Green Revolution

Introduction:

           

The Green Revolution is the increase in food production stemming from the

improved strains of wheat, rice, maize and other cereals in the 1960s developed by Dr

Norman Borlaug in Mexico and others under the sponsorship of the Rockefeller

Foundation. This increased the crop yield in India, Pakistan, Philippines, Mexico, Sri

Lanka and other underdeveloped countries for Green Revolution .

History:

The Green Revolution began in 1945 when the Rockefeller Foundation and the Mexican

government established the Cooperative Wheat Research and Production Program to

improve the agricultural output of the country's farms. Norman Borlaug was

instrumental in this program. This produced astounding results, so that Mexico went

from having to import half its wheat to self-sufficiency by 1956 and, by 1964, to exporting half a million tons of wheat. This program was continued in India and

Pakistan where it is credited with saving over one billion people from starvation.

Norman Borlaug won the 1970 Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts.

From there, the technologies were exported abroad, finding use in regions all over the

world. The success in increasing yields was undisputable. The growth of crop yields

was such that agriculture was now able to outstrip population growth — per capita.

However there is no complete definition of Green Revolution but it is defined in different terms in different dictionaries. Some of these are as follow.

                                                                                                              

Political Dictionary:

            In the early 1960s developments in agricultural production, sponsored by international funding agencies, led to what came to be called the Green Revolution. These developments emphasized hybrid seeds, mechanization, and pest control as answers to the agricultural backwardness of the Third World. High-yielding varieties were promoted, as was the use of pesticides, and economies of scale of production, which could be successful only through mechanization of agriculture. This initiative did result in much better production figures across a range of countries. However, the Green Revolution has been criticized by environmentalists and others for resulting in environmental disasters in the countries where it was most effective. Mechanization of agriculture, where successful, led to changing work and social patterns, an exacerbation of class divisions in society, and the displacement of minority groups like tribal peoples and politically marginalized groups such as women from agricultural production. Further, new types of crops were not resistant to local diseases and required high levels of pesticides which polluted the local waterways, impoverished the land, and also increased the dependency of many Third World countries on the West with import of pesticides. Moreover, the commercialization of agriculture led to the exporting of food out of the local areas, increasing the dependence of producers on market forces that did not always benefit the majority of producers.

Geographical Dictionary:

            The development and use of high-yielding crops (HYVs) in conjunction with improved agricultural technology. New breeds of crops have been developed to increase yields two to four times, to shorten the time required for growth such that more than one crop a year can be produced, and to produce a plant which can withstand extremes of climate or disease. The use of Mexican wheat has doubled yields in the Punjab, and HYV rice has been used to such effect in the Philippines that imports are no longer necessary. The green revolution has had most impact in South and East Asia, and in South America, but has not been taken up to the same extent in sub-Saharan Africa.
There have been drawbacks, however. The grain may not be as palatable or as attractive in appearance as the grain it replaces, and it may use up more energy to process. Seeds have to be bought, as the hybrids are not self-fertile, and some varieties are less resistant to drought and disease. Heavy applications of expensive fertilizers and insecticides are required and these are often made from non-renewable resources.
Herbicides are required because the fertilizer stimulates weed growth as well as crop growth. The high yields and reliance on artificial fertilizers can lead to impoverished soils. Traditional rice exporters, like Burma, have seen the collapse of their markets. Increased yields mean that landowners can use their holdings more profitably and this often means that tenants are dispossessed. Copious, but strictly regulated, irrigation is required.
The green revolution has benefited the most prosperous farmers in the most prosperous areas but its price is too high for many of the peasants who need its help. To that extent, it has only been a partial success.

Britannica Concise Encyclopedia:

            Great increase in production of food grains (especially wheat and rice) that resulted in large part from the introduction into developing countries of new, high-yielding varieties, beginning in the mid-20th century. Its early dramatic successes were in Mexico and the Indian subcontinent. The new varieties require large amounts of chemical fertilizers and pesticides to produce their high yields, raising concerns about cost and potentially harmful environmental effects. Poor farmers, unable to afford the fertilizers and pesticides, have often reaped even lower yields with these grains than with the older strains, which were better adapted to local conditions and had some resistance to pests and diseases.

Columbia Encyclopedia:

            Green Revolution, term referring mainly to dramatic increases in cereal-grain yields in many developing countries beginning in the late 1960s, due largely to use of genetically improved varieties. Beginning in the mid-1940s researchers in Mexico developed broadly adapted, short-stemmed, disease-resistant wheats that excelled at converting fertilizer and water into high yields. The improved seeds were instrumental in boosting Mexican wheat production and averting famine in India and Pakistan, earning the 1970 Nobel Peace Prize for American plant breeder Norman E. Borlaug, leader of the Mexican wheat team. Significant though less dramatic improvements followed in corn. The Mexican program inspired a similarly successful rice-research effort in the Philippines and a network of research centers dedicated to the important food crops and environments of the developing world. By 1992 the system included 18 centers, mostly in developing countries, staffed by scientists from around the world, supported by a consortium of foundations, national governments, and international agencies. Recent research responds to criticism that the Green Revolution depends on fertilizers, irrigation, and other factors that poor farmers cannot afford and that may be ecologically harmful; and that it promotes monocultures and loss of genetic diversity.

Factors Affecting Green Revolution

Hybrid Seeds:

            Most crops consumed by the public-at-large in industrialized nations are Green Revolution crops. The design of high yielding varieties or hybrid strains (so called because they were created by cross-breeding a broad range of varieties to produce the desired combination of characteristics in a single variety, although very random mutagenesis was also used) was motivated by a desire to, first, increase crop yield, and also to increase durability transport and longevity for storage. Norin 10 wheat is an example of such a strain that helped developing countries, such as India and Pakistan to increase the productivity of their crops. Since then, strains have been bred for better appearance (e.g. plumper tomatoes, or straighter, more evenly-coloured rows of maize (corn)). Since improved crop yield was produced mostly through the use of heavy fossil fuel inputs (discussed below), the increased efficiency of Green Revolution strains is geared towards these inputs; that is, the strains are more efficient at exploiting the chemical fertilizers used, and also are designed to be easier to harvest mechanically.

The artificial monsoon came in the form of huge irrigation facilities. Dams were built to arrest large volumes of natural monsoon water which were earlier being wasted. Simple irrigation techniques were also adopted.

Tubewells:

Before the green revolution the canal system laid by the British was the principle means of irrigation.  Table 4 and Figure 3 below show that in 1950 canals provided 81 percent of all irrigation.  At the time tubewells were insignificant.  The green revolution introduced tubewells on a mass level into the landscape of the countryside.  By 1992-93 one quarter of all irrigated land was irrigated with tubewells.  The number of tubewells simply mushroomed from a few hundred in 1960, to 76,000 in 1968, and 156,00 in 1975. 

Circumstantial evidence suggests that this deterioration is at least partly due to some chemical mechanism, probably affecting the formation/gravel filter interface. Systematic studies and rehabilitation trials are urgently required to establish effective remedial measures for existing wells and modifications of design for future wells.

 

Tractorization:

Tractors were presented simultaneously with tubewells.? In 1960 there were 1.665 tractors, from here 1968 there were 18.909 tractors, and from here 1984 there were 187.255 tractors.? Estimate that in 18 last years the number of tractors at least doubled.? According to the recommendations of the World Bank, the majority of these tractors were the very large tractors.? For example, 84 percent of tractors were above power of horse 35. Perhaps, anything else the modernization of agriculture symbolizes more thanthe use of the tractors in the countries in the process of development. In 1959 there were 2000 tractors in the country which climbed close more than 8000 percent up to 18909 in 1968.most of the latter was a bigger size.

Income Disparities:

Rural poverty is a dimensional phenomenon complexes and multi. It has much faces to change place and through time, and was illustrated several manners; relative or absolute poverty; momentary and chronic poverty. It is difficult to include/understand the questions of the rural inequality of poverty and income outwards by the examination of several aspects in correlation of the changes of the sector of agriculture. The recent analysis of great whole of data international and interregional proves that the structure of the agricultural growth is a big factor by explaining the part of rural reduction of poverty.

The study at disposal is undertaken to frame the universally acceptable threshold of poverty, to discover the analysis of tendency of the rural inequality of poverty and income by using the axiomatic approach, with the asses the impact of various factors on the statute of poverty of a household in Pakistan, to develop the equivalent growth rate of poverty (PEGR) to analyze the impact of net to the bottom of the agricultural growth to poor rural and to lay down the Co-integrated tendencies of the agricultural growth, rural poverty and the inequality of income. The national and international poverty lines (in absolute terms) were estimated for Pakistan by using nontraditional techniques. The relative poverty lines based on the distribution of 100%, 75%, and 50% of the income per capita and the expenditure of monthly review were also estimated during the years 1990 at 2001. The evaluation is completely useful to determine tendencies in the inequality of income in the country and the provinces. Moreover, the population was broken up into chronic and momentary poor by comparison with not the poor one. The beams of the population very narrowly to the poverty lines were appreciably climbed of 31.53% up to 40.88%.

Thus a so high proportion of the population close to the poverty line claims the intervention of policy because a very small effort on behalf of the establishments of government can check the vulnerability of the poor passenger and to draw them from the trap of poverty on the one hand. Within the axiomatic framework, five indices of poverty were estimated incorporating the national and international poverty lines in order to select the most suitable measurement for implications of thorough analysis and policy. By developing an axiomatic framework, positive and normative measurements of inequality were estimated. The results indicated that the inequality of income is not stable showing the great variation during the year 1990 to 2001. All the measurement of inequality of income decreased in the year 1990-91 1992-93 and then increased without interruption until the year 2001.

Conclusion

Birth of capitalist agriculture after the conquest of Panjab and Sindh at the semi 19th century, the childhood of capitalist agriculture by the beginning of the 20th century, and the maturity of capitalist agriculture during the green revolution in the last part of the 20th century. In each one of these successive periods, the diffusion of capitalist agriculture indicated two strong tendencies. Initially, the decline of the average peasant, and in the second place, the decline of the tenant based agriculture.
These two factors underline the increasing differentiation of the farming community and the transformation of  Green Revolution and the relations of the production in agriculture. In conclusion, this short analysis of agriculture compared to the policy of state in Pakistan .The implications of these facts are that the increasing differentiation of the farming community in the countryside transforms the country poor into agricultural proletariat which objectively forms an enormous army of reservation of the urban proletariat. In other words, due to the diffusion of capitalism in agriculture the objective interests of the country poor coincide more and more with the interests of the urban proletariat increasing, so not only the probability but also creating the prerequisites for a Democratic Green Revolution of people.