Who fed China’s 1.4 billion people?
Born in 1930 in Beijing, at 19 he witnessed starvation on the streets—bodies lying frozen, people desperate for food. He abandoned the official career his parents had planned and entered agricultural college instead.
For years, his experimental fields were destroyed, seedlings uprooted, and he was called a madman. But he never gave up.
In 1964, after examining 140,000 rice panicles under the scorching sun with a magnifying glass, he discovered the first male sterile rice plant—the seed of the "three-line" hybrid rice system. Over the next seven years, he traveled across provinces collecting samples, even tying seeds around his waist to use body heat for germination during train rides.
In 1973, he found a wild rice plant with sterile pollen. Then came NanYou 1, AiYou, WeiYou, ShanYou... Yields rose from 500 to over 1,000 kilograms per mu. Behind each precise number were millions of Chinese who no longer went hungry.
That man was Yuan Longping. He made China the first nation to successfully harness hybrid rice on a large scale. Now, even in old age, he is either in the rice fields or on his way there. When asked if he fears a return of famine, he simply replied: “It won’t happen. It won’t happen.”