WHO SAID YOU WANTED A REVOLUTION?

THERE HAVE BEEN MANY REVOLUTIONS throughout history—famous, political ones like the English Revolution (1649), American Revolution (1776), French Revolution (1789), Russian Revolution (1917) and Chinese Revolution (1949). There have been revolutions in world views, such as occurred in ancient Greece when rationalism and rational inquiry rose to challenge mythic beliefs and a gods-centric universe. In Europe, the Renaissance ushered in the scientific era and (for better or worse) a human-centric understanding of the world and its myriad operations. Literature, art, music, philosophy have all been shaped by revolutions, by changes in perspective about the world and our place in it.

I DON’T KNOW quite what to call our current times; they are certainly a product of scientific inquiry and exploration. We are ingenious crafters of things and ideas, of learning from the past and reconning the future. Some have called this present arc of humanity’s development the Anthropocene age.* (The term is derived from ancient Greek: anthropos- “human” and -cene “new” or “recent”). Our modern era is said to have begun with the growth of scientific inquiry and the scientific method, and from technologies that used wind, water, and the sun as power sources, and which now use fossil fuels to power the machinery of industry and transportation. The use of machines like cotton gins and steam engines heralded in the Industrial Revolution of the late 1700s. Along with tools of measurement and control, these new technologies furthered humanity’s quest to understand the natural world and to hold dominion over it.

 

FOSSIL FUELS, first used for heating, smelting of ores and manufacturing metals, became a source of energy to run steam engines, mechanical saws, factories, and the nineteenth-century’s emblematic steamships and railway trains. That century also saw a revolution in communications with the invention of the telegraph and telephone. Natural gas came to light homes and cities. Electrical generating stations—thermal and water-powered, ushered in the era of gadgetry and electrical appliances for home use and industry.

REVOLUTIONS great and small shaped our world and us as well. In the twentieth century, coal-powered machinery gave way to oil and diesel engines. Mass production techniques revolutionized factories as the world was flooded with clever creations. WE ENTERED the Atomic Age beneath the shadows of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but the use of nuclear energy for weapons, power generation, medicine, etc., has since become almost commonplace, if expensive. Then came the computer age and advances in information technology. Scientific discoveries about human biology acquired powerful tools for examining and understanding the building blocks of life. Artificial Intelligence (AI) and robotics are today burgeoning fields of inquiry. We stand on the cusp of new knowledge and new directions to explore. 

 

THERE’S ONE REVOLUTION I haven’t mentioned and it’s one that’s often overlooked and taken for granted, yet it remains central to our lives, and that is the revolution in food production known as the Green Revolution.⁺ It’s a term first used in the last third of the 20^th century and now falls, for the most part, under the rubric of today’s “green environmental movement.”¹ Its history, and the individuals and scientists who played a key role in its development are less well known. This is surprising considering how the agrarian undertaking is touted by many as saving a vast swath of the earth’s population from hunger by bringing scientific resources and understanding to bear in expanding the global food supply in the decades following WWII.

“The term ‘Green Revolution’ was coined by William Gaud late in its unfolding, at a meeting of the Society for International Development in DC [Washington] in 1968, in which he described what had happened as a result of US and philanthropic funding for fertilizer, irrigation, improved hybrid seeds, state support and credit:

 

‘These and other developments in the field of agriculture contain the makings of a new revolution. It is not a violent Red Revolution like that of the Soviets, nor is it a White Revolution like that of the Shah of Iran. I call it the Green Revolution.’ (Gaud)” (Patel, “Long Green”)

 

THE GREEN REVOLUTION is the third great chapter in the story of agriculture, and it is, by far, the one most rapidly deployed. It began in the middle decades of the twentieth century, and the global agricultural system forged then continues to this day. It is said to have saved tens of millions from starvation and hunger and kept pace with the massive population growth the world experienced post WWII. In 1940, there were close to 2.5 billion people on the planet. That number is expected to rise to nearly eight billion by 2025. Modern food production methods have fed the world through new seed varieties and planting techniques, soil and crop treatments, high-tech machinery, and sophisticated finance and commodity-trading systems. WITH this new regime, agriculture in the developed world saw record bounties, especially of cereal and grain crops, rice, etc. In Canada, farms grew larger, on average from approximately 250 acres in 1940 to 800 acres today. This was a common development in most modern economies. And larger farms meant fewer farmers. In 1940 approximately 45% of Canada’s population was rural. In 2023 it is around 17%. This consolidation of farms into larger and larger units was facilitated through mechanization, standardized seed types, artificial fertilizers and pesticides, and new forms of financing and credit. Family farms became farm businesses geared to producing crops for internal and external markets. Vast fields of corn, wheat, barley, canola, soybeans, and hogs are among Canada’s major food exports today.

IN RECENT YEARS, there have been discussions among international bodies, corporate and government, about starting a “new” Green Revolution, focusing on indigenous farmers (mostly from the global south) to address their need to modernize and improve crop yields. It is something to note when organizations like the World Bank, the IMF, the WTO, the United Nations, along with philanthropic institutions and wealthy elites all hone-in on this largely overlooked sector of the global food system, with their goal of introducing techniques and innovations developed during the Green Revolution (GR) and making them available to the globe’s remaining millions of small-hold farmers. It seems logical. It seems the right thing to do. It seems like progress. But, as Raj Patel muses in his essay, “The Long Green Revolution”, the idea of creating a “new” Green Revolution (NGR) presupposes the old one has been a success. So, the question is: How successful was it?

THE GREEN REVOLUTION began as a response to world hunger and an ever-expanding global population. In the early decades of the twentieth century, famines caused by flooding and drought afflicted China, killing millions. In 1958-62 tens of millions died there of starvation brought on by the harsh protocols of the central government’s Great Leap Forward policies which made wrenching reforms to the Chinese economy. Wars and civil wars caused famines in India, The Netherlands, Greece, Iran, the USSR, and Germany to name a few. Perhaps the most well-known famine occurred in Russia in 1932-33 where millions of Ukrainians died when Stalin’s regime tried to radically reorganize agriculture in the USSR. Today, this period is known as the Holodomor (“to kill by starvation”). Famines continued throughout the century, and today, with Yemen and Afghanistan being the most recent, despite the ability of global humanitarian resources to be more readily organized and executed.

THE NEED TO GROW hardier and more universally adaptable varieties of grain crops to feed the world became a priority for agronomists in the 1930s and 40s, and the first serious attempt to modernize the world’s agricultural system came from the United States. By then, of course, America and Europe already had mechanized farms, with tractors, harvesters, and the like, along with artificial fertilizers, pesticides, irrigation systems, and farm finance schemes. The bountiful harvests of the American mid-West demonstrated what could be done using such agricultural practices. 

IN the aftermath of the Second World War, food scarcity became a real problem for many countries. The Rockefeller Foundation sought to export American technology and farming techniques to the global community in a bid to stem the tide of world hunger, but also, significantly, with an eye on creating a ‘buffer’ against communism:

 

“…[W]hether additional millions … will become Communists will depend partly on whether the Communist world or the free world fulfils its promises. Hungry people are lured by promises [Italics mine. Ed.] but they may be won by deeds. Communism makes attractive promises to underfed peoples. Democracy must not only promise as much, but must deliver more.” (Rockefeller Foundation strategic document, 1951)

 

TO ACCEPT the twinned challenges of hunger abatement and anti-communism, the philanthropic organization proposed to fund a testing ground for their experiment: Mexico. After WWII, botanists, and agronomists, working with Mexican authorities, set up demonstration farms in different regions of the country. They developed new breeds of wheat and corn that were hardier, more drought resistant, and faster growing. Nobel laureate Norman Borlaug (“the father of the Green Revolution”) developed a particularly hardy, large-headed dwarf wheat (“Pitic 62”) and set out to demonstrate its merits to Mexico’s farmers. For its part, the Mexican government encouraged farmers to use the new seeds and to adopt American methods of farming. CONSEQUENTLY, wheat and corn yields significantly improved, and Mexico became a net exporter of grains. Other American philanthropic foundations—Ford, Dupont, Carnegie, etc., likewise set up demonstration farms and worked with developing nations to restructure their agricultural economies, and to adopt standardized seed, fertilizer, and pesticide regimes, along with farm mechanization and an emphasis on export markets.

WHILE there was uptake from many countries, there were outliers: the USSR, for example, did not subscribe to modern genetic theories until the 1960s, and with respect to plant breeding, it promoted instead a rather bizarre—though politically more acceptable—theory known as Lamarckism which postulated that plants inherit their characteristics directly from their parents.

 

    GREGOR MENDEL 1822-1884

Modern genetics states that plants inherit their characteristics through a longer, more involved process of genetic transfer. [Gregor Mendel’s iconic “pea plants” of the mid-nineteenth century were foundational to science of genetics, which began in earnest in the early decades of the 1900s. Ed.] Lamarckism was an important factor in the USSR’s poor Depression-era harvests, as well as Stalin’s radical collectivization policies which further damaged the country’s food supply network, and failed to significantly improve the country’s agricultural output.

MEANWHILE, countries such as India, the Philippines, Brazil, Argentina, pursued Green Revolutions based on the American model. China, on the other hand, adopted its own version, one that involved land reforms and

 

“…focusing on traditional crop production, the implementation of modern technology and science, creating food reserves for the population, high-yield seed varieties, multi-cropping, controlled irrigation, and protecting food security.”  (Wikipedia)  

 

IT IS OF SOME IMPORTANCE to recall that China experienced a dramatic famine in the years following these successful agrarian reforms when the central government attempted to impose radical political reforms within the country to move China from an agrarian society to one with a communist economy. All too often political agendas have had detrimental effects on food production and distribution.²

 

THUS, as global agriculture takes on an increasingly homogeneous nature, we must ask again: Was the Green Revolution a success, and what will the “new” Green Revolution mean for the world’s farmers? It is without doubt that many countries adopting the new agricultural inputs and systems saw an increase in the size of their harvests. However,

 

“…[w]hile agricultural output increased…the energy input to produce a crop has increased faster, so that the ratio of crops produced to energy input has decreased over time. Green Revolution techniques also heavily rely on agricultural machinery and chemical fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides, and defoliants which, as of 2014, rely on or are derived from crude oil, making agriculture increasingly reliant on crude oil extraction….”

The energy for the Green Revolution was provided by fossil fuels in the form of fertilizers (natural gas), pesticides (oil), and hydrocarbon fueled irrigation. The development of synthetic nitrogen fertilizer has significantly supported global population growth — it has been estimated that almost half the people on the Earth are currently fed as a result of synthetic nitrogen fertilizer use. According to ICIS Fertilizers managing editor Julia Meehan, "People don’t realise that 50% of the world’s food relies on fertilisers.” (Wikipedia)

 

   Sacagawa "Three Sisters" Coin

BESIDES THIS CONCERN for a dwindling supply of non-renewable inputs for modern agriculture, there is an additional concern: the Mexico experiment promoted crops such as wheat and barley for the export market, displacing considerably the country’s polyculture of milpa with its traditional “Three Sisters”³ crops of corn, beans, and squash. Countries adopting the ‘Mexican model’ would profit from agriculture exports to global markets, but at the expense of their own populations who were forced to pay higher prices for food that now needed to be imported. Export-orientated grains and cash crops use land and resources that would otherwise go to feeding their own populations directly (as was the case in China which did not export its food surpluses). Of the Green Revolution in Mexico, critic Carl Sauer says:

 

"A good aggressive bunch of American agronomists and plant breeders could ruin the native resources for good and all by pushing their American commercial stocks... And Mexican agriculture cannot be pointed toward standardization on a few commercial types without upsetting native economy and culture hopelessly... Unless the Americans understand that,  they'd better keep out of this country entirely. That must be approached from an appreciation of native economies as being basically sound". (Wikipedia)

 

Raj Patel offers a further criticism on how GR policies widened the gap between poorer farmers and those able to adopt market-oriented farming practices, with standardized seed⁴, fertilizer, herbicide and pesticide inputs, greater levels of debt-financing, etc.:

 

“A more generalized observation returns to the history of the Green Revolution itself: the scientific breeding strategy was not geared towards the requirements of poorer peasants, but instead produced seeds requiring irrigation and an intensive use of material inputs⁵ [Including farm machinery]. Indeed, the Green Revolution varieties were trialed in far better conditions than experienced by the majority of smallholder farmers, leading to a persistent ‘yield gap’, a gulf between conditions that might be achieved with access to capital and high quality land, and that observed in the real world of poorer farmers.” (Patel)

 

AS I’ve mentioned in an earlier post, today approximately 75% of the globe’s arable land is in farming operations of 123 acres and more yet feeding only 30% of the world’s population. The remaining 25% of arable land is farmed on small-plot farm holdings. Yet these are responsible for feeding 70% of the globe. Remember that the larger farm operations adopt GR tools and techniques that are geared to GR-promoted grains and, when market prices warrant it, growing cash crops (eg.  cacao, oil palm and tobacco) for exports as part of a global food chain. Smaller farms continue to produce food for their local populations. And it is these ‘under-developed’ small-hold farms that advocates for a ‘new’ Green Revolution hope to bring onboard the international agriculture system. So, it must be said that today’s food production methods based on GR requirements for specialized seeds, fertilizer, and herbicide inputs, and so on, create a system that may be ‘efficient’ in achieving a narrow range of goals (grain monocultures, cash crops, predictable yields, for example) but are not resilient (in terms of land use, ecological sustainability, seed variety, local needs). One type of farming feeds markets, the other type feeds people. Patel writes:

 

“The consequences for the integrity and resilience of ecosystems are also profound. In sacrificing the ‘agronomic resilience’ of traditional varieties for the yield enhancing but more vulnerable Green Revolution seeds, the balance between crop and environment is undermined. As Frisson notes, ‘in its ability to buffer yields from season to season and to deliver improved nutrition, and to do so when few other options are available, agricultural biodiversity is perhaps at its most useful in precisely the kinds of marginal and fragile environments that are occupied by the poorest farmers’ Claims for the merits of the Green Revolution abide by a narrow definition of agricultural productivity in which concerns for sustainability are largely absent.” (Patel)

 

HERE, he says that small-hold farms in Africa, in Asia and the developing world are remnant repositories of ecological diversity, seed varieties, soil and water health, etc. Now, corporations and governments are looking to extend new Green Revolution practices and policies to the poorest farmers of the world, those least likely to benefit from them, let alone be able to utilize their technologies or pay for the necessary inputs (fertilizers, herbicides, etc.) Critics suggest what has been called the "financialization" of agriculture is little more than a land grab by wealthy elites on a global scale.

However, recent farmer protests in the Netherlands are indicative of a growing push-back against such measures. There, farmers are being forced to adopt strict nitrogen emission targets or face stiff fines from the federal government. Couched in a green plan to lower the country's overall carbon emissions by demanding its agriculture sector use less nitrogen fertilizer on its fields and curtail their emissions from dairy and cattle operations, some see the measures (which will make many farms unprofitable due to poorer yields and smaller herds) as a land grab by corporations. To add insult to injury, farmers are being forced to accept fire sale prices for their land and sign waivers stating they will NOT farm in the future. I think "draconian" is an apt descriptor here.⁶  

 

SO, we see that new Green Revolution initiatives, promoted by corporations and enforced by governments, can affect both small, subsistence farming in developing regions as well as those agriculturalists who have fully embraced GR practices and protocols established during the last half of the 20th century. 

 

 

OTHER criticisms of the Green Revolution are:

@ It's benefits are uneven. Larger farming operations are more likely to get start-up loans to purchase machinery, seed, etc. And much of the production from field and animal husbandry is influenced by international markets and export imperatives which means, as I've mentioned earlier, that particular types of monoculture crops, seeds, soil and plant treatments are used at the expense of local populations who either have to import foods that are no longer produced locally in the necessary quantities, do without, or accept higher prices overall.

@ There has been considerable scientific literature on the hazards of monoculture, with its long-term effects on local ecosystems, indigenous plant and animal life, insects, as well as soil and water contamination(and degradation) and deforestation.

 

"The environmental impacts of industrial crop farming and CAFOs are significant. There is soil depletion and soil infertility related to monoculture, soil erosion, water pollution, loss of biodiversity, increased greenhouse gas emissions (particularly methane and nitrous oxide) from cow digestion and manure as well as nitrogen-based fertilizers, and pesticide overuse leading to potential pesticide toxicity, especially in farm-workers. (“Industrial Agriculture 101.” NRDC. Jan. 30, 2021)

 

@ ALSO, in our modern scheme of producing food there is an incredible amount of waste. Some studies suggest up to 40% of all food produced is wasted. A shocking figure no doubt, but not surprising given factors such as long supply chains, multiple links in the sale and transportation of food from farm to market. Things like commercial retail standards (the 'perfect tomato', the 'fuzziest' peach', etc) are factors, as is waste in food preparation, storage and cooking. In the past, such extravagances were simply not in common practice. 

It is said that there is enough food produced in the world to feed our populations. The problem is that it doesn't always get to where it is needed. This may be true, but the clusterfuk in 2022 around Ukrainian and Russian wheat not going first to needy countries, and instead ending up in European markets makes the case for politics trumping humanitarianism once more.

@ Industrial monocultures and giant CAFOs add to air and water pollution, weaken a crop's ability to fend off multiple pest and weed infestations because such plants (GMOs especially) are bred to defend against certain pest or weeds at certain times of the year. A more complex field ecology, with a variety crop types, planting times, soil and plant treatments, etc., has greater resilience in combating such assaults. 

@ In addition, the nutritional aspect of GMO crops and monocultures is being questioned. Pesticide and herbicide use are thought to not only degrade soil and water health but also affect the "micronutrient" uptake of crop plants, which, in turn, affects the nutritional benefits of the foods we eat.

 

I THINK I'll end here because this is a broad topic with many 'threads' left to tease out and examine. From my perspective, the agricultural system that has been in place since the early nineteen-sixties seems incredible fragile. It is predicated on an ever-increasing use of resources (petrocarbons) that are non-renewable and in steady decline worldwide. Questions exist around the ecological health of today's farming methods, around its ability to sustainably grow. There are questions around the Green Revolution and whether there can ever be a fair sharing of the world's bounty given the fact that an increasingly financialized and corporate-dominated food production system has metastasized within the sector.  

THIS final point is perhaps most sharply critical of the Green Revolution (new or old), namely that, despite all the work put into the GR, hunger and starvation are still with us. Maybe less than before, but who's to say those numbers won't increase in the years ahead?

 

“Even today, malnutrition and hunger remain the leading cause of death globally, killing around 9 million adults and 3 million children yearly. Surprisingly, it is not because we don’t produce enough food.
Statistically, the earth produces more food than the required level to fulfill the needs of our population. However, politics and food supply controls result in the inefficient distribution of food.
If we don’t find ways to combat this imbalance, the Green Revolution with its high and mighty goals might turn out to be much ado for nothing.” (“Fifteen Green Revolution Pros and Cons to Know.” Our Endangered World. January 2023)

 
We have a long row to hoe and much to do! Nuff said.

 

Cheers, Jake.

______________________________________

 

* JUST when the Anthropocene Age began is still debated. Some suggest the start of agriculture after the last Ice Age. Others think it should be dated from the time when fossil fuels began to be used in the seventeenth century. Still other geologists suggest it should be calculated from the 1950s when hundreds of above-ground nuclear tests were conducted (leaving behind in the geological record a global dusting of radioactive isotopes like cesium 137 and plutonium 239). But, whatever dating regime is finally accepted by the scientific community, the Anthropocene represents the chapter in Earth’s history when humanity’s activities on the planet had noticeable effects on the biosphere.

 

+ Also known as the “Third Agriculture Revolution”, the first two being the “Neolithic”, around 11,000 years ago, which saw the cultivation of crops and beginnings of animal husbandry. The “Second Agricultural Revolution” occurs roughly between the middle of the 17th century until near the end of the 19th. This period saw the introduction of innovative tools such as crop rotation, mechanical reapers, seed drills, the use of guano, chemical fertilizers, and animal labour. 

 

1. Rachel Carson, botanist, and researcher at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute and later at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in her final years wrote the seminal exposé Silent Spring (pub. 1962) that examined the effects of DDT on the environment and living organisms. She is credited with starting the modern environmental movement.

2. IF we leave China from the equation when tabulating the success of post-WWII Green Revolution initiatives, then world hunger actually increased.  

 

“In 1979, there were 490 million Chinese people living in poverty. In 2014, there were only 82 million. Half of China's population had once been hungry and in poverty, but by 2014, only 6% remained so. If China's stats were to be excluded entirely from Green Revolution studies, they would find that world hunger actually increased.   Unlike in China, where locally grown produce would stay within local markets,[Italics mine] the food in other countries was being placed on the global market, never to be eaten by those who grew it.” (Wikipedia)

 

3. GEOGRAPHER Carl O. Sauer described the Three Sisters as "a symbiotic plant complex of North and Central America without an equal elsewhere". 

 

4. IN recent Big Ag corporations have been selling seed stock that has been genetically modified to be herbicide-tolerant and, in addition, sterile. In other words, none of these GMO seeds can be used as planting stock for the following season’s crops. Farmers are forced to purchase seed annually. Obviously, poor farmers are at a disadvantage here. 

 

5. “Most high intensity agricultural production is highly reliant on agricultural machinery and transport, as well as the production of pesticides and nitrates that all require energy. Nitrogen fertilizer is a direct fossil fuel product processed primarily from natural gas. It is estimated that no more than 3.7 billion people of the current world population could be fed without this single fossil fuel agricultural input. Moreover, the essential mineral nutrient phosphorus is often a limiting factor in crop cultivation, while phosphorus mines are rapidly being depleted worldwide.” (Wikipedia)

 

6.  IN recent months, as well, in the Dutch Senate, a fringe, protest party, the  "Farmer-Citizen Movement (BBB)" gained 15 seats and now plays a role in holding in abeyance the Rutte government's agricultural agenda.  

 

 

Patel, Raj. “The Long Green Revolution.” The Journal of Peasant Studies, Volume 40, Issue 1. 2013. Online.

 

Brinkman, M. 2009. “Fighting world hunger on a global scale: The Rockefeller Foundation and the Green Revolution in Mexico”. Rockefeller Foundation. Online.

 

 

 

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