Evaluating the Legacy of the Father of the Green Revolution

Norman Borlaug -- best known for winning the Nobel Prize in 1970 for his role in the Green Revolution (the transformation of agriculture to an industrial, monocropped system, which increased the amount of food being produced in Mexico, India, Pakistan, the Philippines and elsewhere) -- died this past weekend at age 95.

Borlaug's life was dedicated to ending hunger through technology, and increasing yields was his single-minded aim. Though I do not doubt his sincerity in seeking to prevent famine, what he failed to recognize was that hunger did not persist because of a lack of food. That in fact, the root of hunger issues in the world have had more to do with a lack of equal food distribution. (As the BBC recently reported, elimination of food waste alone in the UK and the US could lift 1 billion people out of hunger if that food were instead better distributed.) Technology brings with it both bad and good; and in fact, climate change could be the worst end result of our dalliance with it. But in believing that somehow technology will only perfect us, we've stayed in denial about the potential for technology to also destroy us, whether quick (think atomic bomb) or more subtle -- through the destruction over time of our soil.

Indeed, yields did increase early on through the Green Revolution's efficiencies and the introduction of irrigation and imported nitrogen to the soil. These short-term gains were intoxicating. But in the long term, yields have leveled off and crops have fallen prey to nature's barriers: superweeds, lowering water tables, availability of oil for transport, climate change, etc.

The truth is, we now know that the Green Revolution, like our own American industrial agriculture system, is unsustainable: it is entirely dependent on oil, reliant on excessive amounts of water, and requires the products of a handful of corporations. Sustainable agriculture is the only way forward that deals with these issues, and a 'Sustainable Green Revolution' will necessarily involve putting away silver bullet thinking and instead empowering smallholders in whatever ways work best for their particular region.

While the Obama administration considers forging another Green Revolution, this time in Africa -- where USAID has been funding agricultural biotechnology since 1991 -- I felt that it might be valuable to review some of the legacies of the Green Revolution point by point.

The Green Revolution has:

• Undermined biodiversity. Chemical-intensive agriculture has wreaked havoc on the life in the soil -- killing off the earthworms and other organisms that play a vital role in agriculture. It has also marginalized species of animals by destroying their habitat and poisoning their food and water. Furthermore, in the quest for one species of plant at the expense of all others, diverse sources of food have also been eliminated from local diets.

• Created a less nutritious diet. Big Ag claims they seek to 'feed the world,' but what are they feeding the world, in fact? Destroying many of the varied plants we have historically eaten means local populations (like Americans do now, too) come to rely intensively on just a few grain crops for food. Western afflictions -- diabetes, heart disease, obesity -- are now also prevalent in these populations.

• Exacerbated climate change. Agriculture has the potential to store carbon in the soil in the roots of cover crops and managed grasslands. Yet industrial agriculture continues to undermine anything beyond the yearly planting cycle through invasive tilling, and when using 'no-till' methods, requires the pouring of chemicals over the land that exclude all other species. In addition, more energy is now burned up to produce much of the world's food than is achieved by eating it.

• Increased inequity. The Green Revolution didn't spread the wealth accrued through monocropping. In fact, many corporations have profited from agricultural speculation in the billions of dollars -- meaning they have specifically profited on the risks that exacerbated hunger.

• Functioned as a modern form of colonialism. Local, effective alternatives to the Green Revolution's imposed technologies are being ignored in favor of corporate solutions that change the self-sufficiency and power structure in those countries.

The Green Revolution is not a long-term solution to the problem of hunger. The elephant in the room, of course, is population. Borlaug saw that we could not continue to feed a growing population -- whether he recognized it as a resource availability issue or not.

The book, A Nation of Farmers by Aaron Newton and Sharon Astyk had this to say about the Green Revolution:

There is, in truth, no way to be certain what we gained and what we lost in the Green Revolution. What is virtually certain is that its gains were overstated and that allocation of resources, whether from future generations or from poor to rich, were inequitable. When someone makes the statement that grain yields rose by so much, it looks impressive. But the practical realities of that are very different. We have to ask whether those yield increases actually made it from fields into the mouths of the hungry and whether it was possible to duplicate them through any other method.

The bottom line is that we often think of our wealth as a product of our ingenuity, education and technology, when it is more specifically the result of the exploitation of other countries labor and resources. Borlaug's Green Revolution neglected these social aspects of the need to feed the hungry. The question is, will we ever re-evaluate the underlying principles we espouse for accruing wealth in order to create a truly equitable and just world? If not, we will never solve the problems those principles create.

Follow Paula Crossfield on Twitter: www.twitter.com/civileater

Comments

[NickPanchev]

04:05 AM on 09/26/2009

“World peace will not be built on empty stomachs or human misery,” he said. “It is within America’s technical and financial power to help end this human tragedy and injustice, if we set our hearts and minds to the task.”
"Norman Borlaug, whose work in Mexico..." has not ended.
Continue Borlaug’s mission, like it or not and again in Mexico by www.esecorp.org
With disruptive and revolutionary technologies.

[mikefina]

08:17 PM on 09/15/2009

There is a point in time where introspection morphs into navel-gazing. Yeah, certainly there are downsides to emphasizing yield over bio-diversity, pesticide application vs. organic farming and food security vs. overpopulation.

Still, no civilization in world history, has ever progressed as far as what we now consider low-level prosperity, without first securitizing their population against deprivation or starvation.

Continued food instability on the Indian Sub-Continent would have locked India and Pakistan in unending wars. Global geo-political stability, though still fractious, could not be sustained if 2/3 of the globes population faced starvation every dry season.

Sometimes the do-gooders of the Green movement would be do-betters, if they would just pipe down

[toxicbrainpoison]

06:39 PM on 09/15/2009

Another excellent article. I keep thinking how many rivers were destroyed by the fertilizer and pesticide heavy approach to farming that now dominates after the green revolution. People are fighting for the system that replaced the way their grandparents lived. Local food is so hard to come by and farmers arent paid what they should on the global market. Local food sets up a solution that gives the farmer more money and the consumer a better price and product. I would love to see agriculture get more creative (while protecting wildlife areas.) I would love to see more forest gardens and more soil conservation. It would cool our planet and save water.

[leduck]

06:18 PM on 09/15/2009

sorry
no technology alone cannot solve the world's hunger problem
nor can fixing distribution problems
even with improved echnolgy, and better distrubtion of food, eventually we will all have to confront the elephant in the room

OVERPOPULATION

[toxicbrainpoison]

06:41 PM on 09/15/2009

The UN just put out a study that said family planning would help global warming more affordably than even renewable energy. There is nothing wrong with using a rubber.

[martinfrosa]

04:18 PM on 09/15/2009

The alternative to the "Green Revolution" was starvation for hundreds of millions of people. Would you have preferred that alternative? Your answer might be different if you were a peasant living in India.

[SaltySaltillo]

03:09 PM on 09/15/2009

A well written article. I would remind you, Ms. Crossfield, however, that it is a bit unreasonable to find fault with a man for not knowing what could not be known by him at his time in history. We are mere people standing on the shoulders of giants.
Norman Borlaug and the Green Revolution made a significant and fundamentally positive change in the experience of life for much of humanity.
That we now, in hindsight, can recognize what is wrong about the Green Revolution should not in any way undercut or discredit the boldness of Mr. Borlaug's efforts, intentions and accomplishments. If your point is to discredit the Green Revolution as a complete failure that should be abandoned or rejected, I disagree with you.

That said, I think your point is - correct me if I am wrong - that it is time to move beyond the Green Revolution - time to recognize what is right and wrong, reap the benefits of hindsight, and take the next step forward. If that is your point, I applaud it.