A Small Collection of Articles to Understand the Green Revolution


(And why someone is opposing a second one)


| Otho Mantegazza


The Green Revolution was a plant breeding and technology transfer operation during which, in the cold war era, the United States exported what we know now as “intensive agriculture” first in Mexico and then in the Philippines and in India.

When discussing agriculture, the Green revolution is often cited both as a model that must be followed and replicated and, on the other side, as one that must be absolutely avoided. It’s highly recurring topic, and divisive one.

I wanted to write about this topic for a while mostly for personal reasons: to clear and organize thoughts. But, until now, I have miserably failed in this task. Maybe, indeed, because the Green Revolution is such a divisive topic, or maybe because it has premises and effects that are layered on multiple levels.

Although the Green Revolution itself is a technology transfer act: a transfer of chemical and mechanical technology for agriculture, of how to use it and a transfer and of plant breeds that were scientifically and systematically improved to yield more, the Green Revolution represents also specific model of intervention, that was applied on something as crucial as agriculture. And more then the technology itself, is the transfer method that is up for scrutiny.

The bad news is that, by writing this article, I somehow gave up once again. Instead of write myself about this topic, I’ll try to limit my elaboration and to just provide links to selected articles. These are the articles that I am using to to frame the Green Revolution topic, if you know other resources, I’d be happy to take suggestions.

Norman Borlaug on the Green Revolution

Norman Borlaug is the agronomist that best represents and architected the Green Revolution, it’s only fair that the first resources are from him.

Norman Borlaug won the Peace Nobel prize in 1970 and for the occasion gave a lecture that details the motivations, the thinking and the actions of the Green Revolution.

He dedicated his life to the topic of agricultural development and after 30 years of his first Nobel Prize lecture, he gave a second one (PDF).

To propose a small critic, both lectures communicate technological positivism, approaching agriculture as a mere technological problem to solve. Those lectures are rather short on the social and anthropological side, treating agricultural workers and citizens as a system that must be solved and rarely as single individual human beings.

What I would like also to highlight is the tone of urgency: “We never waited for perfection in varieties or methods but used the best available each year and modified them as further improvement came to hand.”

Critical Analysis of Social and Economics Impacts

Critical analysis of the premises and especially of the effects of the green revolution are often highly politicized. Though, I would say rightly so, since the Green Revolution helped shaping an economic system.

A very detailed critique of the Green Revolution was written recently by Raj Patel, as a tool and as an argument to oppose a second one.

On a similar note, Henry Cleaver wrote a radical critique of the Green Revolution in 1972, right after Norman Borlaug won the Nobel prize.

This two essays provide a highly different frame for this topic from the one seen above.

Impact on Communities

Kathleen Baker and Sarah Jewitt traced and investigated the living conditions over 35 years in six towns of the Indian districts of Bulandshahr, an area that was recipient of the Green Revolution’s technologies.

Their report is extensive and articulated. The observed outcome points toward a positive impact of Green Revolution technologies on the quality of life in the area. Though they point out that the gap between rich and poor is widening, since technological innovation is benefiting mostly the richer parts of the population.

On a similar topic, Andrew Flachs provides a slightly more critical analysis of the “top-down” approach that characterized (but that is not limited to) the Green Revolution.

Urgency, Food Sovereignty and Food Justice

I have to admit that I did not have the chance to read Vandana Shiva’s book “Violence of the Green Revolution”, but I want to add it to this list for it’s relevance on this topic.

And last, going back to the sense of urgency from Norman’s Borlaug words, an urgency that indeed when facing a famine could not be easily dismissed, I would like to highlight another approach that is worth considering from the Food Justice approach.

In the article “What does it mean to do food justice” Valentine Cadieux and Rachel Slocum don’t talk directly about the Green Revolution but points to approaches that could have been relevant to it. Their statement that “corporate and academic agro-science sectors sectors claim that justice is something that might be considered if there is time and inclination, but only after the issue of production has been confronted through techno-neoliberal strategies to ‘feed the world.’ It is therefore incumbent upon scholars and practitioners to make clear how it is, instead, socially just agri-food systems that provide food security and to show what makes those systems possible”, must be considered.

Linked Articles

A recap:

Extra (book). Vandana Shiva, the violence of the Green Revolution: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/278184.The_Violence_of_the_Green_Revolution