Increasing Yields: The Green Revolution

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Increasing YieldsThe Green Revolution
Sources
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Yields have increased

• British wheat yields tripled in last 50 years
• 15X increase from 500 years ago
• Cereal yield worldwide doubled since 1960s

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Reasons Yields Increase

• Increased inputs
• Labor
• Fertilizer
• Machinery
• increased output
• Using technology
• without increasing inputs
• Increased efficiency

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Production Function

• Initially, as input increases, output increases
• Eventually, a point of maximum efficiency will be
  reached
• Additional input will lead to diminished
  increases in output

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Inputs

• Fertilizer
• Can improve yields dramatically 20-1000
• Diminished response if keep adding
• Reduces growth at high levels
• Effectiveness depends on
• Water/Irrigation
• Timing of application
• Biggest increase will be in Africa
• Dem. Rep. Congo uses 1 fertilizer used in South
  Africa

Cassava in Gambia
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Fertilizer use
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Inputs

• Animal Traction
• 400 million draft animals in world
• ½ Worlds ag land farmed with draft animals
• ¼ farmed with hand tools
• ¼ mechanized

China
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Use of Draft Animals

• Do the work of 3-4 humans
• Increase land able to be farmed
• Animal plowing breaks soil better than by hand
• Source of fertilizer
• Initial cost high
• Profitable if can expand land

Vietnam
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Tractors

• Poorest farmers will consider moving from hand
  tools to animals
• Farmers using animals will consider using
  machinery
• May not be efficient choice
• Credit limited
• Gas expensive
• Maintenance expensive
• But labor cheap

Zimbabwe
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Small farms more efficient

• Small farmers use labor more intensively
• Small farmers use space more efficiently
• Small landowners more motivated for production
  and conservation

Tanzania
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Big growers less efficient

• Big growers are less efficient than small growers
  
• in yield/acre
• Big operations are fossil fuel intensive
• requiring 10 Calories for every one produced
• NeoCaloric Ag

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Big Growers in Brazil

• Land ownership is inequitable
• 2/3 of land owned by 3 of population
• 60 of farmland is left idle
• 4.8 million rural families are landless

Brazil Farm
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Big Growers

• Advantages of wealth, size
• Big farms can more easily survive
• Bad years
• Market swings
• Large operations with absentee owners (investors)
  tend to
• Overuse the soil
• Over-spray with chemicals
• Remove wealth generated from the community

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Land Reform

• World Bank
• productivity would be increased if land
  distribution more equitable
• Land reform (redistribution) successful after
  WWII
• South Korea,
• Taiwan
• China
• Recent success
• Japan
• Zimbabwe
• Kerala, India

Kerala, India
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Green Revolution

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

Wheat improvement
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Norman Borlaug

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

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Green Revolution

• 1970s spread to millions of third world farmers
• 1990s 40 of all farms in third world
• 75 Rice in Asia
• 80 Wheat in third world
• 70 Corn worldwide
• Increased yields 250
• Improved standard of living for millions people
  worldwide

India
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CIMMYT

• CIMMYT
• International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center
• In Mexico
• Part of CGIAR
• Consultative Group on International Agricultural
  Research

CIMMYT, Mexico
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Criticisms of the Green Revolution

• Green Revolution hasnt alleviated hunger
• Economic power, land controlled by few
• Technology benefits wealthy
• Therefore Green Revolution increases inequity
• More hunger AND more food at same time

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Criticisms of the Green Revolution

• Food Insecurity of poor not addressed
• Cash Crops food flows from the poor and hungry
  nations to the rich and well-fed nations
• Green Revolution not sustainable
• destroys resource base on which agriculture
  depends

Zambia
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Example 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

India
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Criticisms of the Green Revolution

• 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

Irrigation in Punjab, India
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There are still problems

• 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

Planting rice, India
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ice.jpg
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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

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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 of fertilizer
• Need more fertilizer, pesticide each year for
  same result
• Thus cost go up faster than yields cost-price
  squeeze

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Farm 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.

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U.S. Farm Squeeze

• Since WWII
• number of farms decreased 2/3
• average farm size up ½
• rural communities gutted
• production costs up from 50 of gross to 80

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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

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International Rice Research Institute(IRRI)
Phillippines
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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

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Rice Problem

• 1973 IR26 Resistant to brown plant hopper
• Worked 2 years
• Then Biotype 2 of plant hoppers attacked

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Rice Problem

• 1975 IR32 Resistant to Biotype 2
• Now Biotype 3 appeared
• Insecticides again useless
• Insecticides killed off brown hopper predators
• Resulted in 40x increase in hoppers

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Profits

• Profits from Green Revolution go to
• Middlemen
• Banks
• Chemical companies
• Biggest growers
• Grain prices fall
• Farms get bigger

Brazil
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Increased Dependency

• Poor countries must import
• Seeds
• Fertilizer
• Pesticides
• Herbicides
• Cost to India increased 600 1960-1980
• Biotechnology leads to more dependency

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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

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Destruction of Ag Resources

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

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Sustainable Agriculture Goals

• Environmental Health
• Economic Profitability
• Social and Economic Equity

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Agroecology

• Sustainable farming based on
• ecological principles
• Diversity
• Interdependence
• Synergy
• Complex interactions
• Science to improve not displace traditional
  farming
• Low energy, capital costs

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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, Senegal
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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

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Evergreen Revolution

• Swaminathan led Green Revolution in India
• Agrees cannot maintain crop yields
• Problems
• Excessive use of pesticides
• Groundwater depletion
• Pollution
• Monoculture
• Therefore, India needs sustainable agriculture
• Evergreen Revolution

M.S. Swaminathan World Food Prize 1987
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Vandana Shiva

• "Ecological problems arise from applying the
  engineering paradigm to life."

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Critic of the Green Revolution in India

• 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

Vandana Shiva
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Critic of the Green Revolution in India

• 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.

Vandana Shiva
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Critic of the Green Revolution in India

• The beneficiaries have been
• the agrochemical industry,
• large petrochemical companies,
• manufacturers of agricultural machinery,
• dam builders and
• large landowners.

-- Vandana Shiva "The Violence of the Green
Revolution Ecological Degradation and Political
Conflict in Punjab." The Ecologist, 1991,
21(2)57-60
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Genetic EngineeringThe Next Green Revolution ?
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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.

Norman Borlaug Nobel Peace Prize
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The Next Green Revolution?

• Biotechnology helps farmers produce higher yields
  on less land.
• Technology allows us to have less impact on soil
  erosion, biodiversity, wildlife, forests, and
  grasslands
• To achieve comparable yields (1950-1999) with old
  farming methods, would have needed an additional
  1.8 Billion hectares of land

Norman Borlaug Nobel Peace Prize
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Biotechnology Critic

• Biotechnology development
• Same vision as chemical industry
• Short term goals
• Enhanced yields, profit margins
• Nature should be dominated and exploited
• forced to yield more
• Prefer quick solutions
• to complex ecological problems
• Reductionist thinking about farming
• Instead of integrated systems
• Agricultural success means
• Short term profits
• Not long term sustainability

-- Jane Rissler, Union of Concerned Scientists
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