(Module 37) The Green Revolution

Green Revolution: US supported development of high-yield seed varieties that increased the productivity of ceral crops and accompanying agricultural technologies for transfer to less developed countries.

  • Development and Use of High-Yield Seeds: Scientists directed their earliest efforts toward developing high-yielding varieties of wheat in Mexico in the early 1940s. Scientists expanded their efforts to other cereal grains in the 1960s (e.g., rice).

  • Increased Use of Synthetic Fertilizers and Chemical Pesticides: In order to meet their yield potential, the new plants required more synthetic fertilizers and chemical pesticides which often led to pollution of groundwater, rivers, streams, etc.

Crossbreeding: The act of mixing different species or varieties of plants and animals to produce hybrids:

Hybrids: The offspring of two plants or animals of different species or varieties.

Irrigation and Mechanization:

Irrigation: Movement of water to land; crops.

  • Regional dam construction

  • Mechanical dikes to villages and plots of land owned by individual farmers.

Double cropping: Planting another crop on the same plot of land as soon as the first crop has been harvested.

  • The intense labor needed to produce more than one rice crop per year led to the adoption of mechanical equipment (more efficient, but costly to maintain).

Pros and Cons of the Green Revolution:

Positives:

Increased Crop Productivity: By the end of the twentieth century, the Green revolution led to remarkable increases in cereal production in Mexico, Central America, and many parts of Asia.

Multicropping: Planting two or three crops per year on the same land.

Decreased World Hunger: In 1950, 55% of the people in economically less developed countries such as India, China, and the Philippines, experiences hunger. More than 80% of the people living in those countries now have adequate diets.

More Efficient Use of Agricultural Land: As the population increase people take up more space, and instead of expanding the amount of land needed for agriculture, the Green Revolution allowed production to increase on the same amount of land.

Negatives:

Expense of Farming: Newer fertilizers, tractors, machinery, etc. Are becoming more expensive and are replacing manual laborers. Families are losing their farms to big corporations which have the funds to keep up.

Loss of Subsistence Farming, Plant Diversity, Etc: Expansion of cash crops pushed subsistence farmers to marginal land where crop production for local consumption decreased.

  • There are concerns that the loss of traditional and subsistence agriculture has decreased crop diversity. The loss of crop diversity is also associated with the loss of traditional native crop varieties.

  • The number of diverse food crops has decreased, endangering food security not only for villages but also for larger regions.

Environmental Costs: Newer farming methods are likely to cause pollution to local water supplies such as groundwater, river, streams, etc.

  • Endemic: Native to or characteristic of a certain environment.

  • Environmental Contamination: Chemical residue that builds up with each application of synthetic fertilizers and pesticides.

  • Soil Salinization: The concentration of dissolved salts in the soil.

  • Soil Salinity: A measure of the concentration of dissolved salts in the soil; high soil salinity results from poor irrigation practices.