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Perhaps the best illustration of the postwar development project was the Green Revolution.
Like Modernization theory, the Green Revolution was a distinctively American program that
must be seen in the broader context of the Cold War. But it also illuminates some of
the distinctive features of the post-World War II development project more generally.
Writing in the eighteenth century, English political economist Thomas Malthus posited
that hunger (and by extension famine) was a natural product of the environment and of
human nature. Malthus' believed that human population would grow exponentially, while
food output could only grow arithmetically. Thus at some inevitable point in the future,
the human population would outstrip the ability of the Earth to feed us.
And Mathus' basic ideas have been widely adopted, even in contemporary analyses. Writing in
1968, Paul Ehrlich, author of The Population Bomb, argued that, "Some time between 1970
and 1985 the world will undergo vast famines—hundreds of millions of people are going to starve
to death. That is, they will starve to death unless plague, thermonuclear war, or some
other agent kills them first." His analysis led him to some stark conclusions.
As he wrote, "The United States should announce that it will no longer ship food to countries
such as India where dispassionate analysis indicates that the unbalance between food
and population is hopeless." Fortunately, history to date has proven both
Elhrich and Malthus wrong, even if there remain strong proponents of Malthusian views. Food
production has continued to outpace population growth, though the gap between the two has
begun to close, particularly in recent years. Nevertheless, there are several problems with
Mathus' Theorem. As we'll consider later in the course, consumption is at least as important
as population in understanding environmental degradation. But more directly, despite the
widespread existence of hunger, food production has continued to outstrip population growth
over time. Hunger is thus the result primarily of political and social factors rather than
simply of production. Nobel Prize-winning Indian economist Amartya
Sen has explored famines and hunger. Sen's theory on hunger, known as Entitlement Theory,
argues that hunger results not from a collapse of food production, but rather from the inability
of people to secure access to the food that is produced; or more precisely, from inequalities
built into mechanisms for distributing food. Sen's interest in famines was rooted in his
own experiences as a child during the 1943 Bengal famine, in which an estimated 4 million
people died of starvation, malnutrition, and disease. While declines in food production
were a factor in the Bengal famine, Sen observed that there was actually more food available
in 1943 than there was in 1941 in Bengal. Yet there was no famine in 1941. What set
1943 apart, Sen argues, were the social and economic factors: declining wages, increasing
unemployment, rising food prices, and inadequate food distribution systems. In a similar manner,
the United States, Australia, and other developed countries regularly experience drought but
not famine. And more to the point, Sen argues that while widespread malnutrition may exist,
no democratic country has ever experienced a famine. Clearly, there is something more
to famine than the simple availability of food.
Yet in the 1960s, concerns over the possibility of a food crisis in South and Southeast Asia
combined with growing concerns in the United States about the threat of communist expansion
in the region to promote a "Green Revolution." And to be sure, anti-communism played an important
role in the Green Revolution. Indeed, the Green Revolution (and Modernization Theory
more generally) were seen as central to US efforts to prevent the spread of communism.
As William Gaud, former director of the US Agency for International Development said
of the Green Revolution, "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." The term "Green Revolution" refers to a program
of research, development, and technology transfers that took place from roughly the 1950s to
the 1970s. Led by Norman Borlaug, the "Father of the Green Revolution," the Green Revolution
sparked a sharp increase in global food production by introducing new, chemical-responsive, high-yielding
varieties of rice, wheat, and (to a lesser extent) corn with shortened growing seasons,
while simultaneously expanding infrastructure, the availability of synthetic fertilizers,
pesticides, and herbicides in the Global South. The Green Revolution fundamentally restructured
agricultural production in the Global South, having both positive and negative impacts.
And importantly, the Green Revolution was primarily a state-funded endeavor. Governments
in both the North and the South devoted considerable resources to developing and promoting Green
Revolution technologies. The bulk of the Green Revolution's impact
was felt in South and Southeast Asia, as well as Latin America. Interesting, Africa was
largely excluded from the Green Revolution. And while there have been numerous attempts
to replicate and deploy Green Revolution technologies to Africa, they have generally been unsuccessful.
Most explanations of the failure of the Green Revolution in Africa center on political factors,
such as corruption, insecurity, lack of infrastructure, and weak governmental support. But environmental
factors have also played a role, with the availability of water necessary for irrigation
often lacking and a greater variety of soil types making the development of cultivars
suited for local growing conditions more difficult. In many ways, the Green Revolution presents
a perfect illustration of both Modernization Theory and of the postwar development project
more generally. The Green Revolution represented a coordinated effort on the part of the state
to establish the conditions to transition from traditional, subsistence-based agriculture
to modern agriculture. In doing so, traditional practices (such as the use of conventional,
waste-based fertilizers, reliance on rainfall instead of irrigation, and reliance on traditional
crop varieties) were replaced with "modern" farming centering on genetically uniform crops,
which exhibited quicker maturation and were more responsive to chemical inputs.
In the regions where the Green Revolution was deployed, there was a marked increase
in agricultural output. As this graph shows, per capita food production increased sharply
in Asia and South America from the 1970s onwards, while per capita food production in Africa
declined over the same period. Breaking those figures down, we find that
In Asia, Rice yields more than doubled, while maize and wheat yields more than tripled.
In Latin America, corn yields nearly tripped. But in Africa, yields of the primary crops
increased much more slowly. Maize and cassava yields increased by about 60%, while rice,
millet, and sorghum output increased at much slower rates. Importantly, output for all
five crops actually declined in per capita terms.
And while it certainly led to dramatic increases in food production, the Green Revolution also
had several unintended consequences. In areas where it was adopted, Green Revolution
technologies tended to restructure the agricultural production in fairly broad ways. Peasant farmers
in the Global South tend to be fairly risk adverse. And the smaller your holdings, the
more risk adverse you are likely to be. The smallest farmers live a precarious life, where
one failed growing season can spell ruin. As a result, they tend to adopt new technologies
at a much slower rate. Consequently, small farmers faced growing
competition from larger farmers who could afford to take a chance on the adoption of
the new technologies. This resulted in an increasing level of rural inequality, and
the dispossession of some of the smallest farmers from their land. Land ownership patterns
were thus consolidated, with farms becoming larger, suggesting that Green Revolution technologies
were not scale neutral but instead accrued larger benefits for larger farmers.
Second, intra-household dynamics were also affected by Green Revolution technologies.
Traditionally, many Indian households had a gendered division of agricultural labor
which saw men responsible for cash crops and women responsible for household garden crops.
These garden crops provided the majority of the household's subsistence (not to mention
its micronutrient variety). But the Green Revolution encouraged famers to put more land
under the cultivation of rice and wheat, displacing the traditional gardens maintained by women.
As a result, two important changes occurred. Women's position within the household was
undermined, as their ability to garner a small income (from the sale of vegetables) was reduced.
And more importantly, micronutrient deficiency actually increased despite an increase in
the total number of calories available. Because household diets were increasing less diversified,
micronutrient deficiency, including Vitamin-A deficiency—a leading cause of blindness—actually
increased. People had fuller bellies but a less healthy diet.
Third, the Green Revolution also had a significant impact on the environment. Because the higher-yielding
varieties associated with the Green Revolution depended on the availability of irrigation
and chemical inputs like fertilizer and pesticides, the use of both increased. Runoffs from farmers'
fields brought nitrogen-rich soil into rivers and lakes, creating algae blooms which fed
on the nitrogen and facilitating the development of "dead zones." Soil nutrients declined,
promoting a technology treadmill in which more and more chemicals had to be applied
to maintain overall productivity. And perhaps most importantly, a sharp decline
in the number of traditional crop varieties under cultivation resulted in a loss of indigenous
varieties. Farmers adopting the new seed varieties abandoned traditional varieties of crops.
Hundreds of traditional varieties disappeared in the process.
So, like many of the other issues of development we've considered so far, the impact of the
Green Revolution is decidedly mixed. It expanded agricultural production, enabling countries
like India to move from food importers to food exporters. At the same time, it also
had numerous unintended consequences, exacerbating both economic and gender-based inequalities
in the regions in which the technology was introduced.