. With the help of water pumps (in some areas) to irrigate the fields, these robust crops help families stave off hunger and malnutrition, in addition to bringing in an income.
Harvesting Hope
In the past, farmer Regassa Babsa, 27, was only able to harvest his crops once every two years, due to lack of rain. His family depended heavily on relief handouts to survive.
Now his harvest is much more bountiful, “Thanks to [World Vision’s work in] Jeju, I started cultivating maize using the water pumps in 2005 and obtained a harvest from the crop enough to subsist my family throughout the year,” he says.
Babsa was able to move out of his father’s hut and into a home of his own, with his wife, three children and their newly acquired flock of an ox, two cows and a donkey.
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