Green revolution

The increase in the use of various technologies, such as pesticides, herbicides and fertilizers, as well as new varieties of high-performance crops were used in the decades following World War II to greatly increase global food production.

"Green Revolution" is the name used internationally to describe the significant increase in agricultural productivity and, therefore, in food between 1960 and 1980 in the United States and later extended to numerous countries. It consisted in the adoption of a series of practices and technologies, including the planting of cereal varieties (wheat, corn and rice, mainly) more resistant to extreme climates and pests, new cultivation methods (including the mechanization), as well as the use of fertilizers, pesticides and irrigation by irrigation, which made it possible to achieve high productive yields.

It was initiated by the American agronomist architect Norman Borlaug, with the help of international agricultural organizations, who dedicated himself for ten years to carrying out selective crossings of varieties of wheat, corn and rice in developing countries, until obtaining the most productive ones.. Borlaug's motivation was the low agricultural production with traditional methods, in contrast to the optimistic perspectives of the green revolution regarding the eradication of hunger and malnutrition in underdeveloped countries. The revolution affected, at different times, all countries and it can be said that the process of production and sale of agricultural products has almost totally changed.

The green revolution was highly successful in increasing production, but insufficient importance was given to nutritional quality, resulting in the expansion of cereal varieties with low-quality protein and high carbohydrate content These high-yielding cereal crops, widely spread and currently predominant throughout the world, have deficiencies in essential amino acids and an unbalanced content of essential fatty acids, vitamins, minerals and other factors of nutritional quality.

Although the expansion of these high-calorie cereals managed to avoid starvation in much of the world for several decades, the nutritional impoverishment suffered by diets based on them has exacerbated the problem of malnutrition and the increasing incidence of certain chronic diseases in apparently well-nourished people (the so-called "diseases of civilization"). Not only have human diets suffered directly through the consumption of these cereals, but also due to the impoverishment of the quality of the foods. products of animal origin (derived from animals fed with these cereals).

The term "green revolution" was first used in 1968 by former director of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), William Gaud, who highlighted the spread of new technologies, saying: "These and other developments in the field of agriculture contain the ingredients 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”.

The green revolution mostly benefited large growers, who had the resources and had the need to acquire new technologies, contrary to what happened with small lands.

History

The agricultural development that began in Sonora (Mexico) in 1943, led by Norman E. Borlaug, had been judged a success by the Rockefeller Foundation, which tried to spread it to other countries. The Oficina de Estudios Especiales in Mexico became an informal international research institution in 1959, and in 1963 it formally became the International Center for Maize and Wheat Improvement (CIMMYT).

The new varieties of wheat and other grains played a decisive role in the green revolution.

In 1961, India was on the brink of mass famine. Borlaug was invited to the country by M. S. Swaminathan, adviser to the Indian Minister of Agriculture, S. K. Patil. Despite bureaucratic obstacles imposed by the Indian grain monopolies, the Ford Foundation and the Indian government collaborated to import CIMMYT wheat seed. The Government selected the Punjab region to test the new crops because of a reliable water supply and a long history of agricultural success. Thus, India began its own green revolution program in plant breeding, irrigation development, and financing of agrochemicals.

Evolution of wheat crop productivity in developing countries (kilograms per hectare) between 1950 and 2004, according to FAO.

India soon adopted IR8, a semidwarf rice variety developed by the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) in the Philippines—where the green revolution was also being tested—that could produce more grains per plant when grown with certain fertilizers and irrigation. In 1968, the Indian agronomist Surajit Kumar De Datta published his findings that IR8 rice had produced about five tons per hectare without fertilizer, and almost ten tons per hectare under optimal conditions. This was ten times the yield of traditional rice. The IR8 was a success throughout Asia; Nicknamed the "miracle rice", it was also developed on the semidwarf IR36.

In the 1960s, rice yields in India were about two tons per acre; by the mid-1990s, it had risen to six tons per hectare. In the 1970s, the cost of rice was around $550 per ton; in 2001, it cost less than US$200 per ton. India became one of the world's most successful rice producers, and is now a major rice exporter, shipping almost 4.5 million tons in 2006.

In Mexico, wheat production went from a yield of 750 kg per hectare in 1950, to 3,200 kg on the same area in 1970. Between the years 1940 and 1984, world grain production increased by 250%. In conclusion, the results in terms of increased productivity were spectacular.

Today, Gurdev Sing Khush is fighting for an "even greener revolution" to address the food shortages of this millennium. For this, the next objective is to produce more rice with less land and irrigation requirements, without insecticides or chemical herbicides. This researcher affirms that, to reach the goal of 840 million tons, the production system would have to be revised, invest more in irrigation and train farmers to use new technologies. He maintains that studies on rice cultivation are going to be oriented to a greater extent towards organic farming. In the next thirty to fifty years, varieties capable of withstanding higher temperatures, caused by global warming, should also be available.^{[citation required]}

Criticism

The negative aspects did not take long to appear: unknown and harmful storage problems, excessive cost of seeds and complementary technology, technological dependence, the excessive cost of labor, the better adaptation of traditional crops eliminated or the appearance of new pests.

For this reason, the green revolution was widely criticized from various points of view, from ecological to economic, through cultural and even nutritional.

Organic Agriculture

As a result of this, movements were created that fight for the reduction of the use of agrochemicals. The International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements explains its foundation as follows: «[…] all agricultural systems that promote the healthy and safe production of food and textile fibers from the environmental, social and economic point of view. Where they start from the fertility of the soil as the basis for a good production, respecting the demands and the environment in all its aspects. Organic agriculture considerably reduces the need for external contributions by not using fertilizers, chemical substances, pesticides or other synthetic products. Instead it allows the powerful laws of nature to increase both yields and crop resistance."

In general, industrial agriculture is based on these main pillars:

• agricultural machinery and food transport,
• agrochemicals (pesticides and synthesis fertilizers), to produce several harvests throughout the year (then, intensive farming is called).
• biotechnology and
• irrigation systems (in conjunction with intensity, which causes the extraction of fertility, the extraction and exhaustion of water, has led to the denomination of water as well as agro-extractivism).

Of the four, the first two are directly related to oil production. Thus, in the same way that industrial agriculture has been an important factor in the demographic transition, a possible depletion of oil could mean future famines, food crises and a drastic increase in mortality worldwide.

Answer from Norman Borlaug

The greater use of irrigation plays an important role in the green revolution.

Borlaug dismissed the claims of some of the critics of the green revolution, but considered other concerns, saying his work had been:

a change in the right direction, but has not transformed the world into a utopia.

Of the environmental lobby groups, he said:

some of the environmental pressure groups of Western nations are the salt of the earth, but many of them are elitist. They have never experienced the physical sensation of hunger. They do their lobbying work from comfortable office suites in Washington or Brussels [...]. If they lived only a month in the midst of the misery of the developing world, as I have done for fifty years, they would be cried for tractors and fertilizers and irrigation channels and they would be indignant that fashion elitists from their homes are trying to deny these things.

Bourlaug himself considered the creation of GMOs a natural extension of his own work in the green revolution that must be continued, and that opposition to GMOs stems from the same type of environmental activism—anti-scientific, from his point of view. view—that questions the achievements of the green revolution:

They say it because they have the full belly. The ecological opposition to GMOs is elitist and conservative. Criticism comes, as always, from the most privileged sectors: those who live in the comfort of Western societies, those who have not known the famines closely.

Additional bibliography

• Dr Arvind Upadhayaya. «Black spots in Green revolution» (in English).
• Conway, Gordon (1998). The doubly green revolution: food for all in the twenty-first century (in English). Ithaca, NY: Comstock Pub. ISBN 978-0-8014-8610-4.
• Dowie, Mark (2001). American foundations: an investigative history (in English). Cambridge, MA: MIT. ISBN 978-0-262-04189-8.
• Farrell, John Joseph; Altieri, Miguel A. (1995). Agroecology: the science of sustainable agriculture (in English) (2nd edition). Boulder, CO: Westview Press. ISBN 978-0-8133-1718-2.
• Frison, Emile (2008). "Green Revolution in Africa will depend on biodiversity." Development and Cooperation (in English) 49 (5): 190-93. Archived from the original on December 8, 2008.
• Jain, H.K. (2010). The Green Revolution: History, Impact and Future (in English) (1st edition). Houston, TX: Studium Press. ISBN 978-1-933699-63-9.
• Oasa, Edmund K (1987). «The Political Economy of International Agricultural Research in Glass». In Glaeser, Bernhard, ed. The Green Revolution revisited: critique and alternatives (in English). Allen & Unwin. pp. 13–55. ISBN 978-0-04-630014-2.
• Ross, Eric (1998). The Malthus Factor: Poverty, Politics and Population in Capitalist Development (in English). London: Zed Books. ISBN 978-1-85649-564-6.
• Ruttan, Vernon (1977 language = English). "The Green Revolution: Seven Generalizations." International Development Review 19: 16-23.
• Sen, Amartya Kumar; Drèze, Jean (1989). Hunger and public action (in English). Oxford: Clarendon Press. ISBN 978-0-19-828365-2.
• Shiva, Vandana (1989). The violence of the green revolution: Ecological degradation and political conflict in Punjab (in English). Dehra Dun: Research Foundation for Science and Ecology. ISBN 978-81-85019-19-2.
• Smil, Vaclav (2004). Enriching the Earth: Fritz Haber, Carl Bosch, and the Transformation of World Food Production (in English). MIT Press. ISBN 978-0-262-69313-4.
• Spitz, Pierre (1987). «The Green Revolution Re-Examined in India in Glass». In Glaeser, Bernhard, ed. The Green Revolution revisited: critique and alternatives (in English). Allen & Unwin. pp. 57–75. ISBN 978-0-04-630014-2.
• Wright, Angus (1984). «Innocence Abroad: American Agricultural Research in Mexico». In Bruce Colman; Jackson, Wes; Berry, Wendell, eds. Meeting the expectations of the land: essays in sustainable agriculture and stewardship (in English). San Francisco: North Point Press. pp. 124-38. ISBN 978-0-86547-171-9.
• Wright, Angus Lindsay (2005). The death of Ramón González: the modern agricultural dilemma (in English). Austin: University of Texas Press. ISBN 978-0-292-71268-3.
• Cotter, Joseph (2003). Troubled Harvest: Agronomy and Revolution in Mexico, 1880–2002. Westport, CT: Prager (in English)
• Deb, Debal, Restoring Rice Biodiversity, Scientific American, vol. 321, no. 4 (October 2019), pp. 54–61. (in English)
• Harwood, Andrew (14 June 2013). "Development policy and history: lessons from the Green Revolution". (in English)
• Hurt, R. Douglas. The Green Revolution in the Global South: Science, Politics, and Unintended Consequences. Nexus Series. Tuscaloosa: University Alabama Press, 2020. ISBN 978-0-8173-2051-5. (in English)
• Jain, H.K. (2010). Green revolution: history, impact and future. Houston: Studium Press. ISBN 978-1441674487. (in English).
• Lewis-Nang'ea, Amanda. Review of Hurt, R. Douglas, The Green Revolution in the Global South: Science, Politics, and Unintended Consequences. H-Environment, H-Net Reviews. February, 2021. http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=55547 (in English)
• Randhawa, M.S. 1974. Green Revolution. New York: John Wiley & Sons. (in English)
• Singh, Pratibha (2017). «India's Evergreen Revolution». Future of Food: Journal on Food, Agriculture and Society (in English) 5 (2): 70-79. (in English)
• Yadav, O.P.; Singh, D.V.; Dhillon, B.S.; Mohapatra, Trilochan (2019). «India's evergreen revolution in cereals». Current Science (in English) 116 (11): 1805-1808. S2CID 189922600. doi:10.18520/cs/v116/i11/1805-1808. (in English)