Podcasts about Norman Borlaug

One Billion. That's the estimate... one billion people are alive today, or lived lives they would not have, because of one man. Norman Borlaug, an Iowa farm kid, changed the world and the science behind crops. We share his story and the impact it had on the world. www.BuildUponTheGood.com and follow us on Facebook and Instagram Thanks to our sponsor Empire Wine and Empire Too. Visit them at www.EmpireWine.com or in person at their Albany, NY locations! And thanks to Sean Kelly and the band The Samples for permission to use Streets in the Rain. Visit them at www.TheSamples.com

En la década de 1940, un agrónomo estadounidense recorrió los campos del Japón de posguerra y encontró algo que nadie esperaba: un trigo con un defecto genético que hacía crecer espigas enormes sobre tallos ridículamente cortos. Esa anomalía botánica cambió el curso de la historia alimentaria del siglo XX.La mutación en los genes Rht-B1 y Rht-D1 del trigo japonés Norin 10 eliminó el problema del acame, ese fenómeno donde la planta se dobla sobre sí misma cuando recibe fertilizante. El resultado fue una planta capaz de convertir nutrientes directamente en grano, no en biomasa inútil.Norman Borlaug tomó ese material genético, lo cruzó con variedades mexicanas en campos de Sonora y Toluca, y produjo trigos de alto rendimiento adaptables a distintas latitudes. Lo que parecía un experimento regional se convirtió en la base de la Revolución Verde.India y Pakistán multiplicaron sus rendimientos por cinco en menos de una década. La autosuficiencia alimentaria que parecía imposible en los años 60 se volvió realidad antes de 1975. Borlaug recibió el Premio Nobel de la Paz en 1970.Hoy, más del 70% del trigo cultivado en el mundo lleva ese gen japonés en sus cromosomas. Cada pan, cada tortilla de harina, cada pasta carga sin saberlo el rastro genético de una semilla que nadie quería.Escucha Agricultura Profesional:https://open.spotify.com/show/2ZuOW2DhD7PK4SM33gtFWy?si=e33021063a114550--Créditos musicales:INTROMusic from #Uppbeat (free for Creators!):https://uppbeat.io/t/kevin-graham/53License code: 62TIV9S8Q1XCM65WOUTROMusic from #Uppbeat (free for Creators!):https://uppbeat.io/t/ra/let-good-times-rollLicense code: KUSUTAITXDLYUTHQ--Fuentes consultadas:Borlaug, N. E. (1972). The Green Revolution, Peace, and Humanity. Nobel Lecture, 1970. The Nobel Foundation. Disponible en: nobelprize.orgHedden, P. (2003). The genes of the Green Revolution. Trends in Genetics, 19(1), 5-9. Artículo científico sobre los genes Rht-B1 y Rht-D1 en trigo semienano.Dalrymple, D. G. (1980). Development and Spread of Semi-Dwarf Varieties of Wheat and Rice in the United States: An International Perspective. USDA Economics, Statistics, and Cooperatives Service.Perkins, J. H. (1997). Geopolitics and the Green Revolution: Wheat, Genes, and the Cold War. Oxford University Press.Reynolds, M. P., & Borlaug, N. E. (2006). Applying innovations and new technologies for international collaborative wheat improvement. Journal of Agricultural Science, 144(2), 95-110. Cambridge University Press.

FBN's Charles Baron discusses how AI is transforming farm decision-making in 2026, from an AI advisor named for Norman Borlaug to price transparency that has saved farmers more than $500 million. Plus: tariffs, input costs, and why some farmers are still leaving serious money on the table.

As we continue our series on the different flavors that each grain brings. We dive into Wheat this episode. The abundance of it, it's many uses. And it's flavor contribution to a whiskey, and the world. I hope you enjoy and Be BlessedBadmotivatorbarrels.com/shop/?aff=3https://www.instagram.com/zsmithwhiskeyandmixology?utm_source=ig_web_button_share_sheet&igsh=ZDNlZDc0MzIxNw==Wheat is a global staple because of its high yields, extreme climate adaptability, and exceptional shelf stability. In the world of whiskey, it acts as a "gentling agent," transforming the spirit's character from bold and spicy to soft and approachable. Why Wheat is So AbundantExtreme Adaptability: Wheat grows in diverse climates across six continents, from sub-arctic regions in Scandinavia to subtropical zones in Africa.High Efficiency: Modern hybrid varieties have significantly increased production yields while maintaining a stable harvested area.Long Shelf Life: When kept dry, wheat seeds are shelf-stable for years, a historical necessity for surviving droughts and famines.Ease of Cultivation: Unlike more labor-intensive crops like rice, wheat is relatively easy to grow in massive amounts. Wheat's Contributions to WhiskeyMellowed Flavor Profile: Replacing spicy rye with wheat in a mash bill (creating "wheated bourbon") removes peppery notes, allowing the natural sweetness of corn to shine through.Soft Mouthfeel: Wheat contributes a creamy, velvety, or "pillowy" texture to the liquid, often described as a "rounded" mouthfeel.Distinct Aromas: It typically imparts notes of honey, vanilla, caramel, and freshly baked bread.Graceful Aging: Wheat's gentle nature allows it to interact harmoniously with charred oak, letting barrel notes like toffee and toasted coconut emerge without being overshadowed by heavy spice.Approachability: Because it is less aggressive on the palate, wheated whiskeys (like Maker's Mark) are frequently recommended as entry points for beginners. 1. The "Cradle" and Ancient FoundersGeographic Origin: Wheat was first domesticated around 10,000–12,000 years ago in the Fertile Crescent, particularly in modern-day southeastern Turkey and parts of the Levant.Ancestor Species: It began with wild Einkorn and Emmer, two of the "eight founder crops" of the Neolithic Revolution.The "Accidental" Harvest: Hunter-gatherers initially gathered wild grains that shattered easily. Domestication happened when humans unknowingly selected mutant strains with a "tough rachis", which kept the seeds attached to the stalk rather than scattering them, making large-scale harvesting possible.2. Genetic ComplexityPolyploidy (Genome Merging): Unlike many plants, wheat has a massive, complex genome. Modern bread wheat is "hexaploid," meaning it contains six copies of its genes. This resulted from natural hybridization events between different wild grass species and ancestral wheats over thousands of years.Resulting Adaptability: This genetic "super-stacking" gave wheat the ability to adapt to almost any climate, from the sub-arctic to the sub-tropics.3. The Shift to CivilizationPermanent Settlements: Because wheat could be easily stored for years, humans were no longer forced to follow seasonal food sources. This surplus led to permanent villages, specialized labor (like potters and bakers), and eventually the first empires in Mesopotamia and Egypt.Industrial and Green Revolutions:In the 1870s, the steel roller mill allowed for the mass production of white flour.In the 1950s–60s, Norman Borlaug (the "Father of the Green Revolution") developed semi-dwarf, high-yield varieties that doubled global production and saved millions from starvation.4. From Bread to the BottleColonial Impact: European settlers brought wheat to the Americas in the late 15th century. By the 1800s, the U.S. Great Plains became the world's "breadbasket."

Voy a decir algo que incomoda: en el agro seguimos discutiendo el futuro con ideas de hace 70 años… solo que ahora les cambiamos el nombre y les ponemos “innovación” o “sustentabilidad” según convenga.En este episodio hablamos del libro El mago y el profeta (Charles Mann) y de dos visiones que siguen chocando todos los días en el campo:El mago: Norman Borlaug, el optimismo tecnológico, rendimientos brutales, Revolución Verde.El profeta: William Vogt, planeta finito, límites, y el lado menos bonito del ambientalismo (sí, ese que nadie presume).  No es un episodio para “elegir bando” y salir sintiéndote moralmente superior. Es para entender por qué las soluciones simples normalmente son propaganda… y por qué, nos guste o no, vamos a necesitar un poco de ambos enfoques para lo que viene.  Escúchalo en agronauta.io, y también está en Spotify y YouTube.#AgronautaPodcast #Agricultura #Sustentabilidad #RevolucionVerde #AgTech #CambioClimatico

In this special episode of The Science Behind Your Salad, we take you inside the World Food Prize and the Borlaug Dialogue, the gathering inspired by the grandfather of the Green Revolution, Norman Borlaug’s and his inherent belief that hunger is a challenge humanity can solve. Recorded in Iowa, the episode brings together voices shaping the future of food. Jeannie Borlaug Laube reflects on her father’s legacy from his childhood farm. Rattan Lal reminds us why healthy soils still anchor global food security, while Cary Fowler offers the long view on safeguarding crop diversity. Paul Temple grounds the discussion in farm-level realities, and Olivia Marti brings the energy of a new generation. With insights from Neil Bentley on innovation in a climate-stressed world, this episode closes with a simple truth: feeding the future will take science, leadership, and hope.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Colossians 4:7-17 | December 7, 2025 | Pastor Todd SmithThe sermon explores the profound truth that God uses ordinary people in extraordinary ways. Drawing from the "parade of names" in Colossians 4, Pastor Todd highlights individuals like Tychicus, Onesimus, and Mark, whose lives exemplify dependability, transformation, and forgiveness. These unsung heroes, much like Norman Borlaug who saved a billion lives, demonstrate that God's work often unfolds through those who are simply present and committed. This message challenges us to consider what story our own lives are currently telling. Discover how God can use you right where you are, and why fulfilling your unique calling is essential for His kingdom.To find out more about Crossroads Community Church or to connect with us, visit the following links:→ lifeatcrossroads.org→ facebook.com/lifeatcrossroadsTo give online: lifeatcrossroads.org/giveonline.CCLI License: 2915685CCS WorshipCast License: 9466GRANT OF LICENSE. Crossroads Community Church is granted a non-exclusive, non-transferable license during the term of the agreement to publicly play, perform, and transmit via the website noted above, any musical composition controlled by one or more of the domestic Performing Rights Organizations (ASCAP, BMI and SESAC), as stated in the CCS WORSHIPcast License Terms and Conditions.

Colossians 4:7-17 | December 7, 2025 | Pastor Todd SmithThe sermon explores the profound truth that God uses ordinary people in extraordinary ways. Drawing from the "parade of names" in Colossians 4, Pastor Todd highlights individuals like Tychicus, Onesimus, and Mark, whose lives exemplify dependability, transformation, and forgiveness. These unsung heroes, much like Norman Borlaug who saved a billion lives, demonstrate that God's work often unfolds through those who are simply present and committed. This message challenges us to consider what story our own lives are currently telling. Discover how God can use you right where you are, and why fulfilling your unique calling is essential for His kingdom.To find out more about Crossroads Community Church or to connect with us, visit the following links:→ lifeatcrossroads.org→ facebook.com/lifeatcrossroadsTo give online: lifeatcrossroads.org/giveonline.CCLI License: 2915685CCS WorshipCast License: 9466GRANT OF LICENSE. Crossroads Community Church is granted a non-exclusive, non-transferable license during the term of the agreement to publicly play, perform, and transmit via the website noted above, any musical composition controlled by one or more of the domestic Performing Rights Organizations (ASCAP, BMI and SESAC), as stated in the CCS WORSHIPcast License Terms and Conditions.

Tune in to hear:How did Florence Nightingale transform the healthcare landscape in her time?How did Rachel Carson and her book, Silent Spring, call for a greater awareness of environmental degredation and a heightened awareness of the fragility of our planet?Why did Norman Borlaug win The Nobel Prize, The Presidential Medal of Freedom and The Congressional Gold Medal? Where can his legacy be seen in the present day?Why does participating in activism lead to a greater sense of wellbeing?Why are greater levels of activism also correlated to greater physical health?LinksThe Soul of WealthOrion's Market Volatility PortalConnect with UsMeet Dr. Daniel CrosbyCheck Out All of Orion's PodcastsPower Your Growth with OrionCompliance Code: 3005-U-25304

"The Wizard and the Prophet" by Charles C. MannRhishi Pethe's "Software is Feeding the World" Newsletter "In 1968, the year a USAID official coined the term 'Green Revolution', Norman Borlaug gave a victory lap speech at a wheat meeting in Australia. Twenty years before, he said, Mexican farmers had reaped about 760 pounds of wheat from every acre planted. Now that figure had risen to almost 2,500 pounds per acre, triple the harvest from the same land. The same thing was happening in India. He said the first green revolution wheat had been tested there just in 1964-1965 growing season. It had been so successful that the government had tested it on 7,000 acres the next year, and now it was covering almost 7 million acres. The same thing was happening in Pakistan, and this didn't even count the Green Revolution rice, also short and disease resistant, which was spreading across Asia." That is an excerpt from the book we'll be talking about here today. "The Wizard and the Prophet" by Charles C. Mann. The subtitle is "two remarkable scientists and they're dueling visions to shape tomorrow's world." One of those scientists, "the wizard", was Norman Borlaug: the father of the green revolution. Today's episode focuses on Borlaug's life and contributions to improving crop productivity in some of the most impoverished areas of the world. This episode is co-hosted by Tim Hammerich and Rhishi Pethe.

This episode marks the turning point between The Great Disfarmament (Parts 1 - 6) and The Great Disarmament (Parts 8 - 13). We look back across centuries of agricultural violence—fertilizer bombs, chemical dependency, and genetic control—and begin to see a new story taking root. We recap key voices: the ecological grief of The Epic of Gilgamesh, the defiant poetry of William Blake, the wartime witness of Erich Maria Remarque, the prophetic science of Rachel Carson, the double-edged legacy of Norman Borlaug, and the braided wisdom of Robin Wall Kimmerer. The Great Disarmament didn't begin with a summit or a ceasefire. It began when people said no. When they composted control. When they made peace in the soil. Next episode, we follow that thread—into Spears & Surrender.

In this episode, host Avis Kalfsbeek examines the Cold War's eerie balance between restraint and escalation. While world powers held their fire through Mutually Assured Destruction, another kind of battle intensified in the fields. The Green Revolution promised to end hunger, but often delivered dependency. With hybrid seeds, fossil-fuel fertilizers, and pesticides drawn from wartime chemistry, agriculture became a new theater of control. Countries in the Global South were offered technological salvation—at the cost of local knowledge, biodiversity, and sovereignty. Our featured voice is Rachel Carson, whose 1962 book Silent Spring revealed the hidden cost of domination disguised as innovation. Her quiet courage helped spark a global movement for environmental awareness and restraint. We also reflect on Norman Borlaug's legacy through The Man Who Fed the World—a reminder that even well-intentioned interventions can carry unintended consequences. Control, scale, and speed defined the era. But memory, humility, and care may yet define the future.

Todos los martes en Mañanas Urbanas los profesores de historia Fabricio Machiñena y Fabiana Álvarez nos presentan Noticias De Ayer con hitos que marcaron la historia de la humanidad con personajes introvertidos y sucesos inolvidables de la región, el país y el mundo.

In every generation, important people predict that the end is near and the apocalypse is coming. In the 1960s, the fear was that population growth would destroy the planet—that fertility would outrun the food supply, and hundreds of millions of people would starve to death. The most famous warning was 'The Population Bomb,' a bestselling book published in 1968 by Stanford ecologist Paul Ehrlich, which claimed "the battle to feed all of humanity is over" and “hundreds of millions of people would starve to death” in the 1970s. But then the 1970s came and went. And global famine deaths didn't rise. They declined by 90 percent. In the 1980s, deaths from world hunger fell again. And again in the 1990s. And again in the 2000s. The apocalypse that everybody said was coming never came. And the reason is, basically, we invented super wheat. In the 1950s and 1960s, a plant pathologist named Norman Borlaug, working in Mexico on fungus-resistant wheat on a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation, managed to create a breed of wheat that was super abundant, efficient, and disease-resistant. His work kickstarted what's known as the Green Revolution, a movement whose discoveries are responsible for keeping roughly half the planet alive. In 2007, when Borlaug was 93, The Wall Street Journal editorialized that he had “arguably saved more lives than anyone in history. Maybe one billion.” Today's guest is Charles C. Mann, a journalist and author. We talk about the long history of the Green Revolution. Who was Norman Borlaug? What did he actually do? How did he do it? What does his accomplishment teach us about science, invention, and progress? We're at a moment today when American science is being cut to the bone while foreign aid is being slashed. I sometimes hear the question: What is foreign aid really worth to us? I think it's important to remember that Norman Borlaug was a foundation-funded scientist who didn't do his most important work in air-conditioned labs at Harvard or Johns Hopkins. His breakthroughs came in lean-to shacks in Mexico, where he worked to improve harvests. Without Borlaug's accomplishments, the world would look very different: Famines might trigger migration that destabilizes countries and transforms global politics. The world we have today, where countries like China and India can easily feed their huge populations, is a gift to global stability, to humanity, to America. It grew from the seed of a foreign agricultural support program. If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at PlainEnglish@Spotify.com. Host: Derek Thompson Guest: Charles C. Mann Producer: Devon Baroldi Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Matters Microbial #90: Using Soil Microbiomes in Sustainable Agriculture May 8, 2025 Today, Dr. Francisco Dini Andreote, Assistant Professor of Phytobiomes at Penn State, joins the #QualityQuorum to tell us about the microbiome of plants and the soil, and how understanding that relationship can improve agriculture. Host: Mark O. Martin Guest: Francisco Dini Andreote Subscribe: Apple Podcasts, Spotify Become a patron of Matters Microbial! Links for this episode An overview of the Type 6 Secretory System of bacteria—almost like a microbial switchblade knife. A wonderful video of the T6SS made by a student in my own microbiology course some time ago. A video introduction to the Rhizobium-legume symbiosis and why you should care about it (by my PhD advisor from long ago, Dr. Sharon Long). A more comprehensive review article on the Rhizobium-legume symbiosis.  The chemical signal of geosmin, and how it might be used by other organisms. Ecological succession in the development of sauerkraut. A must read essay by Carl Zimmer likening the human body to a number of ecological niches. The developing field of agroecology.  A reminder about the “One Health” concept. Mycorrhizae and plant nutrition. Chemical communication within the soil. A fun remembrance of Norman Borlaug, who urged us to “listen” to plants. An overview of the root microbiome. The “superorganism” concept versus the “holobiome” concept.. Striga, a parasite of crop plants. Chemical communication and Striga.  An interesting and relevant publication from Dr. Dini Andreote's research group, describing how the root microbiome could help agriculture.  Dr. Dini Andreote's faculty website. Dr. Dini Andreote's very wonderful research team website. Intro music is by Reber Clark Send your questions and comments to mattersmicrobial@gmail.com

Norman Borlaug est sans doute l'un des héros les plus méconnus du XXe siècle. Cet agronome américain, né en 1914 dans l'Iowa, est considéré comme le père de la « Révolution verte », un mouvement qui a transformé l'agriculture mondiale et permis de lutter efficacement contre la famine dans de nombreux pays en développement. Grâce à ses travaux, on estime qu'il aurait sauvé plus d'un milliard de personnes de la sous-alimentation.Après des études en biologie et phytopathologie, Borlaug entame sa carrière au Mexique dans les années 1940, dans le cadre d'un programme financé par la Fondation Rockefeller. À cette époque, le pays fait face à des rendements agricoles très faibles et à des maladies du blé comme la rouille. C'est dans ce contexte qu'il commence à développer des variétés de blé naines, à haut rendement et résistantes aux maladies, capables de pousser dans des conditions climatiques difficiles.Ces nouvelles variétés s'accompagnent d'un ensemble de techniques agricoles modernisées : irrigation contrôlée, engrais chimiques, pesticides et sélection génétique. Cette combinaison, qui sera plus tard appelée Révolution verte, est ensuite appliquée à d'autres cultures, notamment le riz et le maïs. En quelques années, la production de blé au Mexique double, et le pays devient auto-suffisant en céréales dès 1956.Le succès mexicain attire l'attention d'autres nations. Dans les années 1960, l'Inde et le Pakistan, alors menacés par la famine, adoptent les méthodes de Borlaug. En très peu de temps, la production céréalière y explose : l'Inde passe d'importatrice à exportatrice de blé en moins d'une décennie. Ce tournant spectaculaire permet de nourrir des millions de personnes, dans un contexte de croissance démographique galopante.Pour cet accomplissement exceptionnel, Norman Borlaug reçoit en 1970 le prix Nobel de la paix, une distinction rarement accordée à un scientifique. Le comité Nobel souligne que « plus que toute autre personne de son époque, il a contribué à assurer la paix dans le monde en réduisant la faim ».Cependant, la Révolution verte n'est pas exempte de critiques. Certains soulignent l'impact écologique de l'agriculture intensive : épuisement des sols, usage massif de produits chimiques, réduction de la biodiversité. D'autres pointent des inégalités sociales, les petits agriculteurs n'ayant pas toujours les moyens d'accéder à ces technologies.Malgré ces limites, l'œuvre de Borlaug reste monumentale. Jusqu'à sa mort en 2009, il n'a cessé de défendre l'importance de la science pour nourrir l'humanité. Son héritage demeure une source d'inspiration pour les chercheurs du XXIe siècle face aux défis de la sécurité alimentaire mondiale. Hébergé par Acast. Visitez acast.com/privacy pour plus d'informations.

In the 1960s, a deep anxiety set in as one thing became seemingly clear: We were headed toward population catastrophe. Paul Ehrlich's “The Population Bomb” and “The Limits to Growth,” written by the Club of Rome, were just two publications warning of impending starvation due to simply too many humans on the earth.As the population ballooned year by year, it would simply be impossible to feed everyone. Demographers and environmentalists alike held their breath and braced for impact.Except that we didn't starve. On the contrary, we were better fed than ever.In his article in The New Atlantis, Charles C. Mann explains that agricultural innovation — from improved fertilization and irrigation to genetic modification — has brought global hunger to a record low.Today on Faster, Please! — The Podcast, I chat with Mann about the agricultural history they didn't teach you in school.Mann is a science journalist who has worked as a correspondent for The Atlantic, Science, and Wired magazines, and whose work has been featured in many other major publications. He is also the author of 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus and1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created, as well as The Wizard and the Prophet: Two Remarkable Scientists and Their Dueling Visions to Shape Tomorrow's World.In This Episode* Intro to the Agricultural Revolution (2:04)* Water infrastructure (13:11)* Feeding the masses (18:20)* Indigenous America (25:20)Below is a lightly edited transcript of our conversation. Intro to the Agricultural Revolution (2:04)I don't think that people realize that the fact that most people on earth, almost the average person on earth, can feed themselves is a novel phenomenon. It's something that basically wasn't true since as far back as we know.Pethokoukis: What got my attention was a couple of pieces that you've worked on for The New Atlantis magazine looking at the issue of how modern Americans take for granted the remarkable systems and infrastructure that provide us comfort, safety, and a sense of luxury that would've been utterly unimaginable even to the wealthiest people of a hundred years ago or 200 years ago.Let me start off by asking you: Does it matter that we do take that for granted and that we also kind of don't understand how our world works?Mann: I would say yes, very much. It matters because these systems undergird the prosperity that we have, the good fortune that we have to be alive now, but they're always one generation away from collapse. If they aren't maintained, upgraded and modernized, they'll fall apart. They just won't stand there. So we have to be aware of this. We have to keep our eye on the ball, otherwise we won't have these things.The second thing is that, if we don't know how our society works, as citizens, we're simply not going to make very good choices about what to do with that society. I feel like both sides in our current political divide are kind of taking their eye off the ball. It's important to have good roads, it's important to have clean water, it's important to have a functioning public health system, it's important to have an agricultural system that works. It doesn't really matter who you are. And if we don't keep these things going, life will be unnecessarily bad for a lot of people, and that's just crazy to do.Is this a more recent phenomenon? If I would've asked people 50 years ago, “Explain to me how our infrastructure functions, how we get water, how we get electricity,” would they have a better idea? Is it just because things are more complicated today that we have no idea how our food gets here or why when we turn the faucet, clean water comes out?The answer is “yes” in a sort of trivial sense, in that many more people were involved in producing food, a much greater percentage of the population was involved in producing food 50 years ago. The same thing was true for the people who were building infrastructure 50 years ago.But I also think it's generally true that people's parents saw the change and knew it. So that is very much the case and, in a sense, I think we're victims of our own success. These kinds of things have brought us so much prosperity that we can afford to do crazy things like become YouTube influencers, or podcasters, or freelance writers. You don't really have any connection with how the society goes because we're sort of surfing on this wave of luxury that our ancestors bequeathed to us.I don't know how much time you spend on social media, Charles — I'm sure I spend too much — but I certainly sense that many people today, younger people especially, don't have a sense of how someone lived 50 years ago, 100 years ago, and there was just a lot more physical suffering. And certainly, if you go back far enough, you could not take for granted that you would have tomatoes in your supermarket year round, that you would have water in the house and that water would be clean. What I found really interesting — you did a piece on food and a piece on water — in the food piece you note that, in the 1980s, that was a real turning point that the average person on earth had enough to eat all the time, and rather than becoming an issue of food production, it became an issue of distribution, of governance. I think most people would be surprised of that statistic even though it's 40 years old.I don't think that people realize that the fact that most people on earth, almost the average person on earth, can feed themselves is a novel phenomenon. It's something that basically wasn't true since as far back as we know. That's this enormous turning point, and there are many of these turning points. Obviously, the introduction of antibiotics for . . . public health, which is another one of these articles they're going to be working on . . .Just about 100 years ago today, when President Coolidge was [president], his son went to play tennis at the White House tennis courts, and because he was lazy, or it was fashionable, or something, he didn't put on socks. He got a blister on his toe, the toe got infected, and he died. 100 years ago, the president of the United States, who presumably had the best healthcare available to anybody in the world, was unable to save his beloved son when the son got a trivial blister that got infected. The change from that to now is mind boggling.You've written about the Agricultural Revolution and why the great fears 40 or 50 years ago of mass starvation didn't happen. I find that an endlessly interesting topic, both for its importance and for the fact it just seems to be so underappreciated to this day, even when it was sort of obvious to people who pay attention that something was happening, it still seemed not to penetrate the public consciousness. I wonder if you could just briefly talk to me about that revolution and how it happened.The question is, how did it go from “The Population Bomb” written in 1968, a huge bestseller, hugely influential, predicting that there is going to be hundreds of millions of people dying of mass starvation, followed by other equally impassioned, equally important warnings. There's one called “Famine, 1975!,” written a few years before, that predicted mass famines in 1975. There's “The Limits to Growth.” I went to college in the '70s and these were books that were on the curriculum, and they were regarded as contemporary classics, and they all proved to be wrong.The reason is that, although they were quite correct about the fact that the human race was reproducing at that time faster than ever before, they didn't realize two things: The first is that as societies get more affluent, and particularly as societies get more affluent and give women more opportunities, birth rates decline. So that this was obviously, if you looked at history, going to be a temporary phenomenon of whatever length it was be, but it was not going to be infinite.The second was there was this enormous effort spurred by this guy named Norman Borlaug, but with tons of other people involved, to take modern science and apply it to agriculture, and that included these sort of three waves of innovation. Now, most innovation is actually just doing older technologies better, which is a huge source of progress, and the first one was irrigation. Irrigation has been around since forever. It's almost always been done badly. It's almost always not been done systematically. People started doing it better. They still have a lot of problems with it, but it's way better, and now 40 percent, roughly, of the crops in the world that are produced are produced by irrigation.The second is the introduction of fertilizer. There's two German scientists, Fritz Haber and Carl Bosch, who essentially developed the ways of taking fertilizer and making lots and lots of it in factories. I could go into more detail if you want, but that's the essential thing. This had never been done before, and suddenly cheap industrial fertilizer became available all over the world, and Vaclav Smil . . . he's sort of an environmental scientist of every sort, in Manitoba has calculated that roughly 40 percent of the people on earth today would not be alive if it wasn't for that.And then the third was the development of much better, much higher-yielding seeds, and that was the part that Norman Borlaug had done. These packaged together of irrigation fertilizer and seeds yielded what's been called the Green Revolution, doubled, tripled, or even quadrupled grain yields across the world, particularly with wheat and rice. The result is the world we live in today. When I was growing up, when you were growing up, your parents may have said to you, as they did me, Oh, eat your vegetables, there are kids that are starving in Asia.” Right? That was what was told and that was the story that was told in books like “The Population Bomb,” and now Asia's our commercial rival. When you go to Bangkok, that was a place that was hungry and now it's gleaming skyscrapers and so forth. It's all based on this fact that people are able to feed themselves through the combination of these three factors,That story, the story of mass-starvation that the Green Revolution irrigation prevented from coming true. I think a surprising number of people still think that story is relevant today, just as some people still think the population will be exploding when it seems clear it probably will not be exploding. It will rise, but then it's going to start coming down at some point this century. I think those messages just don't get through. Just like most people don't know Norm Borlaug, the Haber-Bosch process, which school kids should know. They don't know any of this. . . Borlaug won the Nobel Prize, right?Right. He won the Nobel Peace Prize. I'll tell you a funny story —I think he won it in the same year that “The Population Bomb” came out.It was just a couple years off. But you're right, the central point is right, and the funny thing is . . . I wrote another book a while back that talked about this and about the way environmentalists think about the world, and it's called the “Wizard and the Prophet” and Borlaug was the wizard of it. I thought, when I proposed it, that it would be easy. He was such an important guy, there'd be tons of biographies about him. And to this day, there isn't a real serious scholarly biography of the guy. This is a person who has done arguably more to change human life than any other person in the 20th century, certainly up in the top dozen or so. There's not a single serious biography of him.How can that be?It's because we're tremendously disconnected. It's a symptom of what I'm talking about. We're tremendously disconnected from these systems, and it's too bad because they're interesting! They're actually quite interesting to figure out: How do you get water to eight billion people? How do you get . . . It is a huge challenge, and some of the smartest people you've ever met are working on it every day, but they're working on it over here, and the public attention is over here.Water infrastructure (13:11). . . the lack of decent, clean, fresh water is the world's worst immediate environmental problem. I think people probably have some vague idea about agriculture, the Agricultural Revolution, how farming has changed, but I think, as you just referred to, the second half, water — utter mystery to people. Comes out of a pipe. The challenges of doing that in a rich country are hard. The challenges doing a country not so rich, also hard. Tell me what you find interesting about that topic.Well, whereas the story about agriculture is basically a good story: We've gotten better at it. We have a whole bunch of technical innovations that came in the 20th century and humankind is better off than ever before. With water, too, we are better off than ever before, but the maddening thing is we could be really well off because the technology is basically extremely old.There's a city, a very ancient city called Mohenjo-daro that I write about a bit in this article that was in essentially on the Pakistan-India border, 2600 BC. And they had a fully functioning water system that, in its basics, was no different than the water system that we have, or that London has, or that Paris has. So this is an ancient, ancient technology, yet we still have two billion people on the planet that don't have access to adequate water. In fact, even though we know how to do it, the lack of decent, clean, fresh water is the world's worst immediate environmental problem. And a small thing that makes me nuts is that climate change — which is real and important — gets a lot of attention, but there are people dying of not getting good water now.On top of it, even in rich countries like us, our water system is antiquated. The great bulk of it was built in the '40s, '50s, and '60s, and, like any kind of physical system, it ages, and every couple years, various engineering bodies, water bodies, the EPA, and so forth puts out a report saying, “Hey, we really have to fix the US water system and the numbers keep mounting up.” And Democrats, Republicans, they all ignore this.Who is working on the water issue in poorer countries?There you have a very ad hoc group of people. The answer is part of it's the Food and Agricultural Organization because most water in most countries is used for irrigation to grow food. You also have the World Health Organization, these kinds of bodies. You have NGOs working on it. What you don't have in those countries like our country is the government taking responsibility for coordinating something that's obviously in the national interest.So you have these things where, very periodically — a government like China has done this, Jordan has done this, Bolivia has done this, countries all over the world have done this — and they say, “Okay, we haven't been able to provide freshwater. Let's bring in a private company.” And the private company then invests all this money in infrastructure, which is expensive. Then, because it's a private company, it has to make that money back, and so it charges people for a lot of money for this, and the people are very unhappy because suddenly they're paying a quarter of their income for water, which is what I saw in Southwest China: water riots because people are paying so much for water.In other words, one of the things that government can do is sort of spread these costs over everybody, but instead they concentrate it on the users, Almost universally, these privatization efforts have led to tremendous political unhappiness because the government has essentially shifted responsibility for coordinating and doing these things and imposed a cost on a narrow minority of the users.Are we finally getting on top of the old water infrastructure in this country? It seems like during the Biden administration they had a big infrastructure bill. Do you happen to know if we are finally getting that system upgraded?Listen, I will be the only person who probably ever interviews you who's actually had to fix a water main as a summer job. I spent [it at] my local Public Works Department where we'd have to fix water mains, and this was a number of years ago, and even a number of years ago, those pipes were really, really old. It didn't take much for them to get a main break.I'm one of those weird people who is bothered by this. All I can tell you is we have a lot of aging infrastructure. The last estimate that I've seen came before this sort of sudden jerky rise of construction costs, which, if you're at all involved in building, is basically all the people in the construction industry talk about. At that point, the estimate was that it was $1.2 trillion to fix the infrastructure that we have in the United States. I am sure it is higher now. I am delighted that the Biden people passed this infrastructure — would've been great if they passed permitting reform and a couple of other things to make it easier to spend the money, but okay. I would like to believe that the Trump people would take up the baton and go on this.Feeding the masses (18:20)I do worry that the kind of regulations, and rules, and ideas that we put into place to try and make agriculture more like this picture that we have in our head will end up inadvertently causing suffering for the people who are struggling.We're still going to have another two billion people, maybe, on this earth. Are we going to be able to feed them all?Yeah, I think that there's no question. The question is what we're going to be able to feed them? Are we going to be able to feed them all, filet mignon and truffled . . . whatever they put truffle oil on, and all that? Not so sure about that.All organic vegetables.At the moment, that seems really implausible, and there's a sort of fundamental argument going on here. There's a lot of people, again, both right and left, who are sort of freaked out by the scale that modern agriculture operates on. You fly over the middle-west and you see all those circles of center-pivot irrigation, they plowed under, in the beginning of the 20th century, 100 million acres of prairie to produce all that. And it's done with enormous amounts of capital, and it was done also partly by moving people out so that you could have this enormous stuff. The result is it creates a system that . . . doesn't match many people's vision of the friendly family farmer that they grew up with. It's a giant industrial process and people are freaked out by the scale. They don't trust these entities, the Cargills and the ADMs, and all these huge companies that they see as not having their interests at heart.It's very understandable. I live in a small town, we have a farm down there, and Jeremy runs it, and I'm very happy to see Jeremy. There's no Jeremy at Archer Daniels Midland. So the result is that there's a big revulsion against that, and people want to downsize the scale, and they point to very real environmental problems that big agriculture has, and they say that that is reason for this. The great problem is that in every single study that I am aware of, the sort of small, local farms don't produce as much food per acre or per hectare as the big, soulless industrial processes. So if you're concerned about feeding everybody, that's something you have to really weigh in your head, or heavy in your heart.That sort of notion of what a farm should look like and what good food is, that kind of almost romantic notion really, to me, plays into the sort of anti-growth or the degrowth people who seemed to be saying that farms could only be this one thing — probably they don't even remember those farms anymore — that I saw in a storybook. It's like a family farm, everything's grown local, not a very industrial process, but you're talking about a very different world. Maybe that's a world they want, but I don't know if that's a world you want if you're a poor person in this world.No, and like I said, I love going to the small farm next to us and talking to Jeremy and he says, “Oh look, we've just got these tomatoes,” it's great, but I have to pay for that privilege. And it is a privilege because Jeremy is barely making it and charging twice as much as the supermarket. There's no economies of scale for him. He still has to buy all the equipment, but he's putting it over 20 acres instead of 2000 acres. In addition, it's because it's this hyper-diverse farm — which is wonderful; they get to see the strawberries, and the tomatoes, and all the different things — it means he has to hire much more labor than it would be if he was just specializing in one thing. So his costs are inevitably much, much higher, and, therefore, I have to pay a lot more to keep him going. That's fine for me; I'm a middle-class person, I like food, this can be my hobby going there.I'd hate to have somebody tell me it's bad, but it's not a system that is geared for people who are struggling. There are just a ton of people all over the world who are struggling. They're better off than they were 100 years ago, but they're still struggling. I do worry that the kind of regulations, and rules, and ideas that we put into place to try and make agriculture more like this picture that we have in our head will end up inadvertently causing suffering for the people who are struggling.To make sure everybody can get fed in the future, do we need a lot more innovation?Innovation is always good. I would say that we do, and the kinds of innovation we need are not often what people imagine. For example, it's pretty clear that parts of the world are getting drier, and therefore irrigation is getting more difficult. The American Southwest is a primary candidate, and you go to the Safford Valley, which I did a few years ago — the Safford Valley is in southeast Arizona and it's hotter than hell there. I went there and it's 106 degrees and there's water from the Colorado River, 800 miles away, being channeled there, and they're growing Pima cotton. Pima cotton is this very good fine cotton that they use to make fancy clothes, and it's a great cash crop for farmers, but growing it involves channeling water from the Colorado 800 miles, and then they grow it by what's called flood irrigation, which is where you just fill the field with an inch of water. I was there actually to see an archeologist who's a water engineer, and I said to him, “Gee, it's hot! How much that water is evaporated?” And he said, “Oh, all of it.”So we need to think about that kind of thing if the Colorado is going to run out of water, which it is now. There's ways you can do it, you can possibly genetically modify cotton to use less water. You could drip irrigation, which is a much more efficient form of irrigation, it's readily available, but it's expensive. So you could try to help farmers do that. I think if you cut the soft costs, which is called the regulatory costs of farming, you might be able to pay for it in that way. That would be one type of innovation. Another type of thing you could do is to do a different kind of farming which is called civil pastoral systems, where you grow tree crops and then you grow cattle underneath, and that uses dramatically less water. It's being done in Sonora, just across the border and the tree crops — trees are basically wild. People don't breed them because it takes so long, but we now have the tools to breed them, and so you could make highly productive trees with cattle underneath and have a system that produces a lot of calories or a lot of good stuff. That's all the different kinds of innovation that we could do. Just some of the different kinds of innovation we could do and all would help.Indigenous America (25:20)Part of the reason I wrote these things is that I realized it's really interesting and I didn't learn anything about it in school.Great articles in The New Atlantis, big fan of “Wizard and the Prophet,” but I'm going to take one minute and ask you about your great books talking about the story of the indigenous peoples of the Americas. If I just want to travel in the United States and I'm interested in finding out more about Native Americans in the United States, where would you tell me to go?One of my favorite places just it's so amazing, is Chaco Canyon, and that's in the Four Corners area — that whole Four Corners area is quite incredible — and Chaco Canyon is a sign that native people could build amazing stuff, and native people could be crazy, in my opinion. It's in the middle of nowhere, it has no water, and for reasons that are probably spiritual and religious, they built an enormous number of essentially castles in this canyon, and they're incredible.The biggest one, Pueblo Bonito as it's called now, it's like 800 rooms. They're just enormous. And you can go there, and you can see these places, and you can just walk around, and it is incredible. You drive up a little bit to Mesa Verde and there's hundreds of these incredible cliff dwellings. What seems to have happened — I'm going to put this really informally and kind of jokingly to you, not the way that an archeologist would talk about it or I would write about it, but what looks like it happened is that the Chaco Canyon is this big canyon, and on the good side that gets the southern exposure is all these big houses. And then the minions and the hoi polloi lived on the other side, and it looks like, around 800, 900, they just got really tired of serving the kings and they had something like a democratic revolution, and they just left, most of them, and founded the Pueblos, which is these intensely democratic self-governing bodies that are kind of like what Thomas Jefferson thought the United States should be.Then it's like all the doctors, and the lawyers, and the MBAs, and the rich guys went up to Mesa Verde and they started off their own little kingdoms and they all fought with each other. So you have these crazy cliff dwellings where it's impossible to get in and there's hundreds of people living in these niches in these cliffs, and then that blew up too. So you could see history, democracy, and really great architecture all in one place.If someone asked me for my advice about changing the curriculum in school, one, people would leave school knowing who the heroes of progress and heroes of the Agricultural Revolution were. And I think they'd also know a lot more about pre-Columbian history of the Americas. I think they should know about it but I also think it's just super interesting, though of course you've brought it to life in a beautiful way.Thank you very much, and I couldn't agree with you more. Part of the reason I wrote these things is that I realized it's really interesting and I didn't learn anything about it in school.On sale everywhere The Conservative Futurist: How To Create the Sci-Fi World We Were PromisedFaster, Please! is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. 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In this episode, Dr. Ilse Alejandra Huerta Arredondo, Assistant Professor of Agriculture at the Universidad de Guanajuato in Mexico, joins host Matt Kasson to discuss growing up in Mexico and her family ties to agriculture including her great grandfather's and grandfather's friendship with Norman Borlaug. Dr. Huerta Arredondo shares her academic journey in Mexico and in central Pennsylvania where she discovered her love for agricultural extension. She discusses her vision for extension and agricultural education in Mexico. Show notes Dr. Huerta Arredondo's North American Agricultural Advisory Network (NAAAN) Profile here: https://naaan.csusystem.edu/directory/ilse-alejandra-huerta-arredondo/ Historic photo of Dr. Huerta Arredondo's great grandfather Jose Huerta and grandfather Jose Huerta Jr. with Norman Borlaug, John Gibler, John Pitner at Centro de Investigaciones Agricolas del Noreste (CIANO), Sonora in 1950: http://hdl.handle.net/10883/4315 Universidad de Guanajuato Press release on Dr. Huerta Arredondo's participation in the Global Guides Program, a development program for educators organized by the World Food Prize Foundation and Global Teach Ag: https://www.ugto.mx/noticias/noticias/17674-profesora-ug-participara-en-programa-internacional-de-educacion-para-la-seguridad-alimentaria This episode is produced by Association Briefings. Special Guest: Ilse Huerta-Arredondo.

Today's podcast is titled, “Future Global Food Production.” Recorded in 1993, this episode features Dr. Norman Borlaug, 1970 Nobel Peace Prize Winner and Founder of the International Wheat and Maize Institute, Dr. Matthew McMahon of The World Bank’s Latin American Division, and Dr. Robert Chandler Jr., Founding Director Emeritus of the International Rice Research Institute discussing the future of global food production. Listen now, and don't forget to subscribe to get updates each week for the Free To Choose Media Podcast.

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Seven Philanthropic Wins: The Stories That Inspired Open Phil's Offices, published by Open Philanthropy on July 3, 2024 on The Effective Altruism Forum. Since our early days, we've studied the history of philanthropy to understand what great giving looks like. The lessons we learned made us more ambitious and broadened our view of philanthropy's potential. The rooms in our San Francisco office pay tribute to this legacy. Seven of them are named after philanthropic "wins" - remarkable feats made possible by philanthropic funders. In this post, we'll share the story behind each win. Green Revolution During the second half of the twentieth century, the Green Revolution dramatically increased agricultural production in developing countries like Mexico and India. At a time of rapid population growth, this boost in production reduced hunger, helped to avert famine, and stimulated national economies. The Rockefeller Foundation played a key role by supporting early research by Norman Borlaug and others to enhance agricultural productivity. Applications of this research - developed in collaboration with governments, private companies, and the Ford Foundation - sparked the Green Revolution, which is estimated to have saved a billion people from starvation. Read more about the Rockefeller Foundation's role in the Green Revolution in Political Geography. The Pill In 1960, the FDA approved "the pill", an oral contraceptive that revolutionized women's reproductive health by providing a user-controlled family planning option. This groundbreaking development was largely funded by Katharine McCormick, a women's rights advocate and one of MIT's first female graduates. In the early 1950s, McCormick collaborated with Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, to finance critical early-stage research that led to the creation of the pill. Today, the birth control pill stands as one of the most common and convenient methods of contraception, empowering generations of women to decide when to start a family. For a comprehensive history of the pill, try Jonathan Eig's The Birth of the Pill. Sesame Street In 1967, the Carnegie Corporation funded a feasibility study on educational TV programming for children, which led to the creation of the Children's Television Workshop and Sesame Street. Sesame Street became one of the most successful television ventures ever, broadcast in more than 150 countries and the winner of more than 200 Emmy awards. Research monitoring the learning progress of Sesame Street viewers has demonstrated significant advances in early literacy. A deeper look into how philanthropy helped to launch Sesame Street is available here. Nunn-Lugar The Nunn-Lugar Act (1991), also known as the Cooperative Threat Reduction Program, was enacted in response to the collapse of the USSR and the dangers posed by dispersed weapons of mass destruction. US Senators Sam Nunn and Richard Lugar led the initiative, focusing on the disarmament and securing of nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons from former Soviet states. In the course of this work, thousands of nuclear weapons were deactivated or destroyed. The act's inception and success were largely aided by the strategic philanthropy of the Carnegie Corporation and the MacArthur Foundation, which funded research at Brookings on the "cooperative security" approach to nuclear disarmament and de-escalation. Learn more about the Nunn-Lugar Act and its connection to philanthropy in this paper. Marriage Equality The Supreme Court's landmark ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges granted same-sex couples the right to marry, marking the culmination of decades of advocacy and a sizable cultural shift toward acceptance. Philanthropic funders - including the Gill Foundation and Freedom to Marry, an organization initially funded by the Evelyn and Wa...

50 % celosvětových kalorií pokryjí tři plodiny – pšenice, kukuřice a rýže. Tyto plodiny prošly šlechtitelskými a genetickými úpravami zejména v poválečném období, jsou bohaté na sacharidy a jejich úkolem bylo jednou provždy skoncovat s hladomory. To se do jisté míry povedlo a americký šlechtitel a otec Zelené revoluce Norman Borlaug dostal za odolné a výnosné odrůdy Nobelovu cenu míru. Jaká je odvrácená strana průmyslově vyráběných kalorií?

Whoa, just went to the Normal Borlaug Boyhood Home in NE Iowa. If you are planning a trip to the Driftless Region, this should definitely be on your itinerary. I explain what you can expect, how you can plan, offer some tips and explain a little bit about the man, Norman Borlaug, the Elvis of wheat research. He is credited with saving over one billion lives through adoption of his farming methods and strains of wheat that it he developed. Experience what made hom great! Absolutely loved this trip to Normal Borlaug Boyhood Home!!

We love to say it's not about the bread on this show, but for this week's Saint it absolutely was about the bread. A gentlemen who has probably impacted your life despite you not knowing he existed. Our Sinner you've almost certainly heard of, and not for anything good. 

This week, Alan, Quinta, and Scott were finally reunited to talk through the week's big natsec stories, including:“First is the Worst.” The historic first criminal trial of a former president has commenced in New York state courts. Both sides have sketched out their cases in opening arguments. What will the charges being brought against former President Trump relating to alleged hush money payments on his behalf mean for him and his 2024 presidential campaign?“Fair Whither Friend.” After months of delay that have, by some accounts, pushed Ukraine dangerously close to defeat, the House has finally passed legislation that would provide them with essential foreign assistance, alongside other aid packages for Israel and Taiwan as well as a handful of related foreign affairs measures. What is good, bad, and ugly about the package that finally got through? And what do the dynamics of its passage mean for other U.S. foreign policy interests in the near term?“The Clock is Tocking.” Among the side measures passed by the House and likely to be enacted into law is a bill targeting the popular social media platform TikTok — one that would ban that platform if its owners, ByteDance, do not divest due to concerns with the degree of control the Chinese government may have over it. But is this sort of regulation of a social media platform constitutional? And is banning one good policy?For object lessons, Alan finally put down the damn remote and recommended an actual book, Charles Mann's “The Wizard and the Prophet,” about the competing, prescient visions of the future put forward by early 20th-century scientists William Vogt and Norman Borlaug. Quinta picked it up and urged listeners to check out the new documentary “Stormy,” about Stormy Daniels and the impact her alleged involvement with former President Trump and its aftermath has had on her life. And Scott shouted out one of his favorite purveyors of the silver screen, Alamo Drafthouse, and their thoughtful “sensory friendly” showings that turn up the lights and down the noise for those with young children or sensory sensitivities — something that recently allowed him and his wife to see “Dune 2” in the theater with a newborn in tow.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week, Alan, Quinta, and Scott were finally reunited to talk through the week's big natsec stories, including:“First is the Worst.” The historic first criminal trial of a former president has commenced in New York state courts. Both sides have sketched out their cases in opening arguments. What will the charges being brought against former President Trump relating to alleged hush money payments on his behalf mean for him and his 2024 presidential campaign?“Fair Whither Friend.” After months of delay that have, by some accounts, pushed Ukraine dangerously close to defeat, the House has finally passed legislation that would provide them with essential foreign assistance, alongside other aid packages for Israel and Taiwan as well as a handful of related foreign affairs measures. What is good, bad, and ugly about the package that finally got through? And what do the dynamics of its passage mean for other U.S. foreign policy interests in the near term?“The Clock is Tocking.” Among the side measures passed by the House and likely to be enacted into law is a bill targeting the popular social media platform TikTok — one that would ban that platform if its owners, ByteDance, do not divest due to concerns with the degree of control the Chinese government may have over it. But is this sort of regulation of a social media platform constitutional? And is banning one good policy?For object lessons, Alan finally put down the damn remote and recommended an actual book, Charles Mann's “The Wizard and the Prophet,” about the competing, prescient visions of the future put forward by early 20th-century scientists William Vogt and Norman Borlaug. Quinta picked it up and urged listeners to check out the new documentary “Stormy,” about Stormy Daniels and the impact her alleged involvement with former President Trump and its aftermath has had on her life. And Scott shouted out one of his favorite purveyors of the silver screen, Alamo Drafthouse, and their thoughtful “sensory friendly” showings that turn up the lights and down the noise for those with young children or sensory sensitivities — something that recently allowed him and his wife to see “Dune 2” in the theater with a newborn in tow. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode with award-winning author and journalist Alan Weisman, we discuss his 2013 book Countdown: Our Last, Best Hope for a Future on Earth? capturing his journey to over 20 countries over five continents to ask what experts agreed were probably the most important questions on Earth, and also the hardest. ‘How many humans can the planet hold without capsizing?' This wide-ranging and immensely stimulating interview captures how growth-biased cultures, religions, nationalities, tribes, and political systems are collectively undermining our ability to live within planetary limits, and also offers inspiring examples of people finding ways of better balancing our needs with those of the planet's and humanity's future - examples which could provide ways of imagining how we might better get through this bottleneck century. We discuss the intended and unintended consequences of the Green Revolution which pushed us grossly beyond Earth's carrying capacity, while causing irreparable harm to natural ecosystems. Weisman unpacks the ethnic, religious, and political complexities and history of the Israel-Palestine conflict and how pronatalism and ecological overshoot factor into it. We also chat about some of the most successful family planning programs across the world, such as in Iran, Thailand, and Costa Rica, as well as outliers with the worst programs, including in China and India. The controversial role of the Catholic Church in pushing for large families not just across the West, but also in Africa, as well as in shunning the population conversation in environmental conferences, is also highlighted. See episode website for show notes, links, and transcript: https://www.populationbalance.org/podcast/alan-weisman   ABOUT US The Overpopulation Podcast features enlightening conversations between Population Balance executive director Nandita Bajaj, researcher Alan Ware, and expert guests. We cover a broad variety of topics that explore the impacts of our expanding human footprint on human rights, animal protection, and environmental restoration, as well as individual and collective solutions. Learn more here: https://www.populationbalance.org/ 

In this episode, Dr. Mannon Gallegly, centenarian and Professor Emeritus of Plant Pathology at West Virginia University, joins host Matt Kasson for an engaging conversation about Mannon's storied 80+ year career as a plant pathologist. Dr. Gallegly shares stories of working alongside Wood Food Prize recipient John S. Niederhauser and Nobel laureate Norman Borlaug in Mexico in the 1950s and 1960s. Show notes West Virginia University Faculty Profile here: https://www.davis.wvu.edu/faculty-staff/directory/mannon-gallegly News Release of Mannon's Majesty, a Late Blight and Septoria Leaf Blight resistant Tomato Variety: https://wvutoday.wvu.edu/stories/2024/01/24/wvu-professor-emeritus-and-creator-of-the-people-s-tomato-unveils-final-variety-makes-limited-seeds-available-for-growers Donate to the Mannon E. Gallegly Student Travel Fund: https://www.apsnet.org/members/give-awards/donate/giving/funds/Pages/Gallegly.aspx Phytopathology News article on Mannon's fund: https://www.apsnet.org/members/community/phytopathology-news/2024/march/Pages/Mannon-Gallegly.aspx APS link to the 1948 APS North Central Meeting at the University of Minnesota and the 1965 Potato Association of America Meeting in Mexico City: https://www.apsnet.org/members/give-awards/donate/giving/funds/Pages/Gallegly.aspx This episode is produced by Association Briefings (https://associationbriefings.com). Special Guest: Mannon Gallegly.

 Henry Wallace was an Iowan, an accomplished geneticist who hybridized corn; an entrepreneur who co-founded Pioneer Hi-Bred to produce seed, still an agricultural behemoth; the third-generation of editors of an influential American newspaper; a mystic who had a mysterious guru; and a “liberal philosopher”, according to no less an authority than Franklin Delano Roosevelt.  He was also at various times Secretary of Agriculture, Secretary of Commerce, Vice President of the United States, and a third-party candidate for President of the United States in the 1948 election. Like America, Henry Wallace contained multitudes.  With me today is Benn Steil, author of The World That Wasn't: Henry Wallace and the Fate of the American Century. Benn Steil is a Senior Fellow and Director of International Economics at the Council of Foreign Relations. His previous books have been on the Marshall Plan, and on the financial arguments focused upon the Bretton Woods conference. In this book we have yet another study examining the central moment of the twentieth century–both chronologically as well as in many other ways–but from the extraordinary and idiosyncratic point of view of Henry Wallace.   For Further Investigation For more on Wallace's Midwestern ethos, see my conversations with Jon Lauck about the Midwest: here, way back in Episode 13 (!!!), and again in Episode 299: The Good Country Benn Steill's previous books are The Marshall Plan: Dawn of the Cold War, and The Battle of Bretton Woods: John Maynard Keynes, Harry Dexter White, and the Making of a New World Order Henry Cantwell Wallace (1866-1924): Secretary of Agriculture, father of Henry Cantwell Wallace  "A Magazine Called Wallace's Farmer" The connection between George Washington Carver, Henry Wallace, and Norman Borlaug

Heute: Ohne Dünger geht es nicht Ein Lobgesang auf Norman Borlaug und die Fortschritte in der Landwirtschaft Nein, Brot, Milch und Wurst kommen nicht aus dem Supermarkt. Dahinter steckt harte Arbeit auf dem Acker, Innovation bei der Entwicklung neuer Landmaschinentechnologie und viel Geduld bei der Züchtung von Saatgut. Nein, ohne Dünger geht es auch nicht, denn Weizen, Roggen und Gerste müssen ordentlich ernährt werden, sonst wachsen sie nur kümmerlich und bringen nicht den notwendigen Ertrag. Wie viel Dünger jede Sorte benötigt, weiss man sehr genau, der Landwirt düngt entsprechend. Ja, Pflanzen müssen auch vor Fraßfeinden geschützt werden. Denn Legion sind jene Heerscharen an Schädlingen, die sich drüber hermachen und zum Beispiel die süßen Säfte aus den Blattbahnen saugen, dabei häufig die Pflanzen mit Viren infizieren. Der Bauer muss auch verhindern, dass andere Pflanzen, auch Unkräuter genannt, der angebauten Nutzpflanze Boden und Sonne streitig machen. Nein, ausschließlich regional geht Ernährung nicht. In vormodernen Zeiten ohne Welthandel wären jetzt im Winter, in dem hierzulande eben nichts wächst, die letzten Reste aus den Speisekammern aufgefuttert, das letzte Sauerkraut ebenso wie die letzte Schweinewurst. Ein Lobgesang auf die wichtigsten Erfindungen und Entwicklungen, die Hunger bekämpfen und Lebensmittel sicherer machen. Webseite: https://www.tichyseinblick.de

The State Department is a large government agency handling matters around the world. One of those issues is food security and what can happen when focus drifts on the issue. Dr. Cary Fowler, a special envoy for global food security for the United States State Department, is a return guest to the Borlaug Dialogue at the World Food Prize and has connection to its founder, Dr. Norman Borlaug.

Norman Borlaug revolutionized wheat and all of food production. That was a moon shot of an idea. Raj Shah is looking for the next one from his role as president of the Rockefeller Foundation. The organization's risk capital can take chances with big thoughts he finds and inspires on his return trip to Iowa.

Today's podcast is titled, “Origins of The International Rice Research Institute.” Dr. Norman Borlaug, 1970 Nobel Peace Prize Winner, and Dr. Robert Chandler, Founding Director Emeritus of the International Rice Research Institute, discuss the origins of the International Rice Research Institute and describe how the impetus for the Institute began with Borlaug's work with wheat in Mexico. Recorded in 1994. Listen now, and don't forget to subscribe to get updates each week for the Free To Choose Media Podcast.

The Green Revolution was a program of agricultural technology transfer that helped poor countries around the world increase food production from the 1950s onward. An American agronomist named Norman Borlaug developed and popularized the central innovation of this revolution: the concept of “wide adaptation,” or the idea that plants could be bred to produce a high yield in a variety of environments, rather than in a particular region. Borlaug's work won him the Nobel Prize in 1970, and his agricultural insights are often credited with saving millions of people from hunger. But the legacy of Borlaug and the Green Revolution is not as straightforward as these accolades suggest.  In this episode, we caught up with interdisciplinary scientist and historian Marci Baranski to discuss her new book, The Globalization of Wheat: A Critical History of the Green Revolution. She talks with host Jason Lloyd about how a more nuanced understanding of the Green Revolution and Borlaug's work can improve agricultural and economic development policies today. Resources: Marci Baranski's book, The Globalization of Wheat: A Critical History of the Green Revolution Madhumita Saha's book review, “Left Behind by the Green Revolution” (Issues, Summer 2023) Marci Baranski and Mary Ollenberger's essay, “How to Improve the Social Benefits of Agricultural Research” (Issues, Spring 2020)

In this episode of All Things Policy, Saurabh Todi and Shambhavi Naik discuss the importance of the Green Revolution and Dr. M.S. Swaminathan's role. They discuss how science and policy intersect and the steps needed to usher in the next green revolution. Recommended readings: MS Swaminathan's farsightedness for Punjab: Discouraged free power to tackle groundwater crisis, wanted ‘evergreen revolution' without harming ecology MS Swaminathan's evergreen revolution: Productivity without ecological harm Do check out Takshashila's public policy courses: https://school.takshashila.org.in/courses We are @‌IVMPodcasts on Facebook, Twitter, & Instagram. https://twitter.com/IVMPodcasts https://www.instagram.com/ivmpodcasts/?hl=en https://www.facebook.com/ivmpodcasts/ You can check out our website at https://shows.ivmpodcasts.com/featured Follow the show across platforms: Spotify, Google Podcasts, Apple Podcasts, JioSaavn, Gaana, Amazon Music Do share the word with your folks  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is a particularly exciting episode as we're joined by Charles C. Mann, the New York Times bestselling author of “1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus,” and “1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created.” Charles shares insights with us about his more recent book, “The Wizard and the Prophet: Two Remarkable Scientists and Their Dueling Visions to Shape Tomorrow's World,” and chats with Shely about the lessons the story of Norman Borlaug and William Vogt have for the future of agriculture. 

La revolución industrial En un proceso bastante curioso los alimentos fomentaron la revolución industrial, pero a su vez, esta revolución cambió por completo la forma cómo nos alimentamos. Así comenzamos a producir más, para más personas y con mayores impactos sobre la naturaleza. En este capítulo les contaremos los cambios dentro de la agricultura qué promovieron la revolución industrial, pero también de los cambios industriales que modificaron la forma cómo cultivamos y producimos alimentos, y los impactos que este conllevó sobre la naturaleza. Abordaremos la alimentación de los trabajadores en el mundo,la historia de la papa y el azúcar, la simplificación de las dietas mundiales, la revolución verde, la modificación de paisajes y ecosistemas para la producción agrícola y la creación de la industria de los alimentos. Notas del espisodio Los colaboradores de esta serie WWF Colombia. Allí pueden encontrar más informaciónsobre la conservación de la naturaleza en Colombia y el mundo Gran parte de lo dicho en este capítulo se basa en el texto de la investigadora Rachel Laudan “Gastronomía e Imperio” También les recomendamos el libro del historiador Fabio Zambrano “Alimentos para la Ciudad” Para saber más sobre la historia de la papa está este tremendo artículo de Carlos Azcoytia“La verdadera historia de la patata y la batata” El texto clásico sobre la historia del azúcar (en inglés) es “Sweetness and Power” de Sidney Mintz. Aquí les dejamos la referencia Norman Borlaug y la Revolución Verde: “milagros y condenas”   ¡Síguenos en nuestras Redes Sociales! Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DianaUribe.fm/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dianauribefm/?hl=es-la Twitter: https://twitter.com/dianauribefm?lang=es Pagina web: https://www.dianauribe.fm

I always wondered why monks put fasting so high on the list of things to do, and St. Benedict, who saved civilization from returning to complete debauchery, had specific rules for his monastery about food. It was known that the monk who could not be disciplined on food would fall to pieces on virtue. I can confirm this. Having grown up on Kool-Aid and Little Debbie (and loving every Nutty Buddy minute of it), the era of cheap food has created a constant feast. The elderly people who grew up in the Depression understood food far better than their baby boomer children and grandchildren. They certainly understood it better than those of us who, in our post-Kool-Aid college era, could pound cheap cases of Natty Light beer and wash it down with a Nacho Bell Grande at 4 AM. (Lest anyone feel I lean too far right, let me remind you I live caught somewhere between hippy and redneck, and the hippies and tree-huggers were right about fast food and fertilizer. But, they missed the second part. While pointing a finger at food and greed, they accepted sin and the overall moral decay as “progressive.”) Here's my theory on Genesis as a mirror of the Green Revolution and the Sexual Revolution: No-fault divorce was caused by refrigeration. Nitrogen fertilizer led to mass-scale abortion. The combine harvester led to the current transgender fad. In short: just as food led to The Fall in the Garden, so did the food security of the last seventy years lead to the rejection of God all over again. In Iowa, a man named Norman Borlaug is praised for feeding a billion people with his scientific agricultural management principles, but in producing massive yields and cheap food, we ate from the tree of knowledge once again and made the same mistake. There is a reason that The Fall starts with food. Taking food for granted leads to sin, lots of it. Food and sex are intertwined. Notice, please, if you will, that the story in Genesis 3 of eating is followed by an obvious sexual fall where they know their nakedness. …the serpent said to the woman, “…when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate; and she also gave some to her husband, and he ate.Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked…” (Gen 3:4-7)Stop. Do you hear how the food was eaten in this secure food paradise? It was eaten without God. Adam and Eve rejected God. Neither of them paused to say “Grace” before eating the fig (or the apple, if you prefer). No, they ate just like we do today, like we do at Culver's or Applebee's, we just dive right in because the food is taken for granted. Occasionally you see some weird family praying in public, but it's rare. And right after Adam and Eve pig out on the fruit, they are naked, porning up the whole world. They are George Costanza. How we think about food matters immensely in the moral life, and it's no wonder that the mass rejection of God parallels the obvious fact that few people pause to say a prayer before eating today. As I fell away, I fell into free beer and fast food and the Age of Costanza swallowed me like the sea beast did Jonah, except I was in the belly for far more than three days. I was barfed out about fifteen years later.Notice, if you would, that the Lord's Prayer hinges in the center on the phrase: “Give us this day our daily bread,” signaling that food is important. In fact, food is so important in centering our lives around God, that the whole Lord's Prayer links this line about food between the beginning heavenly things to the latter earthly things. Food is a gift from God and we should be acknowledging that simple fact as a blessing. But we think the food came from our own ingenuity and cleverness.We assume that the Chipotle and the mutant-sized fruits at Costco all came from us, forgetting that the soil and water itself came from God. This is like someone entering a beautiful home, hanging their own 3x5 picture on a wall, and declaring, “I built this house.” The fact that we have mucked with some genes, figured out refrigeration, and spread NPK fertilizer around the earth in no way diminishes the reality that this created world is the foundation, the gift from God, from which every calorie we eat springs forth. In other words, we are foodless without God. The Great Hunger in 1800s Ireland was not that long ago, and for goodness sakes, Band-Aid and “We are the World” was a mere forty years ago when Ethiopia suffered from famine. The illusion of food security is strong because anyone alive in America today who remembers the Great Depression is now very likely in a nursing home, and those people tend to say a prayer before they eat. A culture flush with food and wealth quickly falls into sin. I don't know how, but the short and seemingly simple book of Genesis always has another layer to it. But then so does Exodus. In the prelude to the Golden Calf, what happens? A giant Texas barbecue, that's what. “…the people rose early and sacrificed burnt offerings and presented fellowship offerings. Afterward they sat down to eat and drink and got up to indulge in revelry.” (Ex 32:6)Food and booze are followed shortly thereafter by the most famous orgy in history, the scandal known as the Golden Calf incident. It makes Watergate or the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal look like a game of Go Fish. Furthermore, in Exodus, whenever the Israelites start complaining, they want to return to the “fleshpots” of Egypt where they were slaves, but you can see how strong food is, such that it goes hand in hand with the rejection of God. What they pine for is when they were slaves and “sat by the fleshpots and ate bread to the full.” Surely there were some hieroglyphic nudes involved as well, the ancient Egyptian version of Playboy or Penthouse. We've all seen the art - they had their porn on stone and papyrus instead of screens. The more I read the Bible, the more I see how much food and sex come up, and why the seemingly odd acts of sacrifice in the Pentateuch make increasing sense, because it was aligning the people's food toward God, and this is exactly what the Eucharist does in our lives at the Catholic Holy Mass. (Once again, two excellent books to help understand sacrifice and food in the Bible are Welcoming Gifts: Sacrifice in the Bible and Christian Life and Jesus and the Jewish Roots of the Eucharist.) Somehow, a kind of knowledge lies within our food, and it goes specifically with taking food for granted. There is something about being full, and having plenty of food, that leads to pride and the rejection of God. I think this is why Jesus says that it will be harder for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to get to heaven. Why? Because the rich man has plenty of food. He feels fully secure and therefore thinks he can live without God. He assumes he has no weakness because his belly is full and he cannot imagine missing a meal because his bank account is also full. All of this illuminates to me why so many of the saints fasted, and why the beatitudes elevate the poor, and why Jesus calls so many of his sheep from places where food security is unlike the American buffet. Those who appreciate food tend to appreciate God, because they know that God is the giver of food. “Give us this day our daily bread” is not a demand; it's a supplication to God and a request made with gratitude. Even today, wealth means food security, but we have so much food that even those in poverty are overweight, and statistics bear this out. Thus we have reached an odd point, where poverty does not mean hunger in many places. That's great that we have food, except when it leads to the rejection of God. So knowledge of good and evil, and the idea that we can be like God, comes after food abundance. It should come as no surprise that the modern “all-you-can-eat-buffet” started in Vegas in the 1940s in order to keep gamblers at the tables, as food and vice were married in true Vegas style. When we feel full, we assume a strength and power that we don't truly possess, and feeling strong, pride blooms and humility is trampled. Fertilizer brought the modern fruit in the garden but the fruit was Fast Food and cheap food, and we have eaten, and eaten, and eaten, like the Hungry Little Caterpillar. The only problem is, we're not caterpillars, so we don't turn into butterflies, we just become full and look for other things to do, like sinning. Sex is the most obvious one. Without food abundance, there would have been no Woodstock, because there would not have been a large population of idle college students of prime working age who could while away their youthful years on drugs and alcohol. Without food abundance and a sense of security in wealth, the Prodigal Son never leaves home and squanders his money on vice. I speak from experience, despite coming of age long after Woodstock, and millennia after the Prodigal Son. Once we are full, knowledge is the great, tantalizing dessert that we desire, always calling to us. It is like the pie in the old diners that sat in the revolving glass case, spinning around, on display like some kind of jewelry near the cash register. The pie sat behind glass like forbidden fruit, and we only order after being already full. But the appetite continues, wanting the pie. I remember looking at the pie and cake in those well-lit spinning cases and wondering, “What might the pie taste like? Will it fulfill me and finish off my meal? What if I could just have a bite?” I don't recall a serpent being there at all, but if serpent actually means “Shiny one” as I have read, then I know what the sacred writer of Genesis was referring to. St. Benedict knew something important. He knew that we cannot reach the wisdom through the mouth and stomach. The kind of knowledge that will satisfy our souls does not come through food, which is why Jesus tells the devil, “Man cannot live by bread alone.” It's not through pie or Kool-Aid or the constipation that accompanies 200 grams of protein a day that we will find the peace and rest we seek.. In a bizarre twist, we must pursue a different kind of knowing, sometimes called the Cloud of Unknowing, and it comes not through food, but through self-denial and prayer. The cloud of ecstasy, we're told by the culture today, must come by a different kind of relationship, usually sexual or experiential, and we completely forget about food. If we haven't fallen for the marketing of the sugar mafia, particularly Coca Cola, then we may fall for the fitness syndicate's promises. If we are not overeating, we then go to the other side of food insanity, where we must know the caloric content and nutrients of every morsel that passes over our teeth. But in both cases, gross abundance of food is present. The foodies and the gluttons have one thing in common: a food obsession with the abandonment of God. Hence, our current world of sexual immorality is a symptom of a prior fall, just as we really don't see the sexual fall in Genesis until chapter 6, with the infamous Nephilim, which come after the eating in the Garden. But one thing is certain. Wealth and abundance lead to the other sins of the body, the “warm sins” as they are sometimes called. And in my own lifetime, you could watch and observe this mood change about what is and what is not a sin, which almost coincided with the increased portions of food. The organic phenomenon is trying to correct the problem seeing food as the God, when food is in fact the gift from God, and so every crossfit and intermittent faster who is not measuring out their food-prep with God at the forefront has missed the point. Both the obese and the buff miss the purpose. It's no wonder we don't understand Leviticus, because it's almost entirely about food and getting into the right relationship to God via food. But we have moved on, thinking that the food abundance will last forever, and thus we've moved on to ever greater sins, knocking down walls and fences of morality and calling them old-fashioned. Why? Because we think this Garden was of our doing, and not God's. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit whydidpetersink.substack.com

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Slowing down AI progress is an underexplored alignment strategy, published by Norman Borlaug on July 24, 2023 on LessWrong. The emotional burden of watching the world end My current beliefs about AI timelines have made my life significantly worse. I find thoughts about the ever-shrinking timeline to AGI invading nearly every aspect of my life. Every choice now seems to be affected by the trajectory of this horrible technology. Based on the responses in this post and others, many if not most people on this forum have been affected in a similar way. AI is the black hole swallowing all other considerations about the future. Frankly, I feel a good deal of anger about the current state of affairs. All these otherwise thoughtful and nice people are working to build potentially world-ending technology as fast as possible. I'm angry so few people are paying any attention to the danger. I'm angry that invasive thoughts about AGI destroying the world are making it harder for me to focus on work that might have a non-zero chance of saving it. And I'm frustrated we've been so closed-minded in our approach to solving this problem. The current situation is almost exactly analogous to the creation of the atomic bomb during World War 2. There's a bunch of very smart people gathered together, supplied with a fuckton of money by powerful groups, working towards the same destructive goal. There is social proof all around them that they are doing the right thing. There are superficially plausible reasons to think that everything will turn out fine. There is token engagement with the concerns raised by people concerned about the implications of the technology. But at the end of the day, the combination of personal incentives, social proof and outside impetus make everyone turn their head and ignore the danger. On the rare occasion that people are convinced to leave, it's almost always the most conscientious, most cautious people, ensuring the remaining team is even less careful. There is so much magical thinking going on among otherwise intelligent people. Everyone seems to be operating on the assumption that no technology can destroy us, that everything will magically turn out fine, despite the numerous historical examples of new inventions destroying or nearly destroying the world (see the Cuban Missile Crisis or the great oxidation event when oxygen-producing bacteria extincted themselves and most other life on earth and caused a 300 million year ice age). Frankly I've found the response from the EA/rationalist community has been pretty lackluster so far. Every serious solution that has been proposed revolves around solving alignment before we make AGI, yet I know ZERO people who are working on slowing down capabilities progress. Hell, until just a month ago, EA orgs like 80,000 hours were RECOMMENDING people join AI research labs and work on CREATING superintelligence. The justifications I've read for this behavior always seem to be along the lines of "we don't want to alienate the people working at top AI orgs because we feel that will be counter-productive to our goals of convincing them that AI alignment is important." Where has this strategy gotten us? Does the current strategy of getting a couple of members of the EA/Rationalist community onto the safety teams at major AI orgs actually have a chance at working? And is it worth foregoing all efforts to slow down progress towards AGI? The goals of DeepMind, OpenAI, and all the other top research labs are fundamentally opposed to the goal of alignment. The founding goal of Deepmind is to "solve intelligence, then use that to solve everything else." That mission statement has been operationalized as paying a bunch of extremely smart people ridiculous salaries to create and distribute the blueprints for (potentially) world-ending AGI...

From Nobel winners to great innovators, Dan Saladino explores the history of prize-winning food ideas that changed the world, including researchers who uncovered the secrets of our stomachs to the plant breeds transforming the future of wheat. Nominations are now open for this year's BBC Food and Farming Awards until June 19th, including Best Innovation which was created to celebrate ideas that will make food production better for us and for the planet. For more than a century, and around the world, ground-breaking ideas linked to food have featured in awards and prizes, from Ivan Pavlov's research on our digestive system through to Norman Borlaug's efforts to increase food production with crop breeding in the 1960s. Both received a Nobel Prize. In more recent years awards have been created to find solutions to some of the biggest challenges we face in food and farming. The former chef of the Swedish restaurant Faviken, Magnus Nilsson now oversees the Food Planet Prize, the world's biggest environmental prize. He tells Dan about previous winners who have created solutions to plastics in our oceans and the problem of abandoned fishing equipment, so called 'ghost nets' and also a project in Africa providing refrigeration to farmers which is resulting in a dramatic reduction in food waste. Another award winner in the programme is Heidi Kuhn, founder of Roots of Peace. This year she was recognised by the US based World Food Prize for decades of work helping to clear mines from regions impacted by conflict and return the land to food production. Produced and presented by Dan Saladino.

Today's podcast is titled, “Africa's Agriculture Crisis.” Dr. Norman Borlaug, 1970 Nobel Peace Prize Winner and Founder of the International Wheat and Maize Institute, Dr. Robert Chandler Jr., Founding Director Emeritus of the International Rice Research Institute, and Dr. Nyle Brady, International Development Consultant for the World Bank and United Nations discuss Africa's agriculture crisis. Listen now, and don't forget to subscribe to get updates each week for the Free To Choose Media Podcast.

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: A BOTEC-Model for Comparing Impact Estimations in Community Building, published by Patrick Gruban on March 14, 2023 on The Effective Altruism Forum. We are grateful to Anneke Pogarell, Birte Spekker, Calum Calvert, Catherine Low, Joan Gass, Jona Glade, Jonathan Michel, Kyle Lucchese, Moritz Hanke and Sarah Pomeranz for conversations and feedback that significantly improved this post. Any errors, of fact or judgment, remain our entirely own. Summary When prioritising future programs in EA community building, we currently lack a quantitative way to express underlying assumptions. In this post, we look at different existing approaches and present our first version of a model. We intended it to make Back-of-the-envelope (BOTEC) estimations by looking at an intervention (community building or marketing activity) and thinking about how it might affect participants on their way to having a more impactful life. The model uses an estimation of the average potential of people in a group to have an impact on their lives as well as the likelihood of them achieving it. If you'd like only to have a look at the model, you can skip the first paragraphs and directly go to Our current model. Epistemic Status We spent about 40-60 hours thinking about this, came up with it from scratch as EA community builders and are uncertain of the claims. Motivation As new co-directors of EA Germany, we started working on our strategy last November, collecting the requests for programs from the community and looking at existing programs of other national EA groups. While we were able to include some early on as they seemed broadly useful, we were unsure about others. Comparing programs that differ in target group size and composition as well as the type of intervention meant that we would have to rely on and weigh a set of assumptions. To discuss these assumptions and ideally test some of them out, we were looking for a unified approach in the form of a model with a standardised set of parameters. Impact in Community Building The term community building in effective altruism can cover various activities like mass media communication, education courses, speaker events, multi-day retreats and 1-1 career guiding sessions. The way we understand it is more about the outcome than the process, covering not only activities that focus on a community of people. It could be any action that guides participants in their search for taking a significant action with a high expected impact and to continue their engagement in this search. The impact of the community builder depends on their part in the eventual impact of the community members. A community builder who wants to achieve high impact would thus prioritise interventions by the expected impact contribution per invested time or money. Charity Evaluators like GiveWell can indicate impact per dollars donated in the form of lives saved, disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) reduced or similar numbers. If we guide someone to donate at all, donate more effectively and donate more, we can assume that part of the impact can be attributed to us. For people changing their careers to work on the world's most pressing problems, starting charities, doing research or spreading awareness, it's harder to assess the impact. We assume an uneven impact distribution per person, probably heavy-tailed. Some people have been responsible for saving millions, such as Norman Borlaug or might have averted a global catastrophe like Stanislav Petrov. Existing approaches Marketing Approach: Multi-Touch Attribution In our strategy, we write: Finding the people that could be interested in making a change to effective altruistic actions, guiding them through the process of learning and connecting while keeping them engaged up to the point where they take action and beyond is a multi-step ...

In this episode, we connect with food science and safety specialist Dr. Elsa Murano. Presently, Dr. Murano serves as the Director of the Norman E. Borlaug Institute for International Agriculture and Development at Texas A&M University's Agriculture and Life Sciences program.  For years, Dr. Murano has been lending her expertise to developing countries around the world – from Sub-Saharan Africa to Latin America… Dr. Murano and her team are committed to following the legacy of Dr. Norman Borlaug, which is to elevate smallholder farmers out of poverty using science. Whether it be crop production or water management, the goal is to create opportunities for farmers across social classes. Offer: Are you ready to unlock the true potential of your body and mind? Introducing Analemma coherent water, a revolutionary new way to improve your health and well-being. Analemma has been clinically proven to significantly increase the ATP levels – the mitochondrial energy of your body! It significantly improves your gut health by improving the state of your microbiome, and it provides up to 12 years of biological age rejuvenation within only three months of drinking this water! Imagine having more energy, a healthier gut, a clearer mind and a youthful body – with Analemma water, it all stops being a dream. Take the first step towards unlocking your true potential – try Analemma water and revolutionize your life! Visit coherent-water.com. Every purchase comes with a 100% money back guarantee, so you can literally taste the difference risk free GET 10% DISCOUNT BY USING CODE Genius10.coherent-water.com – Join the Water Revolution. Join us now to learn about: What causes farmers to fall into poverty, and the strategies that are used to help them. Why economic connections to the marketplace can be challenging for family farmers to obtain. How exporters take advantage of farmers in developing countries.  How environmental factors affect agricultural production in poverty-stricken areas. To find out more about Dr. Elsa Murano and her projects, click here now! Episode also available on Apple Podcast: http://apple.co/30PvU9C

In this episode, we connect with food science and safety specialist Dr. Elsa Murano. Presently, Dr. Murano serves as the Director of the Norman E. Borlaug Institute for International Agriculture and Development at Texas A&M University's Agriculture and Life Sciences program.  For years, Dr. Murano has been lending her expertise to developing countries around the world – from Sub-Saharan Africa to Latin America… Dr. Murano and her team are committed to following the legacy of Dr. Norman Borlaug, which is to elevate smallholder farmers out of poverty using science. Whether it be crop production or water management, the goal is to create opportunities for farmers across social classes. Join us now to learn about: What causes farmers to fall into poverty, and the strategies that are used to help them. Why economic connections to the marketplace can be challenging for family farmers to obtain. How exporters take advantage of farmers in developing countries.  How environmental factors affect agricultural production in poverty-stricken areas. To find out more about Dr. Elsa Murano and her projects, click here now! Episode also available on Apple Podcast: http://apple.co/30PvU9C

George Washington Carver was the first Black student at Simpson College and Iowa State, and later the first Black faculty member at Iowa State. He is only the third person to be honored with a statewide day in Iowa — joining Herbert Hoover and agronomist Norman Borlaug

Just as the political spectrum is divided between left and right, thinking on environmental problem solving is similarly split into two rival camps exemplified by the archetypes of the Wizard and the Prophet. Award winning science writer Charles Mann explores these archetypes as personified by the father of the Green Revolution, Norman Borlaug and the intellectual godfather of the environmental movement, William Vogt. Crudely put wizards are foremost humanists who eschew limits believing that our growing population and appetites can be accommodated by the wise application of decoupling technology. Prophets are foremost environmentalists who believe that carrying capacity is limited and that humans must remain within natural energy flows or risk ecosystem and civilizational collapse. Understanding the origins of one's opponents ideological beliefs and values goes a long way to depersonalizing a sometimes ugly debate and perhaps finding a small patch of common ground. Prophets who have contributed some impressive advances in natural resource stewardship such as water conservation must wrestle with an ugly history of Malthusian ideas which at their worst have justified horrific campaigns of coercive population control. Despite the success of technofixes that fed billions and averted famines wizards must temper their scientific rationalism with a sociologic understanding of the dark sides of modernization such as enclosures of the commons.

Each year farmers are faced with a unique set of challenges, and 2022 was no exception. In this episode, Preston and Jason recap the 2022 growing season and discuss the future of farming. For added context to the discussion, check out the following episodes: Episode 42: Julie Borlaug - Dr. Norman Borlaug and the Green Revolution Episode 56: Matt Helm - New Tools in the Battle Against Tar Spot of Corn Episode 64: Megan Dwyer - Managing Fertilizer Costs with Nutrient Loss Reduction Strategies Episode 66: The Latest Tool in the Battle Against Corn Rootworm - SmartStax Pro® Episode 68: Paul Mitchell - The Economics of Farming in a Volatile Market Environment Preston and Jason appreciate feedback from and enjoy interacting with their audience. Follow the Focus on Agriculture Podcast on Twitter: @Focus_on_Ag.

Nate explains how our culture is "energy blind" and the implications. The YouTube video, featuring charts and graphs, of this podcast is available now: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mVjhb8Nu1Sk 00:35 - Jason's info + book, Post Carbon Institute, Farmland LP, CSAs 02:57 - What is a CSA 04:39 - Biodiversity and geography of the Amazon rainforest and the Andes 05:14 - How will the Amazon and Andes change with climate change 06:17 - The Future is Rural 06:56 - Net energy positive 07:18 - Optimal foraging theory 08:46 - Chewing the cud and ruminant digestion 09:32 - Fiber, cellulose and human digestion 10:16 - NPK (Nitrogen, Phosphorus, Potassium/Potash) 11:01 - Haber Bosch process 14:30 - The Law of Return 15:11 - What is soil? Is it different from dirt? 16:30 - Hydroponics 17:10 - What makes healthy soil? (structure, microbiome, nutrients) 17:24 - Malabon soil 19:49 - How many farms are managing for healthy soils 20:10 - At the current rate our topsoil will be gone in 60 years 20:54 - What percentage of the US labor force are farmers? (~1%) 21:22 - How has the labor force shifted from pre-industrial times? (70-90%) 22:35 - Modern agriculture is an energy sink 23:17 - Past food systems were energy positive (10:1-5:1) 23:35 - The Oil Drum essay (EROI on Nate's potatoes) 25:04 - It takes 10-14 calories to produce, process, and transport every 1 calorie of food we eat 26:50 - Over the last hundred years we have had more energy available every year 27:03 - Trophic pyramids 27:51 - Entropy 31:01 - Supply chain disruptions 31:55 - Fossil fuel depletion 33:48 - Conventional crops no longer have the genes to be grown in organic agriculture 37:16 - Heavy mechanization has led to heavy specialization and regionalization 39:27 - Smaller farms have higher energy returns and higher yields 44:27 - ½ a hectare is needed to feed one person (variation from 2/10th to a whole hectare) 47:46 - Dennis Meadows TGS Episode 51:33 - Potato Famine in Ireland 53:03 - Problems with modern industrial animal agriculture (CAFOs) 54:31 - Diets were tailored to fit the land they're based in 56:13 - In Minnesota there are more pigs than people 56:20 - Population numbers of our livestock 1:00:05 - Energy blindness 1:00:23 - Norman Borlaug and Paul Ehrlich 1:01:09 - Permaculture 1:07:34 - The world's amazing and diverse life 1:09:03 - Chuck Watson TGS Episode 1 and 2 on Nuclear Risk 1:10:20 - Nature is remarkably resilient 1:10:37 - Building back healthy soil

Subscribe Apple | Google | Spotify | Stitcher | iHeart   Support The Daily Gardener Buy Me A Coffee    Connect for FREE! The Friday Newsletter |  Daily Gardener Community   Historical Events 1510 Death of Sandro Botticelli, Italian Renaissance master.  His painting Allegory of Abundance or Autumn is one of his most elaborate and detailed drawings, and it depicts an abundance of flowers and fruits. Sandro painted idyllic garden scenes filled with beautiful women and men from the classical period. His painting, Primavera, depicts nine springtime gods and goddesses from classical mythology in a garden. Venus, the goddess of love, presides over the Garden of the Hesperides. To her right, Flora, the goddess of flowers, sprinkles roses. The garden features orange and laurel trees and dozens of other species of plants.   1642 On this day, Paul de Chomedey, Sieur de Maisonneuve, French military officer, catches his first glimpse of Montreal's landscape. He is recognized as the founder of Fort Ville-Marie (modern-day Montreal) in New France (Province of Quebec, Canada). In George Waldo Browne's 1905 book, The St. Lawrence River: Historical, Legendary, Picturesque, he wrote, On the 17th of May, the rounded slopes of Mount Royal, clad in the delicate green foliage of spring, burst into sight, stirring the hearts of the anxious beholders with newfound joy. They were delighted with the scenery. The fragrance of the springing forest permeated the balmy air, and, what was dearer far to them, over the water and over the landscape, rested an air of peace quite in keeping with their pious purpose. Maisonneuve was the first to step upon the land, and as the others followed him... they fell upon their knees, sending up their songs of praise and thanksgiving. Their first work was to erect an altar at a favorable spot within sight and sound of the riverbank, the women decorating the rough woodwork with some of the wildflowers growing in abundance upon the island, until the whole, looked very beautiful.  Then every member of the party... knelt in solemn silence while M. Barthelemy Vimont... performed ...high mass. As he closed, he addressed his little congregation with these prophetic words: You are a grain of mustard seed that shall rise and grow till its branches overshadow the earth.   1810 Death of Robert Tannahill, Scottish poet, and lyricist. Remembered as the 'Weaver Poet,' Robert was born in Paisley and is often hailed as Paisley's own Robert Burns, as his work is said to rival Robert Burns.  Today in Paisley, a stunning 50ft high mural of a young Robert Tannahill was painted by Mark Worst, collaborating with Paisley Housing Association. The mural overlooks where Robert Tannahill was born on Castle Street in 1774. One of Robert's most beloved songs is Will Ye Go Lassie, Go. The lyrics mention picking Wild Mountain Thyme, a plant known botanically as Thymus serpyllum (TY-mus sir-PIE-lum). Wild Mountain Thyme is a showy, wide growing groundcover from the Old World and has beautiful rose-red flowers and glossy deep green, mat-forming foliage. In the song, the thyme has grown in and around the heather. O the summer time has come And the trees are sweetly bloomin' The wild mountain thyme Grows around the bloomin' heather Will ye go, lassie, go? And we'll all go together To pull wild mountain thyme All around the bloomin' heather Will ye go, lassie, go?   1885 Birth of Elvin Charles Stakman, American plant pathologist. Elvin is remembered for his work identifying and combatting diseases in wheat. In 1917, he married fellow a  plant pathologist named Estelle Louise Jensen. He also encouraged Norman Borlaug to pursue his career in phytopathology after Norman's job at the Forest Service was eliminated due to budget cuts. Elvin was Norman's teacher. And Norman went on to win the Nobel Peace Prize (1970) after discovering dwarf wheat varieties that reduced famine in India, Pakistan, and other third world countries. In 1938, Elvin gave a speech entitled These Shifty Little Enemies that Destroy our Food Crops. During his talk, Elvin focused on one shifty little enemy in particular: rust. Rust is a parasitic fungus that feeds on phytonutrients in grain crops like wheat, oat, and barley. Today, Elvin is remembered with the naming of Stakman Hall - the building where Plant Pathology is taught - at the University of Minnesota's St. Paul campus.  In The Wizard and the Prophet: Two Remarkable Scientists and Their Dueling Visions to Shape Tomorrow's World, Charles Mann reflected, Stakman did not view science as a disinterested quest for knowledge. It was a tool—may be the tool—for human betterment. Not all sciences were equally valuable, as he liked to explain. “Botany,” he said, “is the most important of all sciences, and plant pathology is one of its most essential branches.   Grow That Garden Library™ Book Recommendation 150 Gardens You Need To Visit Before You Die by Stefanie Waldek  This book came out in 2022. Stefanie writes in her introduction: In 150 Gardens You Need to Visit Before You Die, I've shared a vast range of gardens, from immense botanical institutions with thousands of specimens, to smaller plots for quiet meditations, to museums that combine both artworks and plantings. I hope these brief introductions inspire you to plan a visit or two, whether in your hometown or on your global travels, so that you can enjoy the sights, smells, sounds, and stories of the world's best gardens.   The publisher writes: From Kew Gardens in London to the Singapore Botanical Gardens, and from Monet's garden at Giverny to the Zen garden of the Ryoan-ji Temple in Kyoto, this handsomely bound book captures in words and images the most notable features of these 150 glorious, not-to-be-missed gardens. An essential bucket list book for garden lovers! You can get a copy of 150 Gardens You Need To Visit Before You Die by Stefanie Waldek and support the show using the Amazon link in today's show notes.   Botanic Spark 1905 On this day, Louisa Yeomans King wrote in her garden journal about peonies. She published a year's worth of entries in her book, The Flower Garden Day by Day.  In 1902, Louisa and her husband moved to Michigan, where they built a home called Orchard House. With the help of a gardener named Frank Ackney, Louisa began to plan and create her garden. She also began writing about her Gardens. Soon, she gave lectures, contributed pieces to magazines, wrote columns, and organized garden clubs. She even became friends with prominent gardeners of her time like Gertrude Jekyll, Charles Sprague Sargent, and the landscape architects Fletcher Steele and Ellen Biddle Shipman. Louisa learned to garden during the heyday of American Garden Culture. Her garden writing in newspaper columns and magazine publications made her the most widely read American Garden author in the United States. Louisa's first book, "The Well-Considered Garden," the preface was written by her dear friend Gertrude Jekyll. In 1915, when the book debuted, it was considered an instant classic in garden literature. Louisa would go on to write a total of nine books. The garden estate known as Blithewold has a copy of "The Well-Considered Garden." Their particular text also contains a handwritten inscription along with Louisa's signature. The inscription borrows a quote from Sir William Temple, who said, "Gardening is an enjoyment and a possession for which no man is too high or too low." Louisa changed the quote and wrote, "Gardening is an enjoyment and a possession for which no woman is too high or too low." Louisa helped start the Garden Club of America and the Women's National Farm and Garden Association. She held leadership positions in both organizations. When her husband died suddenly in 1927, Louisa was forced to sell Orchard House. She moved to Hartford, New York, and bought a property she called Kingstree. This time, she set up a smaller garden. The size meant less work, which accommodated her writing and speaking commitments better. On this day, Louisa wrote in her journal this note of advice about the Peony: May 17. Disbud most of your peonies now; that is, of a cluster of buds, cut off all but the larger central one. Certain varieties, however, are considered more beautiful if left alone to flower as they will. Among these are Alsace Lorraine and La Rosiere.   Thanks for listening to The Daily Gardener And remember: For a happy, healthy life, garden every day.

Get some water before you listen to this episode: I had to remind myself to drink multiple times during this episode. In this episode, we talk to health coach and host of the podcast "Salad with a Side of Fries," Jenn Trepeck. She talks with us about all of the complexities of the health and food systems that we are a part of (she makes a point of not talking about the healthcare system because in reality, what we have is hardly a system, it's a disaggregated set of actors that are responsible for your health that almost never talk to each other) and the various problems with all of them. For one thing, we have been told to ignore what our bodies tell us from a very young age: we are told to finish what is on our plates instead of listening to when we are actually full. For another thing, we have a totally unrepresentative and inapproproate set of standards that we use to measure "health": most metrics are based entirely off of men, as if women did not exist. The 2,000 calorie diet was created to prevent soldiers during World War 2 from dying of diseases like scurvy when rations were in short supply. BMI was created to make it easier for doctors to talk to patients about weight and because it is cheaper and easier to measure a simple data point like weight with a scale than it is to give patients a more comprehensive understanding of what makes up their body, such as by measuring what percentage of your body mass is fat and what percentage is muscle. We also talk about Big Pharma, GMOs, and how to figure out who to trust when it comes to health information given that so many actors in the nutrition and medical space have monetary incentives to lie or boas their studies, many of which have dubiously statistically significant results to begin with. Links: Jenn's podcast, "Salad with a Side of Fries": https://asaladwithasideoffries.com/ Music is The Beauty of Maths by Meydän. Note: In this episode, Jenn talked about the Nobel Prize-winning agronomist Norman Borlaug and his invention of dwarf wheat. She mentions that dwarf wheat was invented to solve world hunger and did not, in fact, solve world hunger, and therefore suggested that we should go back to eating other forms of wheat because dwarf wheat causes gluten sensitivities. Upon further research after the episode, the articles we found mostly seem to suggest that although we have not solved world hunger, the invention of dwarf wheat has likely saved over a billion people from starvation, so we will allow you to judge for yourself how this use of GMO's might weigh against the current rise of gluten sensitivities. Some articles on Norman Borlaug: "The Man Who Saved a Billion Lives": https://www.huffpost.com/entry/the-man-who-saved-a-billi_b_4099523 "Forgotten Benefactor of Humanity": https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1997/01/forgotten-benefactor-of-humanity/306101/ --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/im-the-villain/support