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The Green Revolutionofagriculture began in 1943, and led in some places to significant increases in agricultural production between the 1940s and 1960s. The associated transformation has continued as the result of programs of agricultural research, extension, and infrastructural development, instigated and largely funded by the Rockefeller Foundation, along with the Ford Foundation and other major agencies.[1] [2] The consensus among some agronomists is that the Green Revolution has allowed food production to keep pace with worldwide population growth. The Green Revolution has had major social and ecological impacts, and with multi-million dollar backing from organizations including the Gates Foundation, the deployment of Green Revolution policies will continue for some time.
The term "Green Revolution" was first used in 1968 by former USAID director William Gaud, who noted the spread of the new technologies and said, "These and other developments in the field of agriculture contain the makings of a new revolution. It is not a violent Red Revolution like that of the Soviets, nor is it a White Revolution like that of the Shah of Iran. I call it the Green Revolution."[3]
The Green Revolution began in 1943 with the establishment of the Office of Special Studies, which was a venture that was a collaboration between the Rockefeller Foundation and the presidential administration of Manuel Avila Camacho in Mexico. While Camacho's predecessor Cárdenas promoted peasant subsistence agriculture through policies of land reform, Avila Camacho's primary goal for Mexican agriculture was to aid in the nation's industrial development and economic growth.[4] US Vice President Henry Wallace, who was instrumental in convincing the Rockefeller Foundation to work with the Mexican government in agricultural development, saw averting famine in Mexico as beneficial to U.S. economic interests.[5]
J. George Harrar, who later became president of the Rockefeller Foundation, headed the Office of Special Studies. Its lead scientists included Norman Borlaug, Edwin Wellhausen, and William Colwell. Researchers from both the United States and Mexico were involved in this program. After the program was closed in 1962, the Mexican government requested a small group of scientists to remain for experimentation purposes. Borlaug, Dr. Delbert T. Myren (communication specialist), John S. Neiderhauser (potato specialist), Edwin J. Wellhausen (maize breeder), Elmer Johnson (maize breeder) and Reggie Laird (agronomist) remained behind to become the nucleus to the CIMMYT staff. CIMMYT was credited with creating short, stiffstrawed, fertilizer-responsive, and disease-resistant varieties of wheat that significantly increased production in Mexico, India, Pakistan, Turkey and in other parts of the globe. These successes won Borlaug the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970. Later in 1970, CIMMYT and IRRI shared the UNESCO Science Prize. Norman Borlaug is often credited with saving over a billion people from starvation.
The Mexican national government invested heavily in rural infrastructure development, and the adoption of new seed varieties became widespread. Mexico became self-sufficient in wheat production by 1951 and began to export wheat thereafter. In 1901, the Mexican population was 13.6 million; by 2005, it had increased to 103.3 million.[6]
With the experience of agricultural development judged as a success, the Rockefeller Foundation sought to spread the Green Revolution to other nations. The Office of Special Studies in Mexico became an informal international research institution in 1959, and in 1963 it formally became CIMMYT, The International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center.
In 1961 India was on the brink of mass famine. Norman Borlaug was invited to India by the adviser to the Indian minister of agriculture M. S. Swaminathan. Despite bureaucratic hurdles imposed by India's grain monopolies, the Ford Foundation and Indian government collaborated to import wheat seed from CIMMYT. Punjab was selected by the Indian government to be the first site to try the new crops because of its reliable water supply and a history of agricultural success. India began its own Green Revolution program of plant breeding, irrigation development, and financing of agrochemicals.[5]
India soon adopted IR8 - a rice variety developed by the International Rice Research Institute that could produce more grains of rice per plant when grown properly with fertilizer and irrigation. In 1968, Indian agronomist S.K. De Datta published his findings that IR8 rice yielded about 5 tons per hectare with no fertilizer, and almost 10 tons per hectare under optimal conditions. This was 10 times the yield of traditional rice.[7] IR8 was a success throughout Asia, and dubbed the "Miracle Rice."
In the 1960s, rice yields in India were about two tons per hectare; by the mid-1990s, they had risen to six tons per hectare. In the 1970s, rice cost about $550 a ton; in 2001, it cost less than $200 a ton. India became one of the world's most successful rice producers, and is now a major rice exporter, shipping nearly 4.5 million tons in 2006.[6]
Famine in India, once accepted as inevitable, has not returned since the introduction of Green Revolution agriculture.
An international group coordinating the efforts of the local groups was formed in 1971 under the urging of the Rockefeller Foundation. The Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research, CGIAR, has added many research centers throughout the world.
CGIAR has responded, at least in part, to criticisms of Green Revolution methodologies. This began in the 1980s, and mainly was a result of pressure from donor organizations.[8] Methods like Agroecosystem Analysis and Farming System Research have been adopted to gain a more holistic view of agriculture. Methods like Rapid Rural Appraisal and Participatory Rural Appraisal have been adopted to help scientists understand the problems faced by farmers and even give farmers a role in the development process.
There have been numerous attempts to introduce the successful concepts from the Mexican and south Asian projects into Africa. These programs have generally been less successful, for a number of reasons. Among these is widespread corruption, insecurity, a lack of infrastructure, and a general lack of will on the part of the governments.
A recent program in western Africa is attempting to introduce a new high-yield variety of rice known as "Nericas". Nericas yields about 30% more rice under normal conditions, and can double yields with small amounts of fertilizer and very basic irrigation. However the program has been beset by problems getting the rice into the hands of farmers, and to date the only success has been in Guinea where it currently accounts for 16% of rice cultivation.[9]
The projects within the Green Revolution spread technologies that had already existed, but had not been widely used outside of industrialized nations. These technologies included pesticides, irrigation projects, and synthetic nitrogen fertilizer.
The novel technological development of the Green Revolution was the production of what some referred to as “miracle seeds.”[10]
Agronomists created strains of maize, wheat, and rice that are generally referred to as HYVs or “high-yielding varieties.” HYVs have an increased nitrogen-absorbing potential compared to other varieties. Since cereals that absorbed extra nitrogen would typically lodge, or fall over before harvest, semi-dwarfing genes were bred into their genomes. Norin 10 wheat, a variety developed by Orville Vogel from Japanese dwarf wheat varieties, was instrumental in developing Green Revolution wheat cultivars. IR8, the first widely implemented HYV rice to be developed by IRRI, was created through a cross between an Indonesian variety named “Peta” and a Chinese variety named “Dee Geo Woo Gen.”[11]
With advances in molecular genetics, the mutant genes responsible for reduced height(rht), gibberellin insensitive (gai1) and slender rice (slr1)inArabidopsis and rice were identified as cellular signaling components gibberellic acid (aphytohormone involved in regulating stem growth via its effect on cell division) and subsequently cloned. Stem growth in the mutant background is significantly reduced leading to the dwarf phenotype. Photosynthetic investment in the stem is reduced dramatically as the shorter plants are inherently more stable mechanically. Assimilates become redirected to grain production, amplifying in particular the effect of chemical fertilizers on commercial yield....
HYVs significantly outperform traditional varieties in the presence of adequate irrigation, pesticides, and fertilizers. In the absence of these inputs, traditional varieties may outperform HYVs.
Cereal production more than doubled in developing nations between the years 1961 – 1985.[12] Yields of rice, maize, and wheat increased steadily during that period.[12] The production increases can be attributed roughly equally to irrigation, fertilizer, and seed development, at least in the case of Asian rice.[12]
While agricultural output increased as a result of the Green Revolution, the energy input into the process (that is, the energy that must be expended to produce a crop) has also increased at a greater rate,[13] so that the ratio of crops produced to energy input has decreased over time. Green Revolution techniques also heavily rely on chemical fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides, some of which must be developed from fossil fuels, making agriculture increasingly reliant on petroleum products.[14] Proponents of the Peak Oil theory fear that a future decline in oil and gas production would lead to a decline in food production or even a Malthusian catastrophe.[15]
The effects of the Green Revolution on global food security are difficult to understand because of the complexities involved in food systems.
The world population has grown by about four billion since the beginning of the Green Revolution and most believe that, without the Revolution, there would be greater famine and malnutrition. India saw annual wheat production rise from 10 million tonnes in the 1960s to 73 million in 2006.[16] The average person in the developing world consumes about 25% more calories per day now than before the Green Revolution.[12] Between 1950 and 1984, as the Green Revolution transformed agriculture around the globe, world grain production increased by 250%.
The production increases fostered by the Green Revolution are widely credited with having helped to avoid widespread famine, and for feeding billions of people.[17]
Some criticisms generally involve some variation of the Malthusian principle of population. Such concerns often revolve around the idea that the Green Revolution is unsustainable[18][19][20], and argue that humanity is currently in a state of overpopulation with regards to the sustainable carrying capacity of the earth.
Malthusianism has been evident throughout the history of the Green Revolution. The team sent to survey Mexican agriculture in 1941 for the Rockefeller Foundation cited the high birth rate and relative inadequacy of its agriculture as a cause for concern.[21] In 1959, the Ford Foundation carried out a study in India that stated the nation’s population would outstrip its food supply by 1966, although the validity of its methodology was a subject of criticism.[22] At Borlaug's Nobel acceptance speech he stated, "...we are dealing with two opposing forces, the scientific power of food production and the biologic power of human reproduction."[23]
To some modern Western sociologists and writers, increasing food production is not synonymous with increasing food security, and is only part of a larger equation. For example, Harvard professor Amartya Sen claimed large historic famines were not caused by decreases in food supply, but by socioeconomic dynamics and a failure of public action. [24] However, economist Peter Bowbrick has accused Sen of misrepresenting historical data, telling outright lies and being wrong on his theory of famines. In fact Bowbrick argues that Sen's views coincide with that of the Bengal government at the time of the Bengal famine of 1943 and the policies Sen advocates failed to relieve the famine.
Some have challenged the value of the increased food production of Green Revolution agriculture. Miguel A. Altieri, a self-proclaimed "agroecologist" and peasant-advocate, writes that the comparison between traditional systems of agriculture and Green Revolution agriculture has been unfair, because Green Revolution agriculture produces monocultures of cereal grains, while traditional agriculture usually incorporates polycultures.[25] Additionally, some claim traditional systems of agriculture that were displaced by the Green Revolution such as the chinampas in Mexico or raised-field rice farming in Asia can be highly-productive.[26] Critics point out that these traditional forms of agriculture produced less food than Green Revolution crops, and were prone to famine, as evidenced by the frequency of famine in these communities.
There are several claims about how the Green Revolution may have decreased food security for some people. One such claim involves the shift of subsistence-oriented cropland to cropland oriented towards production of grain for export and/or animal feed. For example, the Green Revolution replaced much of the land used for pulses that fed Indian peasants for wheat, which did not make up a large portion of the peasant diet.[27] Also, the pesticides involved in rice production eliminated fish and weedy green vegetables from the diets of Asian rice farmers.[28] Critics of this view counter that this presupposes an inherent superiority of subsistence living, which tends to be romanticized in rich Western countries.
The Green Revolution is unpopular among many leftists because of its context within the Cold War.
A major critic of the Green Revolution, the US investigative journalist Mark Dowie, writes that the primary objective of the program was a Cold War geopolitical one: providing food for the populace in underdeveloped countries which thus brought social stability and weakened the fomenting of communist insurgency. Citing internal Foundation documents, he states that the Ford Foundation had a greater concern than Rockefeller in this area.[29]
Additionally, it is maintained elsewhere that there is a significant amount of evidence suggesting the Green Revolution had the effect of weakening socialist movements in many nations. In countries like India, Mexico, and the Philippines, technological solutions were sought as an alternative to expanding agrarian reform initiatives, the latter of which were often linked to socialist politics.[30]
The transition from traditional agriculture in which inputs were generated on-farm to Green Revolution agriculture, which required the purchase of inputs, lead to the widespread establishment of rural credit institutions. Smaller farmers often went into debt, which in many cases result in a loss of their farmland.Cite error: A <ref> tag is missing the closing </ref> (see the help page). Because wealthier farmers had better access to credit and land, the Green Revolution increased class disparities. Because some regions were able to adopt Green Revolution agriculture more readily than others (for political or geographical reasons), interregional economic disparities increased as well. Many small farmers are hurt by the dropping prices resulting from increased production overall.[citation needed]
The new economic difficulties of small holder farmers and landless farm workers led to increased rural-urban migration. The increase in food production led to a cheaper food for urban dwellers, and the increase in urban population increased the potential for industrialization.
In the most basic sense, the Green Revolution was a product of globalization as evidenced in the creation of international agricultural research centers that shared information, and with transnational funding from groups like the Rockefeller Foundation, Ford Foundation, and USAID. Additionally, the inputs required in Green Revolution agriculture created new markets for seed and chemical corporations, many of which were based in the United States. For example, Standard Oil of New Jersey established hundreds of distributors in the Philippines to sell agricultural packages composed of HYV seed, fertilizer, and pesticides.[31]
Green Revolution agriculture increased the use of pesticides, which were necessary to limit the high levels of pest damage that inevitably occur in monocultures.
Irrigation projects have created significant problems of arsenic contamination, salinization, waterlogging, and lowering of water tables in certain areas.[32]
The spread of Green Revolution agriculture affected both agricultural biodiversity and wild biodiversity. There is little argument that the Green Revolution acted to reduce agricultural biodiversity, as it relied upon just a few high-yield varieties of each crop. This has led to concerns about the susceptibility of a food supply to pathogens that cannot be controlled by agrochemicals, as well as the permanent loss of many valuable genetic traits bred into traditional varieties over thousands of years. To address these concerns, massive seed banks such as CGIAR’s International Plant Genetic Resources Institute (now Bioversity International) have been established (see Svalbard Global Seed Vault).
There are varying opinions about the effect of the Green Revolution on wild biodiversity. One hypothesis speculates that by increasing production per unit of land area, agriculture will not need to expand into new, uncultivated areas to feed a growing human population. A counter-hypothesis speculates that biodiversity was sacrificed because traditional systems of agriculture that were displaced sometimes incorporated practices to preserve wild biodiversity, and because the Green Revolution expanded agricultural development into new areas where it was once unprofitable or too arid.
Nevertheless, the world community has clearly acknowledged the negative aspects of agricultural expansion as the 1992 Rio Treaty, signed by 189 nations, has generated numerous national Biodiversity Action Plans which assign significant biodiversity loss to agriculture's expansion into new domains.
Norman Borlaug has dismissed most claims of critics, but does take certain concerns seriously. He states that his work has been "a change in the right direction, but it has not transformed the world into a Utopia". Of environmental lobbyists he has stated, "some of the environmental lobbyists of the Western nations are the salt of the earth, but many of them are elitists. They've never experienced the physical sensation of hunger. They do their lobbying from comfortable office suites in Washington or Brussels. If they lived just one month amid the misery of the developing world, as I have for fifty years, they'd be crying out for tractors and fertilizer and irrigation canals and be outraged that fashionable elitists back home were trying to deny them these things".
