THE “GREEN REVOLUTION” IN AGRICULTURE IN THE 1960s term paper

In 1970 Norman Borlaug (1918–), a plant breeder who had spent most of his life in developing countries, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. He was the person most responsible for the so-called Green Revolution, a series of agricultural techniques which greatly increased crop yield. The Green Revolution played a key role in the postwar expansion of global food production that for decades outran increases in population.

Growing up in the Midwest, Borlaug was familiar with the Dust Bowl phenomenon of the 1930s (severe dust storms and top soil loss caused by drought and poor farming practices). He decided that it was not caused by using technological farming methods but rather by failure to use these methods. High-yield farming methods appeared to help prevent the spread of the Dust Bowl. Borlaug wanted to spread these techniques to other countries.

A chance to do this came in 1943 when the Rockefeller Foundation established a program in Mexico to help poor farmers. Borlaug became the director of the wheat program at the Cooperative Mexican Agricultural Program. His major accomplishment was the perfection of dwarf spring wheat. The idea was to develop a short plant that would expend less energy on the inedible column sections and more on growing grain. Dwarf spring wheat did, however, require fertilizer and irrigation.

In 1962 Borlaug, working out of the International Maize and Wheat Center, an outgrowth of the original program, worked to spread the concept of high-yield agriculture to India and Pakistan. Despite a variety of difficulties, including war between India and Pakistan, Borlaug planted a crop of dwarf wheat. Yields were 70 percent higher than crops of wheat had been in previous years and the next harvest even better. By 1968 Pakistan was self-sufficient in wheat production. In the 1970s and 1980s food production in both Pakistan and India increased faster than the rate of population growth. Similar developments in the cultivation of rice at the International Rice Research Institute in the Philippines, established in 1962 on the model of the Mexican program, led to significant increases in the production of that crop. The Green Revolution has also had critics. High-yield techniques require the use of artificial fertilizers, insecticides, pesticides, and irrigation. Borlaug and most other agronomists now stress the use of “integrated pest management” in place of insecticides and pesticides. Nonetheless, the techniques cost more than many farmers can afford and favor a commercial approach to agriculture. It also appears that limits are being reached in terms of the use of fertilizer and irrigation. The application of fertilizer, for example, does not increase yield beyond a certain point. It also may not be possible to sustain irrigation levels much longer because water tables are being depleted faster than they can recharge. A major question mark at this point is what genetic engineering might contribute to food production in the future.
Questions for Term Papers
1. What led the Rockefeller Foundation to set up a program in Mexico in 1943? Write a report on what the foundation hoped to accomplish.
2. What techniques did Borlaug use in the 1940s and 1950s to develop the dwarf spring wheat that proved to be so successful?
3. One of the most important developments in agriculture since World War II has been the expansion in the use of artificial fertilizer. Discuss changing ideas about the use of fertilizer and present statistics on the expansion of its use and its contribution to expanded yield in one region of the world.
4. The expanded use of irrigation in agriculture has been another major reason for the increases in food production over the last forty years. As in #3, discuss changing ideas about irrigation and present relevant statistics for one region of the world.
5. Investigate the role of commercial agriculture in one country or region. To what extent has commercial agriculture contributed to food insecurity, i.e., problems people have obtaining inexpensive, locally-grown food supplies, by encouraging farmers to grow cash crops?
6. Oxfam International is an organization working in Africa and other parts of the world to introduce many of the ideas associated with Norman Borlaug. Do a report on a region of the world in which Oxfam is active and evaluate the effectiveness of projects it sponsors. Begin with the Oxfam Web site (see Suggested Sources).

Research Suggestions

In addition to the boldfaced items, look under the entries for “The 1992 Earth Summit in Rio” (#94), “Dolly the Sheep Cloned, 1997” (#96), and “The Chinese Economy at the End of the Twentieth Century” (#100). Search under M. S. Swaminathan, Frances Moore Lappé, Food First, Oxfam, Catholic Relief Services, Jimmy Carter, and Ryoichi Sasakawa.

SUGGESTED SOURCES

Primary sources

Future Global Food Production. [videorecording]. McKean, Penn: Idea Channel, 1993. Norman Borlaug talks about feeding the world in the future.

Secondary Sources

Brown, Lester R. “Feeding Nine Billion.” In Lester R. Brown, Christopher Flavin, and Hilary French, eds., State of the World 1999. New York: W. W. Norton, 1999. The latest thinking about the question of food security. Brown is critical of many of the ideas associated with the Green Revolution.

———. Tough Choices: Facing the Challenge of Food Scarcity. New York: W. W. Norton, 1996. A good introduction to the question of food security.

Easterbrook, Gregg. “Forgotten Benefactor of Humanity.” Atlantic Monthly 279, no. 1 (January 1997): 75–82. Also available on-line at http://www.theatlantic/issues/97jan. Biographical sketch of Norman Borlaug.

Lappé, Frances Moore. World Hunger: Twelve Myths, 2nd ed. New York: Grove Press, 1998. First published in 1977 as World Hunger: Ten Myths. Lappé suggest political and social rather than technological solutions for world hunger.

Postel, Sandra. Pillar of Sand: Can the Irrigation Miracle Last? New York: W. W. Norton, 1999. Postel is a leading expert on the question of water supplies for the future. World Wide Web

Borlaug, Norman. “The Green Revolution: Peace and Humanity.” http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/97jan/borlaugh/speech.htm. Borlaug’s 1970 Nobel Prize acceptance speech.

Easterbrook, Greg. “Forgotten Benefactor of Humanity.” http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/97jan/borlaug/borlaug.htm. The on-line version of Easterbrook’s article.

“Oxfam International.” http://www.oxfam.org. Contains the 1998 annual report and many other useful features.