Obituary
113. Norman Borlaug
Sep 17th 2009 From The Economist print edition

Norman Borlaug, feeder of the world, died on September 12th, aged 95

113-1-519
AS DAWN broke over northern Mexico, Norman Borlaug wriggled from his sleeping bag. Rats had run over him all night, and he was cold. In a corner of the dilapidated research station where he had tried to sleep, he found a rusting plough. He took it outside, strapped the harness to himself, and began, furiously and crazily, in front of a group of astonished peasants, to plough the land.
The point was that he needed a tractor, and at once. He had come to Mexico in 1944, leaving a good job at DuPont, to increase grain yields, and to bring these half-starving people food. Hunger made its own imperatives. Feeding people could not wait. For the next ten years he was to work 12-hour days in these dry, baking fields, walking at a half-stoop to examine the stems for disease, perching on a stool to remove, with delicate tweezers, the male stamens of wheat flowers, harvesting wheat at one altitude to plant it immediately at another, until by 1956 Mexico's wheat production had doubled, and it had become self-sufficient.
Wherever he went, Mr Borlaug showed the same impatience. Paperwork was spurned in favour of action planting, advising, training thousands. In India, where he set up hundreds of one-acre plots to show suspicious farmers how much they could grow, he was so frustrated by bureaucracy that when at last his seed came, shipped from Los Angeles, he planted it at once despite the outbreak of war between India and Pakistan, sometimes by flashes of artillery fire. And when in 1984 he was drawn out of semi-retirement to take his seed and techniques to Africa, he forgot in a moment, once he saw the place, his plan to do years of research first. "Let's just start growing," he said.

A. 어휘
feeder 먹을 것을 주는 사람, 사육자. wriggle 꿈틀거리다, 몸부림치다.
dilapidated 황폐한. research station 연구소. rusting 녹이 쓸고 있는.
plough 쟁기. strap 가죽끈으로 묶다. harness 마구, 장비.
furiously 맹렬히. astonished peasants 놀란 농부들.
grain yield 곡물생산. starve 굶어 죽다.
imperative 긴급사항, 명령, 피할 수 없는 것.
baking fields 불에 굽는 것처럼 무더운. stoop 허리를 구부림.
examine 점검하다. perch 새가 앉다. stool 등받이가 없는 의자.
tweezers 족집게. stamen 식물의 수술, 雄"122(웅예). wheat 밀.
harvest 수확하다. altitude 高地(고지), 高度(고도), 標高(표고).
self-sufficient 자급자족할 수 있는. impatience 조바심하기, 참을 수 없음.
paperwork 서류업무. spurn 쫓아내다. plot 작은 땅, 구획.
frustrate 실망하다, 실패시키다, 좌절하다. bureaucracy 관료주의.
outbreak 勃發(발발). artillery fire 대포의 砲火(포화).
retirement 은퇴.

B. 구문
- Hunger made its own imperatives.
[배고픔이 스스로 시급한 명령을 내렸다.(배고픔이 배고픔을 해결해 달라고 요구하였다)]

113-2-520
As a boy, he hadn't known what hunger was. He came from a small Norwegian farm in Iowa, the land of butter-sculptures and the breaded tenderloin sandwich. But on his first trip to "the big city", Minneapolis, in 1933, grown men had begged him for a nickel for a cup of coffee and a small, dry hamburger, and a riot had started round him when a milk-cart dumped its load in the street. He saw then how close to breakdown America was, because of hunger. It was impossible "to build a peaceful world on empty stomachs".
Crop diseases drew his attention first, inspiring him to turn from forestry to plant pathology under Charles Stakman, a lifelong mentor, at the University of Minnesota. Rusts especially exercised him: how they lived, under the green live tissue of stems, how they spread, travelling for miles on the jet stream, and how they fell from the sky to infect even the healthiest crop, if the moisture and temperature were right. Rust had devastated the Midwest in the 1930s, and Mexico shortly before he went there. So Mr Borlaug first bred wheat cultivars for rust-resistance, a ten-year task, and then crossed them with Norin, a dwarf Japanese variety, to produce a shorter, straighter, stronger wheat which, when properly charged with water and fertiliser, gave three times the yield.

A. 어휘
butter-sculptures 버터로 만든 조각품. tenderloin 안심, 허리부분의 연한 살코기.
nickel 5센트 동전. riot 騷擾(소요), 폭동. breakdown 몰락, 정신쇠약.
empty 비어 있는. crop 농작물. forestry 林學(임학).
plant pathology 식물병리학. mentor 스승. rust 식물의 綠病(녹병), 녹.
exercise 괴롭히다. live tissue 생체 조직. stem 줄기. infect 감염하다.
moisture 습기. devastate 황폐시키다. breed-bred-bred 번식시키다.
cultivar=cultivated variety 재배 변종식물. rust-resistance 녹병에 대한 저항력.
cross 交配(교배)하다. dwarf 난쟁이. variety 변종, 종류.
straight 곧은, 똑바른. fertiliser 비료. yield 생산.