The Green Revolution, or the Third Agricultural Revolution, was a period during which technology transfer initiatives resulted in a significant increase in crop yields. These changes in agriculture initially emerged in developed countries in the early 20th century and subsequently spread globally until the late 1980s. In the late 1980s, farmers began incorporating new technologies, including high-yielding varieties of cereals, particularly dwarf wheat and rice, and the widespread use of chemical fertilizers (to produce their high yields, the new seeds require far more fertilizer than traditional varieties), pesticides, and controlled irrigation.
At the same time, newer methods of cultivation, including mechanization, were adopted, often as a package of practices to replace traditional agricultural technology. This was often in conjunction with loans conditional on policy changes being made by the developing nations adopting them, such as privatizing fertilizer manufacture and distribution.
Both the Ford Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation were heavily involved in its initial development in Mexico.Wright, Angus, "Downslope and North: How Soil Degradation and Synthetic Pesticides Drove the Trajectory of Mexican Agriculture through the Twentieth Century" in Christopher R. Boyer, A Land Between Waters: Environmental Histories of Modern Mexico. Tucson: University of Arizona Press 2012, pp. 22–49.Gary Toenniessen et al. "Building an alliance for a green revolution in Africa." Annals of the New York academy of sciences 1136.1 (2008): 233–242. online A key leader was agricultural scientist Norman Borlaug, the "Father of the Green Revolution", who received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970. He is credited with saving over a billion people from starvation. Another important scientific figure was Yuan Longping, whose work on hybrid rice varieties is credited with saving at least as many lives. The basic approach was the development of high-yielding varieties of cereal grains, expansion of irrigation infrastructure, modernization of management techniques, distribution of hybridized seeds, synthetic fertilizers, and pesticides to farmers. As crops began to reach the maximum improvement possible through selective breeding, genetic modification technologies were developed to allow for continued efforts.Hurt, The Green Revolution in the Global South, p. 161
Studies show that the Green Revolution contributed to widespread eradication of poverty, averted hunger for millions, raised incomes, limited the increase of greenhouse gas emissions, reduced land use for agriculture, and contributed to declines in infant mortality.
History
Use of the term
The term "Green Revolution" was first used by William S. Gaud, the administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), in a speech on 8 March 1968. He noted the spread of the new technologies as:
Development in Mexico
Mexico has been called the 'birthplace' and 'burial ground' of the Green Revolution.Esteva, Gustavo, The Struggle for Rural Mexico. South Hadley MA: Bergin & Garvey Publishers 1983, p. 57. It began with great promise and it has been argued that "during the twentieth century two 'revolutions' transformed rural Mexico: the Mexican Revolution (1910–1920) and the Green Revolution (1940–1970)."Cotter, Joseph. Troubled Harvest: Agronomy and Revolution in Mexico, 1880–2002, Westport, CT: Praeger. Contributions in Latin American Studies, no. 22, 2003, p. 1.
The genesis of the Green Revolution was a lengthy visit in 1940 by U.S. Vice President-elect Henry A. Wallace, who had served as U.S. Secretary of Agriculture during President Franklin Roosevelt's first two terms, and before government service, had founded a company, Pioneer Hi-Bred International, that had revolutionized the hybridization of seed corn to greatly increase crop yields. He became appalled at the meager corn yields in Mexico, where 80 percent of the people lived off the land, and a Mexican farmer had to work as much as 500 hours to produce a single bushel of corn, about 50 times longer than the typical Iowa farmer planting hybrid seed. Wallace persuaded the Rockefeller Foundation to fund an agricultural station in Mexico to hybridize corn and wheat for arid climates, and to lead it, he hired a young Iowa agronomist named Norman Borlaug.
The project was supported by the Mexican government under new President Manuel Ávila Camacho, and the U.S. government, the United Nations, and the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). For the U.S. government, its neighbor Mexico was an important experimental case in the use of technology and scientific expertise in agriculture that became the model for international agricultural development.Wright, "Downslope and North", pp. 22–23. Mexico sought to transform agricultural productivity, particularly with irrigated rather than dry-land cultivation in its northwest, to solve its problem of lack of food self-sufficiency.David Barkin, "Food Production, Consumption, and Policy", Encyclopedia of Mexico vol. 1, p. 494. Chicago: Fitzroy Dearborn 1997. In the center and south of Mexico, where large-scale production faced challenges, agricultural production languished.James W. Wessman, "Agribusiness and Agroindustry", Encyclopedia of Mexico vol. 1, p. 29. Chicago: Fitzroy Dearborn Publishers 1997 Increased production promised food self-sufficiency in Mexico to feed its growing and urbanizing population with the increase in a number of calories consumed per Mexican.Barkin, "Food Production", p. 494. The science of hybridization was seen as a valuable way to feed the poor and would relieve some pressure of the land redistribution process. In general, the success of "Green Revolution" depended on the use of machinery for cultivation and harvest, on large-scale agricultural enterprises with access to credit (often from foreign investors), government-supported infrastructure projects, and access to low-wage agricultural workers.Wright, "Downslope and North", p. 38.
Within eight years of Wallace's visit, Mexico had no need to import food, for the first time since 1910; within 20 years, corn production had tripled, and wheat production had increased five-fold. In 1943, Mexico imported half of its wheat requirements, however by 1956 it had become self-sufficient and it was exporting half a million tons of wheat by 1964. Within 30 years, Borlaug was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for ultimately saving two billion people from starvation.
Mexico was the recipient of knowledge and technology of the Green Revolution, and it was an active participant with financial supports from the government for agriculture and Mexican agronomists. In the aftermath of the Mexican Revolution, the government had redistributed land to ejidatarios in some parts of the country which had broken the back of the hacienda system. During the presidency of Lázaro Cárdenas (1934–1940), land reform in Mexico reached its apex in the center and south of Mexico. Agricultural productivity had fallen significantly by the 1940s.
After Borlaug's agricultural station was established, in 1941, a team of U.S. scientists, Richard Bradfield (Cornell University), Paul C. Mangelsdorf (Harvard University), and Elvin Charles Stakman (under whom Borlaug had studied at the University of Minnesota) surveyed Mexican agriculture to recommend policies and practices.E.C. Stakman, Richard Bradfield, and Paul C. Mangelsdorf, Campaigns Against Hunger. Cambridge MA: Belknap Press 1967. In 1943, the Mexican government founded the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT), which became a base for international agricultural research.
Agriculture in Mexico had been a sociopolitical issue, a key factor in some regions' participation in the Mexican Revolution. It was also a technical issue enabled by a cohort of trained agronomists who advised ejidatarios on how to increase productivity.Cotter, p. 10 In the post-World War II era, the government sought development in agriculture that bettered technological aspects of agriculture in regions not dominated by small-scale ejido cultivators. This drive for agricultural transformation brought Mexico self-sufficiency in food, and in the political sphere during the Cold War, helped stem unrest and the appeal of Communism.
The Mexican government created the Mexican Agricultural Program (MAP) to be the lead organization in raising productivity. Mexico became the showcase for extending the Green Revolution to other areas of Latin America and beyond, into Africa and Asia. New breeds of maize, beans, and wheat produced bumper crops with additional inputs (such as fertilizer and pesticides) and careful cultivation. Many Mexican farmers who had been dubious about the scientists or hostile to them (often a mutual relationship of discord) came to see the scientific approach to agriculture as worth adopting.Cotter, p. 235
The requirements for the full package of inputs of new strains of seeds, fertilizer, synthetic pesticides, and water were often not within the reach of small-scale farmers. The application of pesticides could be hazardous for farmers. Their use often damaged the local ecology, contaminating waterways and endangering the health of workers and newborns.Wright, "Downslope and North", pp. 39–41
One of the participants in the Mexican experiment, Edwin J. Wellhausen, summarized the factors leading to its initial success. These include: high yield plants without disease resistivity, adaptability, and ability to use fertilizers; improved use of soils, adequate fertilizers, and control of weeds and pests; and "a favorable ratio between the cost of fertilizers (and other investments) to the price of the produce."Wellhausen, Edwin, "La agricultura en México". Ciencia y Desarrollo, vol. 1, no. 13, March–April 1977, p. 40
IR8 rice and the Philippines
In 1960 during the administration of President Carlos P. Garcia the Government of the Republic of the Philippines with the Ford Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation established the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI). A rice crossing between Dee-Geo-woo-gen and Peta was done at IRRI in 1962. In 1966, one of the breeding lines became a new cultivar: IR8 rice. The administration of President Ferdinand Marcos made the promotion of IR8 the lynchpin of the Masagana 99 program, along with a credit program. The new variety required the use of fertilizers and pesticides but produced substantially higher yields than the traditional cultivars. Annual rice production in the Philippines increased from 3.7 to 7.7 million tons in two decades. The switch to IR8 rice made the Philippines a rice exporter for the first time in the 20th century, though imports still exceeded exports, according to data from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization. From 1966 to 1986, the Philippines imported around 2,679,000 metric tons and exported only 632,000 metric tons of milled rice. By 1980, however, problems with the credit scheme rendered the loans accessible only to rich landowners while leaving poor farmers in debt. The program was also noted to have become a vehicle of political patronage.
Start in India
In 1961, Norman Borlaug was invited to India by the adviser to the Indian Minister of Agriculture Dr. M. S. Swaminathan. Despite bureaucratic hurdles imposed by India's grain monopolies, the Ford Foundation and Indian government collaborated to import wheat seed from the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT). The state of Punjab was selected by the Indian government to be the first site to try the new crops because of its reliable water supply, the presence of Indus plains which make it one of the most fertile plains on earth, and a history of agricultural success. India began its own Green Revolution program of plant breeding, irrigation development, and financing of agrochemicals.