1 . He was wandering in a rice field of dreams.     1     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.

Then Yuan Longping woke up, laughing.     2    . 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 vigor of the wild strain that he and his team had found after much searching and had cross-bred, over careful years, with the domesticated variety.

The figures spoke for themselves.     3    . In Yunnan province more than 17000 kilograms had been produced per hectare. China’s rice crop had risen from 57m tonnes in 1950 to 195m in 2017; from food deficiency, to food security. Higher rice-yields allowed farmers to turn more land to other uses-fruit, vegetables, fishponds-so that people ate more and well.

For this he won the Medal of the Republic, China’s highest, and the World Food Prize. An asteroid was named after him. There was talk of the Nobel, too.     4    . Though he was rich, from his shares in a seed company that used his name, he looked like a peasant, thin as a twig, with his face leathered by sun and his big hands rough from “playing in the mud” all day.

He was far happier in his short-sleeved work-shirts, out in his rice, or stripped off swimming in any wild river he could find, than in a tang suit in some conference hall.