And as the global hero Norman Borlaug has shown, genetic engineering and biotech can even do exactly this for denser food production.

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Dr. Norman Borlaug is one of only three Americans to ever win the Nobel Peace Prize, the Congressional Gold Medal (America's highest civilian honor) and the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

WHITEHOUSE: A Nobel Prize for Food and Agriculture

Norman Borlaug had got a Nobel in 1970 for developing the high yielding wheat at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Centre in Mexico, and had been supported by the Rockefeller Foundation.

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In 1952 news of Vogel's wheat filtered down to a remote research station in Mexico, where a man named Norman Borlaug was breeding fungus-resistant wheat for a project funded by the Rockefeller Foundation.

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Born on a farm in northeast Iowa in 1914, Norman Borlaug became a plant pathologist who, while working among the poorest farmers in Mexico in the 1940s and 50s, developed a new "miracle wheat" which was able to resist disease and triple the yield.

WHITEHOUSE: A Nobel Prize for Food and Agriculture

We are in deep trouble, McHughen noted, when the media and the public are willing to equate the views of Jeffrey Smith or Jeremy Rifkin with those of the late Norman Borlaug, the Nobel Laureate and one of the pioneers behind the green revolution that has saved tens of millions of lives.

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