As a
general rule, the most successful man in life is the man who has the best
information
The second
half of the 20th century saw the biggest increase in the world’s population
in human history. Our population surged
because:
- Medical advances lessened the mortality rate in
many countries
- Massive increases in agricultural productivity
because of the “Green Revolution”
The global
death rate has dropped almost continuously since the start of the industrial
revolution - personal hygiene, improved methods of sanitation and the
development of antibiotics have all played a major role.
The term
Green Revolution refers to a series of research, development, and technology transfers
that happened between the 1940s and the late 1970s. The
initiatives involved:
- Development of high yielding varieties of
cereal grains
- Expansion
of irrigation infrastructure
- Modernization
of management techniques
- Mechanization
- Distribution of hybridized seeds, synthetic
fertilizers, and pesticides to farmers
Tractors
with gasoline powered internal combustion engines (versus steam) became the
norm in the 1920s after Henry Ford developed his Fordson
in 1917 - the first mass produced tractor. This new technology was available
only to relatively affluent farmers and it was not until the 1940s tractor
use became widespread.
Electric
motors and irrigation pumps made farming and ranching more efficient. Major
innovations in animal husbandry - modern milking parlors, grain elevators,
and confined animal feeding operations -
were all made possible by electricity.
Advances
in fertilizers, herbicides, insecticides, fungicides, antibiotics and growth
hormones all led to better weed, insect and disease control.
There were
major advances in plant and animal breeding - crop hybridization, artificial
insemination of livestock, and genetically modified organisms (GMOs).
Further
down the food chain came innovations in food processing and distribution.
All these
new technologies increased global agriculture production with the full
effects starting to be felt in the 1960s.
Cereal
production more than doubled in developing nations - yields of rice, maize,
and wheat increased steadily. Between 1950 and 1984 world grain production
increased by over 250% - and the world added over two billion more people for
dinner.
The Green
Revolution
The
modernization and industrialization of our global agricultural industry led
to the single greatest explosion in food production in history. The
agricultural reforms and resulting production increases fostered by the Green
Revolution are responsible for avoiding widespread famine in developing
countries and for feeding billions more people since. The Green Revolution
also helped kick start the greatest explosion in human population in our
history - it took only 40 years (starting in 1950) for the population to
double from 2.5 billion to five billion people.
Norman
Borlaug, an American scientist, is often called the Father of the Green
Revolution (GR). In 1943, he began conducting research in Mexico regarding
developing new, disease resistant high yielding varieties of wheat. Mexico
then combined Borlaug's wheat varieties with the agricultural technologies
being developed at the time and was able to become a wheat exporter by the
1960s - prior to Mexico’s Green Revolución
the country was importing almost half of its wheat supply.
Improving
seeds is what people have been doing since the beginning of agriculture -
people selected the biggest seeds that were easiest to thresh and stored them
for planting the next crop. But in Mexican test plots something special
happened - improved varieties of short stemmed wheat dramatically increased
yields.
What makes
these improved plants successful are:
- Plants with the largest seeds were selected for
breeding to create the most production
- By maximizing the seed or food portion of the
plant, the plant is able to use photosynthesis more efficiently because
the energy produced during this process went directly to the food
portion of the plant
- By selectively breeding plants that were not
sensitive to day length, researchers doubled a crop’s production
because the plants were not limited to certain areas of the globe based
solely on the amount of light available to them
These high
yield plant varieties need:
- Fertilizers
- Irrigation
- Pesticides
The
“revolution" in Green Revolution is well deserved. The new seeds
along with chemical fertilizers, pesticides and more irrigation replaced
traditional farming practices in many areas of the world.
The Green
Revolution: Accomplishments and Apprehensions
Address
by:
The
Honorable William S. Gaud, Administrator
Agency for International Development
Department of State\
Before:
The
Society for International Development
Shorehan Hotel
Washington, DC
March 8,
1968
Over the
last five months we have seen new evidence of their progress. Record yields,
harvests of unprecedented size and crops now in the ground demonstrate that
throughout much the developing world - and particularly in Asia - we are on
the verge of an agricultural revolution.
- In May 1967 Pakistan
harvested 600,000 acres to new high-yielding wheat seed. This spring
(1968) the farmers of Pakistan will harvest the new wheats
from an estimated 3.5 million acres. They will bring in a total wheat
crop of 7-1/2 to 8 million tons - a new record. Pakistan has an
excellent change of achieving self-sufficiency in food grains in another
year.
- In 1967 the new high-yielding
wheats were harvested from 700,000 acres in
India. This year they will be planted to 6 million acres. Another 10
million acres will be planted to high-yield varieties of rice, sorghum,
and millet. India will harvest more than 95 million tons in food grains
this year - again a record crop. She hopes to achieve self-sufficient in
food grains in another three or four years. She has the capability to do so.
- Turkey has demonstrated that
she can raise yields by two and three times with the new wheats. Last year's Turkish wheat crop set a new
record. In 1968 Turkey will plant the new seed to one-third of its
coastal wheat growing area. Total production this year may be nearly
one-third higher than in 1965.
- The Philippines have
harvested a record rice crop with only 14% of their rice fields planted
to new high-yielding seeds. This year more land will be planted to the
new varieties. The Philippines are clearly about to achieve
self-sufficiency in rice.
These and
other developments in the field of agriculture contain the makings of a new
revolution. It is not a violet 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
production advances of the Green Revolution were real.
But by any
yardstick the Green Revolution, while a true, almost global agricultural
revolution, was not as green as many think - there was collateral damage:
- Agricultural output did increase as a result of
the Green Revolution, but the energy input to produce a crop increased
faster - the ratio of crops produced to energy input has decreased. This
is because High Yielding Varieties (HYVs) of seeds only outperform
traditional varieties when adequate irrigation, pesticides and
fertilizers are used
- Green Revolution agriculture produces
monocultures of cereal grains. This type of agriculture relies on the
extensive use of pesticides because monoculture systems - with their
lack of genetic variation - are particularly sensitive to bug
infestations
- The transition from traditional agriculture to
GR agricultural meant farmers became dependent on industrial inputs -
not made on the farm inputs. Farmers faced severely increased costs
because they now had to purchase such items as farming machinery,
fertilizer, pesticides, irrigation equipment and seeds
- The increased level of mechanization on larger
farms removed a large source of employment from the rural economy. New
machinery – mass produced gas tractors, large self propelled
combines and mechanical cotton pickers – all combined to sharply
reduce labor requirements
- Less people were affected by hunger and died
from starvation - but many more are affected by malnutrition such as
iron or Vitamin A deficiencies. Green Revolution grains do not have the
same nutritional values as traditional varieties. The switch from
heavily rotated multiple crops to mono cropping or dual cropping reduces
total soil fertility and the nutritional value of our food
- The Green Revolution reduced agricultural
biodiversity by relying on just a few varieties of each crop. The food
supply could be susceptible to pathogens that cannot be controlled by
agrochemicals
- Many valuable genetic traits, bred into
traditional varieties over thousands of years, are now lost
- Wild plant and animal biodiversity was hurt
because the Green Revolution expanded agricultural development into new
areas where it was once unprofitable or too arid to farm
- The 20/80 phenomenon - the rapid increase in
farm size and the concentration of production among large producers
means 20% of producers generate 80% of the agricultural output
- As a result of modern irrigation practices,
aquifers in places like India (once Borlaug's greatest triumph) and the
US mid west have become depleted. There are two types of aquifers:
replenishable, most of the aquifers in India
and the shallow aquifer under the North China Plain are replenishable – depletion means the maximum
rate of pumping is automatically reduced to the rate of recharge. For
fossil, or nonreplenishable aquifers - like
the U.S. Ogallala aquifer, the deep aquifer under the North China Plain,
or the Saudi aquifer - depletion brings pumping to an end. In the more
arid regions like the southwestern United States or the Middle East the
loss of irrigation water could mean the end of agriculture in these
areas
- Green Revolution techniques rely heavily on
chemical fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides, some of these are developed
from fossil fuels which makes today’s agriculture regime much more
reliant on petroleum products
- Farming methods that depend heavily on chemical
fertilizers do not maintain the soil's natural fertility and because
pesticides generate resistant pests, farmers need ever more fertilizers
and pesticides just to achieve the same results
- The increased amount of food production, and
foods low price, led to overpopulation worldwide
"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".
Norman Borlaug, father of the Green Revolution, winner of the Nobel Peace
Prize in 1970, the 1977 US Presidential Medal of Freedom and the US
Congressional Gold Medal in 2006
The Green
Revolution's use of hybrid seeds, irrigation, chemical fertilizers,
pesticides, fossil fuels, farm machinery, and high-tech growing and
processing systems combined to greatly increase agriculture yields. The Green Revolution is responsible for feeding
billions - and likely enabling the birth of billions more people.
A Harsh
Reality
The modern
agricultural complex spawned by the Green Revolution may have allowed us to
grow more food, but dependence on this high cost industrial input type of
system extracts an extreme toll.
"The
earlier Green Revolution has been criticized for excessive use of pesticides,
excessive use of fertilizer, overexploitation of ground water, and so on. It
had a number of negative consequences – we were able to revolutionize
agriculture in the northwest part of India*, [but] it’s now in
ecological distress." Dr. Monkombu Sambasivan (M.S.) Swaminathan,
father of India’s Green Revolution
* New
technologies were introduced to grow the new varieties of seeds - chemical
fertilizers, pesticides and the drilling of thousands of wells for
irrigation.
By 2050,
the world's population is expected to reach around nine billion - minimum and
maximum projections range from 7.4 billion to 10.6 billion. Norman Borlaug is
on record stating he believed that 100% adoption of presently existing Green
Revolution practices (and adaptation of well advanced research in the pipeline),
could feed 10 billion people on a sustainable basis.
"Future
food-production increases will have to come from higher yields. And though I
have no doubt yields will keep going up, whether they can go up enough to
feed the population monster is another matter. Unless progress with
agricultural yields remains very strong, the next century will experience
sheer human misery that, on a numerical scale, will exceed the worst of
everything that has come before". Norman Borlaug
Unfortunately
the high yield growth is tapering off and in some cases declining. This is in
large part because of an increase in the price of fertilizers, other
chemicals and fossil fuels, but also because the overuse of chemicals has
exhausted the soil and irrigation has depleted water aquifers.
Dr. M.S. Swaminathan said: “stagnation in productivity is
due to depleting natural resources base such as a steep fall in ground water
table, impaired water quality, increasing input cost - particularly diesel,
deficiency of micro-nutrients in the soil, deteriorating soil health, and
high indebtedness of farmers.”
There has
been almost no real increase in funding of the international agricultural
science effort since the 1970s. This global decline in agricultural R&D
means less new technology will be available to farmers. What is available are
Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) - heavily bio-engineered seeds - which
rely on the same industrial credits – fertilizers, pesticides, diesel
and irrigation - that the first Green Revolution did.
Conclusion
Narrowly
focusing on increasing production as the Green Revolution
did cannot
alleviate hunger because it failed to alter three simple facts - an increase
in food production does not necessarily result in less hunger -
if the
poor don't have the money to buy food increased production is not
going to help
them.
Secondly,
a narrow focus on production ultimately defeats itself as it destroys the
base on which agriculture depends – topsoil and water.
And
thirdly to end hunger once and for all, we must make food production
sustainable and develop secure distribution networks of needed foodstuffs.
Here’s
a final word from the father of the Green Revolution:
In his
Nobel lecture of 1970, Borlaug stated: “Most people still fail to
comprehend the magnitude and menace of the population monster. The rhythm of
increase will accelerate . . . unless Man becomes more realistic and
preoccupied about his impending doom.”
In July
2007 Borlaug was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal, the wording of the law
by which it was awarded said: “Dr Borlaug has saved more lives than
any other person who has ever lived.”
The world
spends $1500 billion a year on weapons - perhaps we should put more effort
into playing nice and spend more on figuring out how to feed ourselves?
Let’s
hope that the next developments in Green Revolution food production are at
least as successful as the first. Lets also hope
making Green Revolution Two a little more environmentally friendly is on the
radar screen.
Because if
it isn’t, it should be.
If you're interested in learning more about the junior resource market
please come and visit us at www.aheadoftheherd.com.
Membership is free, no credit card or personal information is asked for.
Richard Mills
Aheadoftheherd.com
|