During the past three years spectacular progress has been made in increasing wheat, rice, and maize production in several of the most populous developing countries of southern Asia, where widespread famine appeared inevitable only five years ago.

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.