Norman Borlaug (1914-2009) disrupted American foodways on an unprecedented scale. Unlike most profit-conscious Food Disruptors, Borlaug dedicated his life to agricultural research. He labored for decades with his hands in the soil.

Borlaug experienced hunger first-hand. He witnessed bloody food riots during the Great Depression. Motivated to raise people up through improved grain yields, he fundamentally altered wheat crops.

In 1944, Mexico was starving. In the same fields, under the same brutal conditions as poor, Mexican agricultural workers, Borlaug developed a wheat hybrid that could withstand the terrible blight of black stem rust that wiped out wheat crops worldwide. Borlaug also introduced chemicals such as nitrogen into poor soils to boost crop production.

The semi-dwarf strain of wheat could tolerate a wide range of climatic conditions. It grew on short stalks so it could hold up plumper seed heads.

By 1963, 95 percent of the Mexican wheat crop was Borlaug's variety, the country was a net wheat exporter, and its wheat yield was 6 times that of 1944.

In the 1960s, India and Pakistan were at war, and populations of both countries were starving. Surmounting considerable bureaucratic obstacles, Borlaug succeeded in introducing his high-yield, disease-resistant crops to the Indian subcontinent. Food production grew faster than populations in this region by the late 1960s.

Borlaug's crop development techniques were transferred to Asian rice production in the 1960s.

In 1970, Borlaug received the Nobel Peace Prize. Billions of lives were saved through his methodologies.

HOWEVER, as always with disruption of foodways, unintended consequences emerged and plague our food system today. Reduction of bio-diversity in a crops as fundamental as wheat and rice increases the vulnerability of global food supplies. Huge-scale mono-crop farming has caused top-soil depletion. Chemical inputs to this type of farming have created horrible downstream effects, including tens of thousands of square miles of ocean dead zones.