To feed the world

1  He was wandering in a rice field of dreams. The plants were taller than a man. Their ears hung full as brooms, and each grain was as big as a peanut. After walking a while he lay down in the leaf-shade, quite hidden. A rest was a good idea, because the wonder-plants went on and on.

2  Then Yuan Longping woke up, laughing. The rice plants, which 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 ones, and the grains plumper. They had all the vigor of the wild strain that he and his team had found in Hainan in 1970 and had crossbred with the domesticated variety. Some skeptical people told him he was wasting his time, since rice was a self-pollinator. He believed that crossbreeding was universal and 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 70 million more people could be fed every year. China’s rice yield had risen from 57 million tons in 1950 to 208 million in 2022, transforming China from food deficiency to food security. Higher rice yields allowed farmers to turn more land to other uses – fruit, vegetables, fishponds – so that people not onlyhad more to eat, but ate well. And this message was for China as well as the world. He traveled across Asia and to Africa and America to help people grow rice, as well as inviting his foreign peers to China to share his research. A fifth of all rice grown globally now comes from hybrids 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 was widely known as the Father of Hybrid Rice, and even an asteroid was named after him. Although he was famous, he chose to stay away from the spotlight and devoted himself to rice growing. His face was leathered by the sun and his big hands were rough from “playing in the mud” all day. He was far happier in his short-sleeved work shirts, out in his rice field, than in a suit in some conference hall. As an official of the World Food Prize Foundation said, Professor Yuan was incredibly humble. He never sought fame or adulation, but rather focused only on hard work and results that could help eradicate poverty and lift people out of hunger.

5  Yuan Longping was born in Beijing, but he enjoyed the countryside and the thought of growing tasty things. Inspired by his initial interest, he decided to study agriculture in college. After graduation, Yuan Longping took a job as a teacher in Anjiang 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, and a watermelon on a pumpkin, but found that any inherited traits vanished in the second generation. Then he read about plant genetics, and turned his full attention to China ’s staple, rice.

7  As a boy he was fascinated by the deliciousness of Xiaozhan Rice from Tianjin, said to be the best in China at that time. Around Anjiang, what the farmers wanted was quantity: miracle-yields from their fields. They would cross the mountains to get better seeds, so he did the same, traveling around China to find the strong wild male-sterile plants he needed. Once he found them, it took three years to perfect the hybridizing and another three to get his super rice into commercial production. 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 rice fields in the world were planted with his hybrid rice, an increase in yield of two tons per hectare would feed 400-500 million 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 white chrysanthemums. Several of the mourners said that whenever they sat down to a meal, or merely smelled the fragrance of rice, they would remember “Grandfather Yuan”. Among the flowers were the traditional bowls of boiled rice, the best thing to commemorate the Father of Hybrid Rice.

让世界告别饥饿

1 他徜徉在一片梦幻般的稻田里。水稻长得比人还高，它们垂着的穗子饱满得像扫把，颗颗谷粒像花生米一样大。走了一会儿后，他躺下来在禾下纳凉，身影隐没其中。休息一下是个好主意，因为神奇水稻无边无际，一眼望不到头。

2 接着袁隆平就醒了，笑了起来。这些水稻是他几十年间陆续在湖南安江和长沙培育的，他播种、培育，每天骑着摩托车去察看水稻的生长情况。这些水稻还未达到理想状况，但仍然配得上“超级稻”这个名号。比起普通水稻，超级稻的叶子长得更直、更长，结的谷粒也更饱满。这些水稻具有之前发现的野稻品种的所有活力。袁隆平和他的团队1970年在海南发现了该野稻品种，并把它与人工栽培的品种进行了杂交。一些持怀疑态度的人对他说他在浪费时间，因为水稻属于自花授粉作物。袁隆平相信杂交现象普遍存在，而且杂交总会使后代更强壮。

3 数字说明一切。他的新杂交水稻的年产量提高了20%，这意味着每年至少可以多养活7000万人。中国水稻产量从1950年的5700万吨增加到2022年的2.08亿吨。中国告别了粮食短缺，实现了粮食安全。更高的水稻产量使农民能够将更多土地用于其他用途——种植水果、蔬菜或者建造鱼塘，这样人们不仅吃得饱，而且吃得好。杂交水稻的贡献还跨越了国界，惠及全世界。袁隆平游历亚洲、非洲和美洲，帮助人们种植水稻，还邀请外国同行来中国分享他的研究成果。现在全球种植的水稻中有五分之一来自他培育的杂交品种。

4 袁隆平因此荣获了中国最高荣誉勋章——“共和国勋章”，以及世界粮食奖。他以“杂交水稻之父”而广为人知，甚至还有一颗小行星以他的名字命名。虽然他很有名，但他选择避开媒体关注，专心种水稻。他的脸被太阳晒得又黑又粗糙，他的一双大手因为整天“与泥巴打交道”也变得粗糙了。他穿着短袖工作服在外面的稻田里劳作，比穿着西装在会议厅里开会要快乐得多。正如世界粮食奖基金会的一位官员所说，袁教授非常谦虚。他从不追求名利，而是把心思都花在帮助消除贫困、使人们摆脱饥饿的勤奋工作及其成果上了。

5 袁隆平在北京出生，但他喜欢农村，喜欢琢磨如何种出好吃的东西。受到最初兴趣的激励，他决定在大学学习农业。毕业后，他在安江农业学校任教。他说：“吃饱饭是人民的头等大事。”

6 袁隆平最初研究嫁接。他在红薯上嫁接月光花，在土豆上嫁接番茄，在南瓜上嫁接西瓜，但他发现所有遗传特征到了第二代就消失了。随后他阅读了植物遗传学方面的资料，并将全部注意力转向研究中国的主食——水稻。

7 小时候，他就对天津小站稻的美味很着迷，据说小站稻是当时中国最好的米。在安江周边地区，农民想要的是产量，他们期盼农田能有奇迹般的高产量。他们会翻山越岭去寻找更好的种子。袁隆平也一样，为了寻找所需的强壮的野生雄性不育植株，他踏遍了中国的山山水水。找到它们后，他花了三年时间完善杂交，又花了三年时间将他的超级稻投入商业化生产。然后，水稻产量就呈陡直曲线飙升。

8 他不断努力优化水稻：使之耐盐以便在沿海地区种植，与玉米杂交使其更有营养，使其富含维生素A以改善人们的视力。他满脑子想的都是，只要世界上有一半的稻田种植他的杂交水稻，每公顷产量增加两吨，那么每年就可以多养活4-5亿人。而且，他一直谈论着比人还高的水稻。

9 他去世后的第二天，长沙殡仪馆外，一波又一波前来悼念的人们敬献的黄白菊花堆得像山一样。几位哀悼者说，每次坐下来吃饭，或者只是闻到稻米香，他们就会想起“袁爷爷”。鲜花丛中摆着几碗传统的米饭，这是对“杂交水稻之父”最好的纪念。