Plant pathologist Norman Borlaug, 95, died this Saturday, raising questions about the legacy of industrial food in the Third World. In 1970, Borlaug received a Nobel Peace Prize for averting famine through bringing fertilizers, pesticides and new plant strains to countries like India, Mexico and Pakistan. But environmentalists argue that his plant engineering only delayed catastrophe at great ecological costs.

According to the Washington Post, Borlaug grew up in Iowa and was touched by the lines of people in bread lines during the Great Depression. He wanted to solve the issue of hunger. After getting his Ph.D in plant pathology in 1942, he worked on a team requested by the Mexican government to increase wheat production. First, he grew wheat in two seasons rather than one. Then, Borlaug developed a short-stalked “dwarf” wheat because fertilizer had made the old variety so tall the stalk fell over.

With Mexico on his resume, Borlaug went to develop dwarf rice species for Southeast Asia. By the end of his career, according to his foundation, the World Food Prize, he had programs in Latin America and Southeast Asia, along with a fat portfolio in the Middle East: Beginning in the early 1960’s, his approach to wheat breeding was introduced in Egypt, Tunisia, Syria, Iran, Libya, Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey, Iraq, Afghanistan, Algeria and Saudi Arabia. By the mid-1980s, he was pushing for a Green Revolution in Africa, too.