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                             To feed the World

    1.  He was wandering in a ricefield of dreams. The plants were tall as sorghum, taller than a man. Their panicles hung full as brooms, and each grain was as big as a peanut. After walking a while he lay down in the leaf-shade with a friend, quite hidden. A rest was a good idea, because the wonder-plants went on and on. In fact, they covered the world. 

    2. Then Yuan Longping woke up, laughing. The rice plants he had tended for decades at Anjiang and then Changsha in Hunan province, sowing and nurturing them, visiting daily on his motorbike to inspect them, were not quite there yet. But they still deserved their name of super rice. The leaves were straighter and taller than ordinary, and the grains plumper. They had all the vigour of the wild strain that he and his team had found, after much searching, beside a railway line in Hainan in 1970 and had cross-bred, over careful years, with the domesticated variety. Sceptics told him he was wasting his time, since rice was a self-pollinator. He believed that cross-breeding was universal and, besides, that it always made the offspring stronger. 

3 The figures spoke for themselves. With his new hybrid rice the annual yield was 20 higher. This meant that at least 70million more people could be fed every year. China's rice yield had risen from 57 million tons in 1950 to 208 million in2022, transforming China from food deficiency to food security.Higher rice-yields allowed farmers to turn more land toother uses—fruit, vegetables, fishponds—so that people not only ate more, but ate well. And this message was for theworld, as well as China.Once his rice grew well, he sent seeds to the International Rice Research Institute in thePhilippines. Then he travelled widely, all across Asia and to Africa and America, as well as inviting foreign students tothe Hunan Hybrid Rice Research Centre in Changsha to instruct them. A fifth of all rice grown globally now comes fromhybrids that were his.

4 For this Yuan Longping won the Medal of the Republic, China 's highest state honor, and the World Food Prize.He waswidely known as the father of Hybrid Rice, and even an asteroid was named after him. Although he was famous, hechose to stay away from the spotlight and devoted himself to rice growing.His face was leathered by sun and his bighands were rough from “playing in the mud” all day. He was far happier in his short-sleeved work-shirts, out in his ricefield, than in a suit in some conference hall. As an official of the World Food Prize Foundation said,Professor Yuan wasincredibly humble.He never sought fame or adulation, but rather focused only on hard work and results that could helperadicate poverty and lift people out hunger.

5 Yuan Longping was born in Beijing, but he enjoyed the countryside and the thought of growing tasty things.Inspiredby his initial interest,he decided to study agriculture in college.After graduation,Yuan Longping took a job as teacher inAnjiang Agricultural School.He said,"Having enough food was people's priority."”

6 Yuan Longping had at first worked on grafting.He grafted moonflowers on sweet potatoes, tomatoes on potatoes, anda watermelon on a pumpkin, but found that any inherited traits vanished in the second generation.Then he read aboutplant genetics, and turned his full attention to China's staple, rice.

7As a boy he was enraptured by the deliciousness of xiaozhan rice from Tianjin, said to be the best in China.AroundAnjiang, what the peasants wanted was quantity: miracle-yields from their fields.They would cross the mountains to getbetter seeds, so he did the same, travelling round China to find the strong wild male-sterile plants he needed.Once hefound them, it took three years to perfect the hybridizing and another three to get his super rice into commercialproduction.Then, in a steep curve, yields soared away.

8 he kept on working to make rice better:salt-tolerant to grow by the coast, crossbred with corn to be more nutritious.enriched with Vitamin A to improve people 's eyesight.His mind was filled with the thought that if just half of the ricefields in the world were planted with his hybrid rice, an increase in yield of two tons per hectare would feed 400-500million more people every year. And he still talked of plants taller than a man.

9 Outside the funeral home in Changsha on the day after his death, crowds came to lay a mountain of yellow and whitechrysanthemums. Several of the mourners said that whenever they sat down to a meal, or merely smelled the fragranceof rice, they would remember "Grandfather Yuan".Among the flowers were the traditional bowls of boiled rice,the bestthing to commemorate the Father of Hybrid Rice.