Thinking about the Green Revolution

Source of graph

The Green Revolution was basically the result of the application of science and technology to the problem of improving agricultural productivity in developing nations. I think the narrative line is something like this:

• The densely populated countries of Asia were facing major food shortages in the early 1960s. They were not producing enough food to feed themselves and did not have the huge resources that would have been necessary to make up the shortfall. This was only the most extreme example, and in most of the developing world, most people worked in low yield agriculture and their productivity had to be increased to enable national economic development.
• With Rockefeller and Ford Foundation support, the International Center for Maize and Wheat research in Mexico had shown that new varieties of these basic grain crops could be developed with greatly increased yields, and that grain production in Mexico had been increased by wide spread use of the new varieties. It was recognized that the approach offered a chance to improve yields all over the developing world.
• The International Rice Research Center was created in the Philippines to expand the CIMYT work to that crop, and other International Agricultural Research Centers were later created and joined together with the coordination of Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research. Long term support of the CGIAR was achieved through a collaborative approach of several donors.
• Potentially revolutionary advances in technology were achieved in getting important qualities necessary to improve grain production into improved cultivars of rice and other grains.

The key innovation apparently was the transfer of dwarfing genes into high yielding varieties of grains. Shorter varieties with strong stems could hold more grain weight without lodging (falling over which ruins the grain). Other traits such as disease resistance, insect pest resistance, the ability to grow in different conditions and improved nutritional characteristics were then incorporated into improved varieties over time.

• There was then a huge job of adapting these varieties to the local conditions in individual countries, done by national agricultural research services. Then seed for the improved varieties had to be produced in industrial quantities. Farmers had to be taught to use the new varieties, a job done largely by new agricultural extension services. The human resources to run the field stations and extension services had to be trained, largely by a new network of national agricultural universities. National governments with the support of the donor community carried out the institution building of the research services, extension services and agricultural colleges. There was a lot of training of developing country agricultural leaders in U.S. and other developed country graduate schools.
• The improved varieties, in order to achieve their potential yields, required irrigation, fertilizers and pesticides. Road systems had to be improved to facilitate movement of inputs and outputs of farming. Input and output markets had to be developed. Grain storage facilities had to be built to handle the product.  The investment needs were huge in this effort, and the donor community helped developing countries build the capacity to provide these inputs for their farmers, especially in Asia.
• The result has been a huge increase in grain yields in Asia and Latin America, and a lesser increase in Africa where for many reasons the improved varieties were less widely accepted and used.

Thus the story is one in which innovative scientific research in IARCs proved successful. Then developing countries innovated through the use of the improved genetic materials naturalizing them to their own conditions and disseminating them to their farmers. Finally, heavy investments had to be made in the rural sector to enable farmers to realize the potential in their new materials.

The result was that the food production per farmer increased in much of the developing world. Since each farmer could produce more food, the largest movement from rural to urban areas in history was made possible. The new urban populations took jobs in manufacturing and service industries, fueling economic development. Perhaps most important, the feared famines were averted.

The United States was supportive at all stages. That support involved a partnership among government (especially USAID), foundations, land grant colleges and NGOs, not to mention the large number of individuals who made careers in this form of development assistance. The model of U.S. agricultural development was widely shared, and U.S. experience of improved agriculture fueling overall economic development was replicated in many nations.

The story illustrates an important aspect of the role of science and technology in development. A body of scientific information has accumulated over time, including information about the genetics of the grain species and their varieties, the diseases and pests that affect these crops, soils and growing conditions, etc. That information includes understanding from the social sciences about the economics of farming and food markets and understanding of the dissemination of innovations.

This scientific wealth informed specific efforts to improve varieties of the major grain crops. This effort could be seen as applied science or technology development. The social expenditures on science and improvement of varieties were fairly small, as compared to either the total value of global grain production or the value of the increased grain production since the 1960s. It was also small as compared to the total investment needed to transfer the improved varieties from the experimental field stations to the tens of millions of farmers who adopted improved varieties plus the investments in improved agricultural infrastructure needed to use the improved varieties effectively, plus the increased inputs of fertilizers and pesticides needed to achieve high yields with the improved varieties. However, without the science and technology development, the improved yields would not have been realized nor would most of the investments economically warranted.

When the effort to improve grain yield in developing nations began, U.S. scientific involvement was absolutely critical. The agricultural research capacity of the world was highly centralized in the United States. In the last half century the scientific capacity in developing nations has been greatly increased, but that in the United States still plays a critically important role globally. Focusing U.S. agricultural science in part on the needs of developing nations was a critically important role for the development assistance donor agencies, and remains important today.