Myth:

• Increased grain yields are the key to ending hunger
• Higher yields mean more income to poor farmers
• Thus poverty declines
• Also, more food means less hunger

• 1960’s: improved wheat varieties gave dramatic increases in yield in Mexico
• Varieties more responsive to irrigation and petrochemical fertilizers
• Soon new rice and maize varieties

• Joined Rockefeller Foundation team in Mexico 1944
• Increased yield, rust resistance in wheat
• Biggest contributor to Green Revolution
• Won Nobel Peace Prize in 1970

• 1970’s: spread to millions of third world farmers
• 1990’s: 40% all farms in third world

• Improved standard of living for millions people worldwide

Maize breeding at CIMMYT , Mexico
(International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center)

Green Revolution

• Huge production advances
• Tens of millions of extra tons grain/yr
• Idea: extra production buys time while world deals with poverty, population growth
• Way to help using technical expertise

Answer to Green Revolution

• Production WILL have to increase as world population grows
• But, Green Revolution hasn’t alleviated hunger
• Economic power, land controlled by few
• Technology benefits wealthy
• Therefore Green Revolution increases inequity
• More hunger AND more food at same time

• Insecurity of the poor not addressed
• Thus Green Revolution cannot buy time: population will continue to grow
• Green Revolution not sustainable

            destroys resource base on which agriculture depends

      Example: India
       

• India: self-sufficient in grain due to Green Revolution
• But 1/3 of people poor
• 5,000 children die each day
• Poor cannot afford to BUY the food

• Early, poor had little access to credit
• Could not buy seeds, fertilizer, irrigation to make Green Revolution work
• Wealthy invested, got richer, drove out poor
• Now, more emphasis on loans for poor

• Need good land (wealthy own)
• Agrochemicals bad for health, environment
• Expensive inputs: profits to global chemical companies
• Rural people displaced from land
• Mechanization reduces agricultural jobs
• Not ecologically sustainable: depletes soil, pesticide race

Philippines Example

• Two villages studied:
• large and small farmers invested in Green Revolution
• Village 1 had more equal land holdings, solidarity:   All benefited from Green Revolution
• Village 2 dominated by a few wealthy landowners:  Wealthy increased land by 50% at expense of poor

Farm Squeeze

• Fertilizer use increases by huge amount
• Yields do not increase proportionally
• India: 6x rise in fertilizer use but 2/3 less production/ton fertilizer
• Need more fertilizer, pesticide each year for same result
• Thus cost go up faster than yields: cost-price squeeze

• U.S. true home of Green Revolution
• Yields up 3x but prices down
• To survive, must expand acreage to make up for lower per acre profit.
• Since WWII

Soil Depletion Worldwide

• Dramatic increases in yields during 1970s, 1980s
• Soil now depleted, resulting in leveling off or dropping yields
• 6% of Ag land in India now useless

Rice breeding at International Rice Research Institute: IRRI

Rice Problem

1968:  IR8 rice had 2x yield increase

• Short: need herbicides to compete with weeds
• Uniform genetically: susceptible to pests
• Brown plant hopper devastated rice
• Insecticide spraying useless; brown hopper resistant

• Worked 2 years
• Then Biotype 2 of plant hoppers attacked

• Now Biotype 3 appeared
• Insecticides again useless
• Insecticides killed off brown hopper predators
• Resulted in 40x increase in hoppers
• Problem was early spraying:  Must delay 40 days

Profits from Green Revolution go to

• Middlemen
• Banks
• Chemical companies
• Biggest growers

Increased Dependency

Poor countries must import:

• Seeds
• Fertilizer
• Pesticides
• Herbicides

Unsustainable Agriculture

• Industrial agriculture = mining land to extract maximum output
• “War” between humans and weeds, insects and disease
• Market dictates weapons: pesticides and chemical fertilizers
• We are destroying our food producing resources

• Desertification
• Soil erosion
• Pesticide contamination
• Groundwater depletion
• Salinization
• Urban sprawl
• Genetic resources shrinking
• Fossil fuels depleting

• Environmental Health
• Economic Profitability
• Social and Economic Equity
  

Sustainable farming based on ecological principles:

• Diversity
• Interdependence
• Synergy
• Complex interactions

Agroecology

• Intercropping
• Mixing annual and perennial crops
• Crop rotations:  Rotate cereals and legumes
• Mixing of plant and animal production: Rice paddies with edible weeds, fish and rice
• Not continuous production of one crop

Intercropping Legumes and Maize, Ghana

Africa

• Fragile soils must be protected
• Could mix millet, cattle, and Acacia trees
• Trees fix nitrogen, have deep tap roots
• Cattle eat tree pods
• Plant millet after leaves fall
• Could support 2x population in Senegal
• Aid agencies instead promoting new seeds, fertilizers, agrochemicals, biotechnology, free trade

• Excessive use of pesticides
• Groundwater depletion
• Pollution
• Monoculture
  

• “The Green Revolution has been a failure.
• It has led to reduced genetic diversity,
• increased vulnerability to pests,
• soil erosion,
• water shortages,
• reduced soil fertility,
• micronutrient deficiencies,
• soil contamination
• reduced availability of nutritious food crops for the local population,
• the displacement of vast numbers of small farmers form their land,
• rural impoverishment and
• increased tensions and conflicts.
• The beneficiaries have been the agrochemical industry,
• large petrochemical companies,
• manufacturers of agricultural machinery,
• dam builders and
• large landowners.”
  

Genetic Engineering The Next Green Revolution?

• “Biotechnology will help [developing countries] accomplish things that they could never do with conventional plant breeding
• “I believe genetically modified food crops will stop world hunger.”
• Biotechnology helps farmers produce higher yields on less land.
• Technology allows us to have less impact on soil erosion, biodiversity, wildlife, forests, and grasslands
  

• Disease resistant crops increase productivity
• Herbicide resistant crops are more easily farmed
• Has potential to contribute to sustainability
• Can contribute to nutrition
  • Golden Rice: Carotenoid synthesis in rice for Vitamin A
  • Ferritin synthesis in rice for Iron storage
• Banana vaccines:  
  • under development: Low cost vaccine delivery in developing nations
    

• Increase productivity
• Increase purity
• Increase safety
• Improve nutrition
• Improve food quality
• Improve sustainability
• Benefit ecosystem

• Burden of proof must be met by objectors, detractors
• Must be proved bad on a case by case basis
• Result: ethical objections and criticisms

• Food Safety
  •  Allergies?
  • Unknown problems in future?
• Ethical to move genes between species?
• Organic foods non-GMO
  
  • Labeling required?
• Public perception currently negative
• Herbicide resistant crops will require more import of specific herbicides.  Benefit wealthy?
• Escape of genetically engineered genes into environment?
• U.S. profited $6.6 billion in genes from 3rd world countries.  Fair?
• Unsustainable

Terminator Technology

• Makes patented seeds from genetically engineered crops sterile
• Protects patents:  farmers must buy seeds
• Property rights: motivation to improve seed
• Potential problems:

• “Biotechnology  is being developed with the same vision that promoted chemicals to meet the single, short-term goals of enhanced yields and profit margins.
•  This vision embraces a view of the world characterized by beliefs that nature should be dominated, exploited, and forced to yield more
  • by preferences for simple, quick,  immediately profitable 'solutions' to complex ecological problems
  • by 'reductionist' thinking that analyzes complex systems like farming in terms of component parts,  rather than as an integrated system
  • and by a conviction that agricultural success means short-term productivity gains, rather than long-term sustainability.”

Return To World Food Issues Homepage