Norman Borlaug
I’d never heard of Norman Baulaug until yesterday. But as his obituary in the Times today stated.
Norman Borlaug has, in the opinion of many experts, saved more human lives than any other individual in history. He was the grandfather of the “Green Revolution” in which, between 1961 and 1980, wheat crop yields doubled, tripled and sometimes quadrupled around the world. His experiments with hybrid wheat strains and nitrogenous fertiliser created strains of the staple food impervious to pests, bad weather and poor soil, enabling the world to support a far greater human population than many thought possible after the Second World War. Yet his methods and message fell out of favour, to the detriment of millions — especially in Africa.
Read the full obituary and you get a flavour of someone who was not only a great scientist, but someone who was a deep thinker. He warned against population growth and felt that his advanced crops would only give a breathing space.
But it still did not prevent others from rubbishing his achievements.
Therein lies the rub. Some of his methods of using lots of fertiliser may well be challenged, but we all should agree with his policy of growing crops on the productive land. Surely, this should leave more land for other more idealistic uses. He even signed an agreement with one of founders of Greenpeace on this.
But one paragraph in the obituary is this.
Others followed his example, and India’s wheat crop increased from 12 million tonnes in 1965 to 17 million in 1967. That year Pakistan, a country dependent on wheat imports, imported 42,000 tonnes of seeds. It was self-sufficient in seed stocks 12 months later.
It just shows how if you are more efficient, things can a lot better.
If I have a gripe with him personally, it is that the greater part of his work was with wheat! I can’t eat it or wheat products because I’m a coeliac.
But as I repeat many times. It will not be politicians who get us out of the mess that they have created, but the scientists and engineers. We need a lot more like Norman Borlaug.
Cornflour
My mother was a traditional English cook, so when she made a sauce, she didn’t use flour. She used cornflour. Often it was Brown and Polson. As it was gluten-free, this was actually good for me and probably helps to prove the theory I have that good proper cooking is actually better for you. Flour is a cheap way of putting bulk into ready made and processed food.
There has been a discussion on the UK-Coeliac group about cornflour and corn in general.
This illustrates the differences between English all over the world.
Farmers in the UK and probably a lot of other places, use corn as a general term for any cereal, including wheat and barley. They call maize, maize. Whereas in the US, maize is corn.
All confusing. Truly we’re all dvided by a common language.
To make matters worse, according Wikipedia, cornflour in Australia is made from wheat. The article also talks about cornstarch, the name used for cornflour in the US.
It all makes me, want to do more cooking from scratch.
The Anonymous Widower 