I’ve never met Norman Borlaug. If I bumped into him at the local diner, I wouldn’t recognize him.

He’s 93, so if I did bump into him, I hope the bump would be figurative, not literal.

But what’s important about him is not his age, it’s his accomplishments. As Greg Easterbrook pointed out on The Huffington Post website, this man has saved more human lives than probably anyone else alive.

And yet he didn’t get much national news coverage on the day he received the Congressional Gold Medal. ABC, NBC, CBS? No coverage there.

Why?

Well, years ago, while professional population ecologists were prophesying mass famine and starvation, Borlaug researched crop varieties and traveled around the world like Johnny Appleseed, spreading best-of-practice agriculture. By increasing crop yields, he saved millions of lives.

Unfortunately, lots of folks earn a lot of money telling you that it takes lots of government to fight poverty. But Borlaug never bought into that. Years ago he warned that “pervasive” and “well-camouflaged bureaucracy” was “[o]ne of the greatest threats to mankind.”

He may have saved millions of lives in places like India and Pakistan, yes. But he did it by helping the poor help themselves. That puts too many professional helpers out of business. Besides, that’s in no way nearly as dramatic and newsworthy as a famine.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.