Week 12: Green Revolution, Hunger, Food Insecurity,

The Green Revolution

-As the world population grows, the food supply must also grow, putting more pressure on agriculture

-Norman Borlaug, father of the Green Revolution, scientist, geneticists, agronomist

• His technological breakthrough (HYV wheat) in the 50s and 60s in Mexico, helped achieve the transformation of farming through agricultural development

• Waging a War Against Hunger

• Borlaug given the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970 for his work

Biotechnology

-to increase the world’s food production in developing countries through the use of biotechnology

-Technology brought to developing regions of the world, such as India, Pakistan, and in Latin America

Pros and Cons of Biotechnology in Agriculture

Emphasizes monoculture (uniformity of crops and limited variety) for efficiency

Pros:

• higher crop yield (HYV) using less land

• Vaccinated with genes for desirable traits - disease, pest, and drought resistance

• Reduced reliance on herbicides and pesticides and irrigation

Improvement

between 1950 and 1984 world grain production increased by 250% and the world saw a 70% population increase

Mixed Results

-in the 1950s and 1960s, the Green Revolution was promoted as a solution to world hunger through a rise in agricultural production, but results have been mixed

-nearly 1B remain undernourished

Vandana Shiva

-physicist, ecologist, activist, editor, author

-founder of Navdanya

• a movement for biodiversity conservation and farmers’ rights

-Founder and director of the Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Natural Resource Policy

-Critique of the Green Revolution

Cons of Green Revolution, negative occurrences

“The first year you get a seed package, the second year you get a credit package, and the third year you get a debt package” - Vandana Shiva

• Farmers have abandoned traditional agriculture, losing biodiversity

• 250 traditional crops varieties replaced by mono cropping of rice, wheat

• Dwarf crops eliminate multiple functions such as fodder for animals and organic matter for soil

  • cows eat grass→manure from the cows on the grass → the grass uses it as nutrients

  • Cows eat corn →manure from the cows on the grass → the grass can’t use it as nutrients

• climate change brings unpredictability of monsoons and rainfalls necessary to grow crops

• poorer farmers that can’t pay lost their farms - suicides

• land-grabs result by corporations for commercial use

• poorer families can’t buy expensive grain - surplus

Unintended Consequences

• lower protein content of genetically modified food - starchy food - focus on yield not nutrition

  • touch of the population is fed but remains malnourished

• Expensive for poorer farmers to buy seeds and necessary chemical inputs to “turn on” desirable traits

• Pest-resistance builds and ‘super-bug’ are created making increased use of pesticides necessary - exposure leads to illness and cancer risk

• Heavy dependence on fossil fuels once cheap and abundant and water for irrigation

• soil degradation - chemicals strip soils of nutrients

  • requires increased use of synthetic fertilizers

Monsanto

“No food shall be grown that we don’t own”

• purposely threw their seeds into other farmers land to own them

  • their seeds are patented so once they end up in their fields, Monsanto owns it

Marginal Returns - GR Part 2

• Green Revolution - style agriculture and biotechnology to produce food, did not cure world hunger, but it did transform food production into an industry, creating large agribusiness corporations around the world

• Between 1945 and 1994 energy input to agriculture increased fourfold while crop yields increase only threefold

• Since then, energy input has continued to increase without a corresponding increase in crop yield

• we have reached the point of marginal returns

Failure of the Green Revolution (Pfeiffer, 2006)

• According to Pfeiffer, the failure of the Green Revolution results from a misunderstanding of the causes if starvation in the world today

• “Hunger is not caused by a lack of food, but from a lack of access to food” (Marxist view)

• Failure of the profit-based market system to distribute food equitably

• Along with it’s accompanying land degradation and overuse of water and fossil fuels - unsustainable agriculture

• Solution: social, agrarian and democratic reforms and recognizing every person’s right to a subsistence diet

Maxist view in the eyes of GR

• Between 1950 and 1984 world grain production increased by 250% and the world saw a 70% population increase

• It allowed the population to grow in excess the planets’ carrying capacity.

  • In a natural system, solar energy (a constant) and photosynthesis sets limits on the amount of food that can be generated at any one time, therefore places a limit on population growth

• With the introduction of external inputs; fossil fuel and biotechnology, food production increases and population growth increases

• In past, a farmer fed on average 6-8 people, now a farmer feeds 126 people on average

Approximately 1 in 7 people world wide struggle with hunger (925M undernourished mostly developing countries)

The Next Green Revolution (Sanchez, 2004)

Southern Africa is ready for the African Green Revolution, similar to the Green Revolution of the 1960s in India, China, and Latin America but with differences

Based on 4 criteria that blends the traditional with the technological could triple food production without harming the environment

• Mineral and organic fertilizer that provide nutrients to the soil - agroforestry, low-till or no-till techniques

• Small-scale irrigation technologies for collecting rainwater rather than dams

• Biotechnology to fortify African food crops against drought and pests and increase nutritional content of staple foods

• Crops of master farmers trained in current agricultural techniques, posted in villages to provide advice

Positive outcomes to the Next GR in Africa

• Additionally, rising crop yields, increasing productivity of Africa’s villages would raise the status of women

• Women grow 80% of the food in Africa without the use of modern technology

• if farming were made easier women would:

  • Be freer to find work off the farm and increase their incomes and children would have better food to eat

  • Girls would stay in school longer and become educated

  • SOL increases and population decreases

  • Locally grown foods for children’s feeding programs increases demand and helps African agriculture to strengthen itself

Women’s empowerment leads to lower population growth and advances in children’s health and education

USA and Africa →Green revolution

In 2003, the US gave $500M of emergency food aid to Ethiopia to help people survive the drought year, but

Only a fraction ($4M) to help African farmers be more agriculturally productive over the long-run

Africa need aid that will teach the how to produce their own food in a sustainable way for the long-term,

“Give people a fish and they will eat for a day; teach people how to fish and they will eat for their lifetime and … they will buy fishing equipment”

Beyond the Green Agriculture

Africa

• the majority of African countries do not support GM organisms

• Conventional breeding programs

• agroecology techniques

India

• 200M are undernourished

• loss of biodiversity depletion, GHG emissions, resilience and adaptation to climate change necessary

• Researches suggest: diversity crop production

• Use of Nutri-cerals-millets, sorghum

Food Insecurity/ Hunger