Lester R. Brown Facts
Lester R. Brown Facts
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| Interesting Lester R. Brown Facts: |
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| Lester Brown was born in Bridgeton, New Jersey on a farm without running water or electricity. |
| His many chores on the farm taught him much about the interplay of environment, food, and plant pathology. |
| In 1951 he and his younger brother, Carl, started a tomato growing business which grew to eventually sell over 1.5 million pounds of tomatoes a year. |
| In 1955 he earned his degree in agricultural science from Rutgers University and he went to India through the International Farm Youth Exchange Program. |
| He saw the result of food scarcity and it changed his life. |
| In 1959 he earned a Master's degree in agricultural economics from the University of Maryland and joined the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Foreign Agricultural Service in the Asia branch. |
| In 1960 he earned a Master's of public administration from Harvard's Graduate School of Public Administration. |
| In 1963 he published Man, Land and Food which was a comprehensive study of population, food and land resources. |
| The Secretary of Agriculture read the report and offered Brown a job on his staff where he became the resident specialist on global issues. |
| From 1966 to 1969 he led the International Agricultural Development Service where his job was to increase food production in Third World countries. |
| He was an early proponent of the Green Revolution which used better seeds and cultivation techniques to increase food supplies. |
| In 1974 he received a grant of $500,000 from the Rockefeller Brothers fund to found the Worldwatch Institute, the first think tank devoted to studying global environmental issues. |
| In 1986 he received a $250,000 "genius award" from the MacArthur Foundation. |
| Among the most influential of his more than 50 books is Who Will Feed China? which launched many conferences on the world-wide effects of food shortages. |
| In 2009 he wrote Plan B which was written as a wake-up call to world leaders to save civilization and makes the point that we are reaching a point of no-return. |
| Among his 26 international awards he received the Arthur S. Fleming award in 1969, the A.H. Boerma award from the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization in 1981, the Lorax award of the Global Tomorrow Coalition in 1985 and the World Wildlife fund for Nature in 1989. |
| In 2010 and 2011 he was listed as one of Foreign Policy's Top 100 Global thinkers. |
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