What Is the “Green Revolution”?

JUST a few years ago, starvation was reported to be affecting hundreds of millions of persons in various lands. Every day thousands of deaths were said to be taking place due to food shortages.

This was especially so of India. There, two consecutive years of poor rains, in 1965 and 1966, produced a drought that severely affected crops. Loss of life from hunger was great. Only massive shipments of food from other countries prevented a complete catastrophe.

As a result, dire predictions of world famine came from many sources. Some authorities estimated that the mid-1970’s would certainly see that famine. There were those who even said that the world famine had already begun.

Yet, today there is not as much said about people actually starving to death around the world as there was then. Indeed, we now hear of food ‘surpluses’ in some places where there used to be great shortages only a few years ago.

What is the reason for this? It is because a ‘revolution’ has been taking place in the production of food grains. So highly regarded is this phenomenon that it is given the name “green revolution.”

However, it has also raised questions, such as the following: How did this “green revolution” come about? Are there dangers associated with it? Is it really helping the poor and hungry of the world? Is it the answer to man’s food problems? Let us examine each of these questions.

How It Began

The “green revolution” more specifically has to do with the successful development of very high-yielding types of wheat and rice. It is so important because these two grains, especially rice, are the staple foods for most of earth’s population.

This “green revolution” began about the year 1965. It had its start earlier in a joint program of wheat improvement conducted in Mexico between that country’s Ministry of Agriculture and the Rockefeller Foundation.

The first breakthrough came as the result of efforts by a team of agriculture experts headed by Dr. Norman E. Borlaug. This was after about twenty years of experimenting. They developed varieties of wheat that produced up to four bushels where only one bushel had grown before!

The new wheat was short, and its stalk very stiff. This was important, as it enabled the plant to avoid falling down under the weight of the extra-large heads of grain. Also, it was not sensitive to the length of the daytime period. This meant that it could be planted even in those parts of the earth where the daylight hours differed from where the seed was developed. Also, it had a very high response to fertilization and irrigation.

At about the same time, a new high-yield rice plant was developed in the Philippines. The agency responsible for this was the International Rice Research Institute. This discovery did for rice what the Mexican experiments did for wheat.

In 1965 these new grains were planted on a larger experimental scale in Asia. Several hundred acres were sown. Today, only seven years later, tens of millions of acres are planted in the new varieties in various parts of the earth! This is particularly true of the wheat-growing areas of India and Pakistan. In the Philippines and other Southeast Asia rice-growing areas, plantings of the new rice varieties have also increased rapidly.

How Effective Has It Been?

The production of grain has undergone a marked change because of the new varieties. In several countries there have been large increases in grain production. The magazine BioScience of November 1, 1971, noted particularly India and Pakistan, “where, it is said, they are dispelling the specter of widespread famine or at least postponing it for perhaps a generation.”

Previously, the best harvest for India was during the 1964-65 crop year. Then, about 89 million tons of grain were produced. But for 1970-71 about 107 million tons were reported. The most spectacular increase was registered by the wheat crop. It more than doubled in six years, from about 11 million tons to 23 million tons. Rice production has not expanded as spectacularly. Yet, some Indian officials predicted that 1972 could see “self-sufficiency” in that basic food.

As a result of the large increases in crop yields, some famine-prone areas of the world that formerly had to import huge amounts of grain were reported to have enough now, or were even exporting it. This success with the new grains has induced more and more farmers to plant them each year.

From this, one could conclude that science has at last found the answer to man’s food problems. It would seem that the hungry peoples of the world have only to plant the new varieties of wheat and rice and starvation can be avoided.

A Warning

Yet, many agriculture experts warn against such a conclusion. They say that the “green revolution” is not solving mankind’s hunger problems now, and will not do so in the future!

For instance, in the book The Survival Equation, an article by agricultural economist Wolf Ladejinsky states the following:

“For nearly five years the ‘green revolution’ has been under way in a number of agriculturally underdeveloped countries of Asia. Its advent into tradition-bound rural societies was heralded as the rebuttal to the dire predictions of hunger stalking large parts of the world.

“But more than that, those carried away with euphoria at the impending changes saw in them a remedy for the poverty of the vast majority of the cultivators. . . .

“However, the propitious circumstances in which the new technology thrives are not easily obtainable and hence there are inevitably constraints on its scope and progress. Apart from this, where it has succeeded, the revolution has given rise to a host of political and social problems. In short, the green revolution can be, as Dr. Wharton correctly pointed out in ‘Foreign Affairs’ in April 1969, both a cornucopia and a Pandora’s box.”

Why are many authorities issuing warnings against undue optimism, right in the midst of the “green revolution”? What are some of the problems being encountered? How do they affect the possibility of the “green revolution” being able to overcome hunger and poverty?

One problem holds great potential danger. It has to do with the genetic background of the new grain varieties.

[Picture on page 4]

A new high-yield rice plant developed in the Philippines did for rice what Mexican experiments did for wheat, but is this solving the problem?