I was merely refuting the crass claim that giving money to a starving woman and child [...] must be better than creating economic tools.

But you didn't refute it, because "give the money to someone who will do as much good as Norman Borlaug" is not an instruction anyone is in a position to follow. "Give the money to someone engaged in plant-breeding research" might be, but the example of Borlaug gives only very weak reason to think that this will be effective. Likewise for "Give the money to a government-funded research institute", "Give the money to the Mexican government", "Give the money to someone called Norman", etc.

note the incidental misandry!

I don't see any misandry there. There would likewise be no misogyny if Benito had written "... a father and child starving to death". In either case, you could argue that there's some sort of misplaced gender asymmetry going on, but I don't see that it's misanythingy. Regardless, is there some point you were making ("people who want to give money to poor people in Africa are sexists!" or something), or was this just a tactical shot aimed at making someone who disagrees with you look bad?