Who Benefits Most From the “Green Revolution”?

WHAT might the average person conclude when he reads how the “green revolution” has increased yields so spectacularly? He is apt to think that more and more hungry people are being fed so that their numbers are decreasing.

Is that the case? Unfortunately, it is not. It is not the most needy who are benefiting the most. We can see why when agriculture experts explain what must be done to produce the new high-yield crops.

For one thing, explains Professor of Virology Dean Fraser of Indiana University, the new seeds produce abundantly “only with the application of large amounts of fertilizer.” So fertilizer must also be available. But fertilizer supplies are not always plentiful in underdeveloped lands.

Even when such supplies are available, the farmer must be able to afford the fertilizer. Most farmers in poorer lands are themselves poor. Hence, the farmer who is already better off and can afford the fertilizer usually reaps the greater benefits, not the one who suffers the most hunger or poverty.

A More Urgent Requirement

There is something else required that is even more critical than fertilizer. In India’s Green Revolution author F. R. Frankel states: “The successful cultivation of the dwarf wheats depends even more heavily on assured supplies of water. In fact, irrigation at fixed times in the growth cycle of the plant is essential to the realization of its high-yield potential.” And rice needs even more water than wheat.

Irrigation is not the same as rainfall. The new varieties cannot depend upon uncertain rainfall. They require regular irrigation. So an assured supply of water is a necessity. This irrigation water could come from river systems by means of canals. But in poorer lands, these often have not been built. In most cases pumps are required to bring groundwater to the surface.

All of this takes technology; machines are needed to dig canals, and factories to make pumps. Also, Frankel says: “In addition, the new wheats also require more sophisticated farm equipment to produce optimum yields: improved ploughs, discs, and harrows for proper land leveling [otherwise irrigation would not be practical]; seed and fertilizer drills for shallow planting and exact spacing of seedlings; and plant protection equipment to ward off rusts and other diseases.”

Who is in a position to afford all of this? Again, it is the farmer who is already more prosperous.

Note that protection equipment is needed. This includes the heavy use of pesticides to protect the new grains. Not only does this take money to obtain, but it is a pollutant. However, wide use is excused as the lesser of two evils. It is felt that a hungry man is not as concerned about long-range harm from pesticides. He wants to get food into his stomach. Yet, there is the inevitable price to pay later.

Summarizing these requirements, U.S. News & World Report stated: “The new seeds alone, however, cannot revolutionize agriculture. Their full genetic potential cannot be realized without irrigation and plenty of fertilizer and pesticides.” All of that takes money. The poor and hungry are not the ones who have it.

Unevenly Distributed

Because of such reasons as the foregoing, the book India’s Green Revolution declares: “The gains of the new technology have been very unevenly distributed.”

This conclusion is backed up in the book The Survival Equation, which says this:

“One must say that the revolution is highly ‘selective,’ . . . It is enough to recall that three-fourths of India’s cultivated acreage is not irrigated, and ‘dry’ farming predominates. If for no other reason, vast parts of the country have not been touched by the transformation at all and equally vast parts can boast only of ‘small islands within.’ . . .

“The green revolution affects the few rather than the many not only because of environmental conditions but because the majority of the farmers lack resources . . . Waiting to be part of it and yet not getting there create potentially disturbing social, economic and political issues. And this is the other side of the coin in any assessment of the course of the green revolution.”

Hence, while total harvests and income may go up, they are not evenly distributed. For example, in two of India’s major wheat-growing areas, Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, an estimated 80 percent of all farms are less than eight acres in size. This means that they usually do not have the resources to take advantage of the new technology. So a relatively small percentage of the really needy are benefited. In fact, in all India, it is said that 185 million people live on farms which are less than five acres in size.

Also, in many poorer lands there are farmers who do not own their farms but who rent from landlords. And in recent years, land values have risen. Near areas where the “green revolution” has been in evidence, values have sometimes risen three-, four- or fivefold. As a consequence, rents have skyrocketed, making it more difficult for the tenant farmer. And some landowners, seeing the profits that can be made from the newer crops, decide to farm the land themselves. So they push the tenant farmers off the land, reducing them to landless workers.

The number of landless workers in rural areas is staggering. In India alone those who own no land are said to be over 100 million persons. That is in addition to the millions of poor people crowded into the cities.

These landless workers in India, together with the 185 million others operating less than five acres, represent nearly 309 million people! That is the majority of India’s rural population. And most of them live in abject poverty. Their average income is said to be only 200 rupees (about $21) per person per year.

The results? India’s Green Revolution states that this has “actually led to an absolute deterioration in the economic condition” of the poorer people. And an economist writes in The Survival Equation that ‘the rich get richer, but the poor poorer.’

Thus, the very people that the “green revolution” was to help are the very ones it is helping the least. And in the underdeveloped nations of the world, that is a problem of huge proportions.

“Green Revolution” Could Turn “Red”

The scope of the problem can be seen by noting the words of India’s Prime Minister, Indira Gandhi. Addressing the Chief Ministers of all the states in India, she said: “The warning of the times is that unless the green revolution is accompanied by a revolution based on social justice the green revolution may not remain green.”

The implication is that it could turn “red,” that is, Communistic, as a reaction against continued poverty, hunger and injustice. That has happened before where the poor have seen their situation deteriorating while others, especially the wealthier, benefited from new technology.

Nor should you conclude that this is just an isolated situation in one country. It is the rule rather than the exception. An agricultural official from Colombia told guests at a food conference in that country: “The ‘Green Revolution’ is bypassing the people, the people who need it the most. It is deepening the gap between the ‘haves’ and the ‘have-nots.’”

Also, The Bulletin, an Australian weekly magazine, said: “The failure of food to get ahead of numbers is not primarily an agricultural problem but an economic one. The fact is, the mass of people are too poor to buy the better foods they need, even when they are available.” And that is true to an extent even in the United States, where the government pays farmers to keep land out of production while at the same time millions of Americans are undernourished, not able to afford an adequate diet for good health.

Summarizing this situation, a late report issued by A. H. Boerma, Director-General of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, declares: “The distribution of the added income in agriculture has, if anything, become more unequal, with the result that the absolute numbers of hungry and malnourished have increased over the years.”

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The book “India’s Green Revolution” states that only a minority are benefiting and that most of the poor are getting poorer