Green Revolution Notes

Neo-Malthusianism and Development

  • Neo-Malthusianism focuses on:
    • Quantity: Population may 'explode.'
    • Quality: 'Inferior' peoples may expand faster than 'superior' ones.

World War II Impacts

  • Global conflict with racial dimensions.
  • 60 million deaths, but lives saved by antibiotics and DDT.
  • Led to the creation of the United Nations and the disintegration of colonial empires.
  • Followed by the emergence of the Cold War.

The Advent of ‘Development’

  • Addressed multiple concerns:
    • Humanitarian: reduce mortality.
    • Geo-political: reduce poverty to combat communism.
    • Economic: encourage market production.
    • Ethical/racial: address contradictions in population growth policies.

Modernization Theory

  • Poverty was cultural, not racial.
  • Progress was possible/inevitable and could be accelerated with technology.

Goals of the Green Revolution

  • Increase productivity/yields of basic food crops.
  • Feed a growing population in the Global South.
  • Promote modernization to contain communism.

The Green Revolution

  • 1940s-today; peak in 1960s/1970s.
  • Norman Borlaug: 1970 Nobel Peace Prize.
  • Aimed to transfer "modern" agricultural practices to the "Third World."

Focus: High-Yield Crop Varieties

  • “Modern” high-yield varieties require inputs.
  • Specialized, standardized “technology packages”

Overarching Method

  • Gather germplasm from gene-rich countries.
  • Hybridize and develop “improved” varieties.
  • Ship seeds to farmers overseas.
  • Third World regions are original sources of the crops that make up 95.7 percent of world harvest.

Consultative Group for International Agricultural Research (CGIAR)

  • Oversees International Agricultural Research Centers (IARCs).
  • Released >8000 Modern Varieties in over 100 countries between 1960-2000.

"Early” Green Revolution (1961-1980)

  • Significant impacts in Latin America and Asia.
  • HYVs accounted for 21% of yield growth and 17% of production growth.
  • Area expansion was 20% of production growth.

“Late” Green Revolution (1981-2000)

  • Yield growth accounted for 86% of increases in food production in developing world.
  • HYVs accounted for 50% of yield growth and 40% of production growth.
  • Sub-Saharan Africa’s increases were based almost entirely on extending the area under cultivation.

Who Benefited?

  • Consumers: lower food prices.
  • Farmers whose yields increased significantly.
  • Farmers who subsist on their own crops.

Barriers to Entry

  • Capitalized farms benefit and persist.
  • Rising productivity depresses prices, pushing more small farms out of business.

How to Commodify the Seed

  • Hybridization.
  • Engineered sterility.
  • Biologically interrupt natural self-reproduction.

Changes in Farm Inputs (1935-1977)

  • Nonpurchased inputs: -44%
  • Purchased inputs: +256%
  • Farm labor: -76%
  • Machinery: +362%
  • Agrichemicals: +1,887%
  • Farm productivity: +207%

Genetic Erosion

  • Variability decreases across scales.
  • In organisms themselves: Heterozygosity versus homozygosity.
  • In fields: monocropping vs. polycropping or rotating.
  • In regions: uniformity through economic competition.
  • Internationally: huge outputs outcompete local landraces.

Carl Sauer’s Critique

  • Expressed concerns about redesigning agriculture and its impact on local ecosystems.
  • Warned against dependence on commercial fertilizers and ecological upsets from chemicals.
  • Peasant wisdom is greater; avoid harnessing them to accelerating ‘production.’

The Demographic Transition

  • Step 1: Declining mortality.
  • Step 2: Declining fertility.
  • Reduced mortality is a prerequisite to development.