Norman Borlaug, aged 95, died this past Saturday.   In 1999, the Atlantic Monthly estimated that his efforts (along with the people he trained and institutes he founded) had saved more than one billion lives … almost all in developing countries.  [Thanks to Gregg Easterbrook who posted op-ed piece today.]

You’re probably asking … what the heck did he do to have such an impact?

Borlaug was a key innovator in agriculture productivity.  He developed higher yield crops which required less water, less pesticides, were more disease resistant and thrived under much more varied and adverse conditions than previous cereal breeds.  He is often referred to as the father of the Green Revolution.

A few big picture stats:

• In 1950, world grain production was 692 million tons for 2.2 billion people.
• In 1992, production rose to 1.9 billion tons for 5.6 billion people.
• Grain yields doubled from < 0.5 ton per acre to 1.1 tons per acre.
• From 1965 to 2005, global per capita food consumption rose to 2,798 daily calories from 2,063 … mostly in developing countries.

Changing history in India and Pakistan

In the 1965 India/Pakistan famine, Borlaug traveled with 35 truck loads of high-yield seeds to the Indian subcontinent.  In the midst of a famine (and a war), he (and his Mexican assistants) sowed the first crop with these seeds.  Within 3 years, Pakistan was self-sufficient in wheat production and within 6 years, India was self-sufficient in all cereal production.  There hasn’t been a shortage of food since then in those countries.  He appropriately received the Nobel Peace Prize.

Backlash from people who have never gone hungry

As he ventured into seeking to provide similar cereal crop benefits to Africa, he was denounced by critics because his techniques require some pesticides as well as fertilizers.  Here’s some of his responses:

“[Most Western environmentalists] have never experienced the physical sensation of hunger.  They do their lobbying from comfortable office suites in Washington or Brussels.  If they lived just one month amid the misery of the developing world, as I have for 50 years, they’d be crying out for tractors and fertilizers and irrigation canals and be outraged that fashionable elitists in wealthy nations were trying to deny them these things.”

“Without high-yield agriculture, increases in food output would have been realized through drastic expansion of acres under cultivation, losses of pristine land a hundred times greater than all losses to urban and suburban expansion.”

In nations which have adopted his techniques, population growth as slowed as less workers are needed to produce food.

On behalf of the billions of people who have benefited from Borlaug’s pioneering work, I say “thank you.”

I met up recently with Whit Alexander, a co-founder of board game company Cranium which they sold last year to Hasbro. He has provided the seed funding for a new social business venture called Burro.

Whit believes that there is a huge opportunity to develop quality branded products and a distribution channel optimized for the bottom of the pyramid (4B+ people who live on < $2/day). His goal is to deliver products at reduced cost to these customers which also improve their lives.

Their first business line is renting rechargeable batteries starting in Ghana. Why, you might ask?

• Long-term cheaper. Rechargeable batteries are cheaper to operate over their life-time than the traditional non-rechargeable disposable batteries.
• Multiple benefits. Batteries can power lights which lets a shop stay open longer and kids to perform homework when it’s dark. Also, mobile phones and radio … important communication tools … all require batteries. Batteries are a regular budget item for most families globally.
• Better for environment. Growing issues created by disposed non-rechargeable batteries.

Here’s how their model works:

• Burro purchases rechargeable batteries from low-cost Chinese manufacturers.
• Burro sets up centrally located branch offices to store and recharge batteries.
• Burro hires independent battery rental reps who signup customers to monthly rental agreements which cost the equivalent of 3 non-rechargeable batteries each. Customers are provided unlimited recharging of their AA batteries along with an adaptor case (see photo) to allow batteries to operate as popular D-size batteries.

Currently they are operating a pilot in Ghana to demonstrate the business model and get the kinks figured out. Once they’ve got the model figured out, they plan to expand their branch network plus to offer additional products through their growing distribution channel.

I was introduced recently to VillageReach, an innovative non-profit headquartered in Seattle which is focused on addressing one of the largest issues in healthcare delivery systems in emerging countries … delivery to the local clinic.

There was an interesting article in this weekend’s Wall Street Journal’s Weekend Journal called “A New Dawn” which featured too very different perspectives on climate change. One article by Ian McEwan focuses on how developed countries should focus our budgets on climate change and the second article by Bjorn Lomborg focuses on how we need to focus our budgets on doing things which will have the broadest impact for humanity and the world.

I think both articles are a good read and both articulate very strong perspectives and arguments. I am most intrigued though by the arguments made by Bjorn Lomborg as they are more global in nature, so I’m going to focus more on his ideas in this article. Lomborg is a professor at Copenhagen Business School and the organizer of the Copenhagen Consensus, an interesting gathering of some of the world’s smartest scientists and economists which attempts to gain a “consensus” on the priorities for doing the most good with our investments. I wrote about this process earlier.

Here are a few of Lomborg’s facts/observation of climate change forecasts:

• The UN science consensus expects temperature increases of 3 to 7 degrees Fahrenheit by 2100, leading to sea-level increases of 0.5 to 2 feet. This is similar to the 1.5 feet of sea-level rise experienced in the past 150 years.
• Warming in this time-frame will mean about 400,000 more heat-related deaths globally and 1.8M fewer cold-related deaths according to Ecological Economics publication.
• Economic models estimate a decrease in global GDP of about 3% by 2100. The UN expects that in this same timeframe the average person will be 1400% richer.
• Kyoto compliance requires spending of ~$180B per year through 2100 with an eventual reduction of global temperature of an eventual estimated 0.3 degrees Fahrenheit.

He points out that these climate change-related investments might make sense as the top priority in a world of infinite resources and no other major issues. The reality is that we face many other moral decisions … life and death decisions affecting 10’s of millions of people … which must be considered. Here are some of the other potential priorities:

• Agriculture output. Climate change is expected to reduce agriculture productivity by 1.4% by 2100. By 2080, global agriculture output is expected to more than double. If we did nothing to reduce the impact of global climate change, this doubling would be delayed until … 2081.
• Malnutrition. Global warming is forecasted to increase the number of malnourished by 28M by the 2100. Today there are 900M malnourished people. We expect to add about 3B more people to the planet by 2100. By that time, the number of people malnourished is expected to drop to 100M. This is more of a political will issue than a financial issue.
• Kyoto vs. Hunger. Spending $180B per year through 2100 on Kyoto will avoid 2M hungry by 2100. Spending $10B per year, the UN estimates could save 229M people from hunger today. Spending directly on hunger (vs. indirectly through carbon reductions) is 5,000x more effective. Climate change (if fully realized) would only address 3% of the hunger problem.
• Foreign aid effectiveness. Focusing foreign aid on areas such as direct malnutrition policies, immunization and agricultural R&D would return value of 15-20x the good than the cost.
• Innovation vs. reductions. Incentives for creating new technologies (a cornerstone of Obama’s proposed plan) which offer low-carbon alternatives will deliver 11x more good than the cost. Whereas simple CO2 cuts produce $0.90 return on the dollar. He encourages countries to spend 0.5% of their GDP on low-carbon innovation incentives.

I am not an expert on the numbers quoted, so that requires further review and validation. I do admire intellectual honesty and a genuine debate with all of the facts on the table as we have some very important priority decisions to make now with a new President and Congress. I’m hoping we’ll put aside philosophical arguments and let the best ideas win out … especially for the sake of the world’s poor who have no voice.