The forgotten world is made up primarily of the developing nations, where most of the people, comprising more than fifty percent of the total world population, live in poverty, with hunger as a constant companion and fear of famine a continual menace.

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.