This is Part 1 of a three-part interview series. Ray Offenheiser: The Green Revolution was the emergence of new varieties of crops, specifically wheat and rice varietals, that were able to double if not triple production of those crops in two countries.
Norman Borlaug, who was the originator of what was a dwarf wheat variety in Mexico, is considered the godfather of the Green Revolution. The varieties of wheat that he developed there became a model for what could be done in other staple crops around the world. In the case of Mexico, he increased productivity dramatically. Once the new varieties of wheat were widely reproduced, you saw diminished malnutrition across the country. He was then asked to experiment with introducing wheat in India and Pakistan during dramatic famines in the s, and they had a similar type of effect there.
RO: At the time there was a real question as to whether one could grow more crops on less land, and he was really interested in whether you could redesign the plant itself to do that. One of the things he realized was that normal wheat at that particular time grew on a very tall, long stalk that was basically seeking to get as much sunlight as possible.
Borlaug realized that if he actually grew a smaller variety with a shorter and sturdier stem that it could hold more grains on its head. A similar type of thing was done in the Philippines at the International Rice Research Institute with rice, where you could take the plant, produce a dwarf variety with a sturdier stem and get more grains of rice on the head.
Borlaug also was credited with developing a variety of this dwarf wheat that could be grown in pretty much any sort of environment around the world, because other varieties were sensitive to light and also temperature and other sorts of environmental changes. Since all these brought sudden reformation in agricultural practices and spread quickly to attain dramatic results thus, it is termed as revolution in green agriculture.
One of the major milestones in the Green Revolution in India were the development of high-yielding varieties of wheat and rust resistant strains of wheat, while the high yielding varieties programme was constrained to only 5 crops - wheat, rice, jowar, maize, and bajra.
After the Green Revolution in India, there was an increase in agricultural production. Modern methods and technology — including high-yielding variety HYV seeds, tractors, irrigation facilities, pesticides and fertilisers — were adopted. The Green Revolution was an endeavour initiated by Norman Borlaug in In the s, a large dosage of pesticides revolutionised farming ways in India, with the results considered good at the time.
The picture, however, is no longer rosy. The consequences of the Green Revolution have come under constant global scrutiny. In due course, pests grew immune to pesticides and farmers, in desperation, began pumping out more of these chemicals. Their excessive use not only contaminated the air, soil and the water table, but also exposed plants and humans to the threat of adulterated pesticides. While the Green Revolution provided a few solutions to the problem of food security, Punjab began to face a completely new range of problems: Decaying soil, pest-infested crops and indebted farmers.
The state — known as the torchbearer of the Green Revolution — also happens to be the first state that suffers from its adverse consequences. Proponents of the Green Revolution focus on maximising yield in the fight against hunger, comparing pesticides with drugs used for the sick. Because of its success in producing more agricultural products there, Green Revolution technologies spread worldwide in the s and s, significantly increasing the number of calories produced per acre of agriculture.
The beginnings of the Green Revolution are often attributed to Norman Borlaug, an American scientist interested in agriculture. In the s, he began conducting research in Mexico and developed new disease resistance high-yield varieties of wheat.
By combining Borlaug's wheat varieties with new mechanized agricultural technologies, Mexico was able to produce more wheat than was needed by its own citizens, leading to them becoming an exporter of wheat by the s.
Prior to the use of these varieties, the country was importing almost half of its wheat supply. Due to the success of the Green Revolution in Mexico, its technologies spread worldwide in the s and s. The United States, for instance, imported about half of its wheat in the s but after using Green Revolution technologies, it became self-sufficient in the s and became an exporter by the s. In order to continue using Green Revolution technologies to produce more food for a growing population worldwide , the Rockefeller Foundation and the Ford Foundation , as well as many government agencies around the world funded increased research.
In with the help of this funding, Mexico formed an international research institution called The International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center. Countries all over the world, in turn, benefited from the Green Revolution work conducted by Borlaug and this research institution.
India, for example, was on the brink of mass famine in the early s because of its rapidly growing population. Borlaug and the Ford Foundation then implemented research there and they developed a new variety of rice, IR8, that produced more grain per plant when grown with irrigation and fertilizers.
Today, India is one of the world's leading rice producers and IR8 rice usage spread throughout Asia in the decades following the rice's development in India. The crops developed during the Green Revolution were high yield varieties - meaning they were domesticated plants bred specifically to respond to fertilizers and produce an increased amount of grain per acre planted.
The terms often used with these plants that make them successful are harvest index, photosynthate allocation, and insensitivity to day length. The harvest index refers to the above-ground weight of the plant. During the Green Revolution, plants that had the largest seeds were selected to create the most production possible.
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