Contrasting sharply, in the developing countries represented by India, Pakistan, and most of the countries in Asia and Africa, seventy to eighty percent of the population is engaged in agriculture, mostly at the subsistence level.

Later in his life he helped apply these methods of increasing food production to Asia and Africa. Norman Ernest Borlaug (March 25 1914 – September 12 2009) was an American agronomist humanitarian and Nobel laureate who has been called "the father of the Green Revolution" and "The Man Who Saved A Billion Lives". He took up an agricultural research position in Mexico where he developed semi-dwarf high-yield disease-resistant wheat varieties.