The Green Revolution, and What It Cost

Objec­tives of Green Rev­o­lu­tion#

• Short Term: The rev­o­lu­tion was launched in the mid-1960s to address Indi­a's food cri­sis.
• Long Term: The long term objec­tives included over­all agri­cul­ture mod­ern­iza­tion based on rural devel­op­ment, indus­trial devel­op­ment; infra­struc­ture, raw mate­r­ial etc.
• Employ­ment: To pro­vide employ­ment to both agri­cul­tural and indus­trial work­ers.
• Sci­en­tific Stud­ies: Pro­duc­ing stronger plants which could with­stand extreme cli­mates and dis­eases.
• Glob­al­iza­tion of the Agri­cul­tural World: By spread­ing tech­nol­ogy to non-indus­tri­al­ized nations and set­ting up many cor­po­ra­tions in major agri­cul­tural areas.

Basic Ele­ments of the Green Rev­o­lu­tion#

Expan­sion of Farm­ing Areas: Although the area of land under cul­ti­va­tion was being increased from 1947 itself, this was not enough to meet the ris­ing demand.

• The Green Rev­o­lu­tion pro­vided assis­tance in this quan­ti­ta­tive expan­sion of farm­lands.

Dou­ble-crop­ping Sys­tem: Dou­ble crop­ping was a pri­mary fea­ture of the Green Rev­o­lu­tion. The deci­sion was made to have two crop sea­sons per year instead of just one.

• The one-sea­son-per-year prac­tice was based on the fact that there is only one rainy sea­son annu­ally.
• Water for the sec­ond phase now came from huge irri­ga­tion projects. Dams were built and other sim­ple irri­ga­tion tech­niques were also adopted.
• Using seeds with improved genet­ics: Using seeds with supe­rior genet­ics was the sci­en­tific aspect of the Green Rev­o­lu­tion.
• The Indian Coun­cil for Agri­cul­tural Research devel­oped new strains of high yield vari­ety seeds, mainly wheat and rice, mil­let and corn.

Impor­tant Crops in the Rev­o­lu­tion#

• Main crops were Wheat, Rice, Jowar, Bajra and Maize.
• Non-food grains were excluded from the ambit of the new strat­egy.
• Wheat remained the main­stay of the Green Rev­o­lu­tion for years.

Back­ground of Green Rev­o­lu­tion in India#

• In 1943, India suf­fered one of the worst food crises in recorded his­tory, the Ben­gal Famine, which led to the death of approx­i­mately 4 mil­lion peo­ple in east­ern India due to hunger.
• Even after inde­pen­dence in 1947, until 1967 the gov­ern­ment largely con­cen­trated on expand­ing the farm­ing areas.
• But the pop­u­la­tion was grow­ing at a much faster rate than food pro­duc­tion.
• This called for an imme­di­ate and dras­tic action to increase yield. The action came in the form of the Green Rev­o­lu­tion.
• The green rev­o­lu­tion in India refers to a period when Indian Agri­cul­ture was con­verted into an indus­trial sys­tem due to the adop­tion of mod­ern meth­ods and tech­nol­ogy such as the use of HYV seeds, trac­tors, irri­ga­tion facil­i­ties, pes­ti­cides and fer­til­iz­ers.
• It was funded by the Indian and US gov­ern­ments and by the Ford and Rock­e­feller Foun­da­tions.
• The Green Rev­o­lu­tion in India is largely the Wheat Rev­o­lu­tion as the wheat pro­duc­tion increased by more than three times between 1967-68 and 2003-04, while the over­all increase in the pro­duc­tion of cere­als was only two times.

Pos­i­tive Impacts of Green Rev­o­lu­tion#

• Tremen­dous Increase in Crop Pro­duce: It resulted in a grain out­put of 131 mil­lion tonnes in the year 1978-79 and estab­lished India as one of the world's biggest agri­cul­tural pro­duc­ers.

- The crop area under high yield­ing vari­eties of wheat and rice grew con­sid­er­ably dur­ing the Green Rev­o­lu­tion.

• Reduced Import of Food-Grains: India became self-suf­fi­cient in food-grains and had suf­fi­cient stock in the cen­tral pool, even, at times, India was in a posi­tion to export food-grains.

- The per capita net avail­abil­ity of food-grains has also increased.

• Ben­e­fits to the Farm­ers: The intro­duc­tion of the Green Rev­o­lu­tion helped the farm­ers in rais­ing their level of income.

- Farm­ers ploughed back their sur­plus income for improv­ing agri­cul­tural pro­duc­tiv­ity.

- The big farm­ers with more than 10 hectares of land were par­tic­u­larly ben­e­fited by this rev­o­lu­tion by invest­ing large amounts of money in var­i­ous inputs like HYV seeds, fer­til­iz­ers, machines, etc. It also pro­moted cap­i­tal­ist farm­ing.

• Indus­trial Growth: The Rev­o­lu­tion brought about large scale farm mech­a­niza­tion which cre­ated demand for dif­fer­ent types of machines like trac­tors, har­vesters, thresh­ers, com­bines, diesel engines, elec­tric motors, pump­ing sets, etc.

- Besides, demand for chem­i­cal fer­til­iz­ers, pes­ti­cides, insec­ti­cides, weed­i­cides, etc. also increased con­sid­er­ably.

- Sev­eral agri­cul­tural prod­ucts were also used as raw mate­ri­als in var­i­ous indus­tries known as agro based indus­tries.

• Rural Employ­ment: There was an appre­cia­ble increase in the demand for labour force due to mul­ti­ple crop­ping and use of fer­til­iz­ers.

- The Green Rev­o­lu­tion cre­ated plenty of jobs not only for agri­cul­tural work­ers but also indus­trial work­ers by cre­at­ing related facil­i­ties such as fac­to­ries and hydro­elec­tric power sta­tions.

Neg­a­tive Impacts of Green Rev­o­lu­tion#

• Non-Food Grains Left Out : Although all food-grains includ­ing wheat, rice, jowar, bajra and maize have gained from the rev­o­lu­tion, other crops such as coarse cere­als, pulses and oilseeds were left out of the ambit of the rev­o­lu­tion.
  • Major com­mer­cial crops like cot­ton, jute, tea and sug­ar­cane were also left almost untouched by the Green Rev­o­lu­tion.
• Lim­ited Cov­er­age of HYVP: High Yield­ing Vari­ety Pro­gramme (HYVP) was restricted to only five crops: Wheat, Rice, Jowar, Bajra and Maize.
  • There­fore, non-food grains were excluded from the ambit of the new strat­egy.
    • The HYV seeds in the non-food crops were either not devel­oped so far or they were not good enough for farm­ers to risk their adop­tion.
• Regional Dis­par­i­ties:
  • Green Rev­o­lu­tion tech­nol­ogy has given birth to grow­ing dis­par­i­ties in eco­nomic devel­op­ment at inter-regional and intra-regional lev­els.
  • It has so far affected only 40 per­cent of the total cropped area and 60 per cent is still untouched by it.
  • The most affected areas are Pun­jab, Haryana and west­ern Uttar Pradesh in the north and Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu in the south.
  • It has hardly touched the East­ern region, includ­ing Assam, Bihar, West Ben­gal and Orissa and arid and semi-arid areas of West­ern and South­ern India.
  • The Green Rev­o­lu­tion affected only those areas which were already bet­ter placed from an agri­cul­tural point of view.
  • Thus the prob­lem of regional dis­par­i­ties has fur­ther aggra­vated as a result of the Green Rev­o­lu­tion.
• Exces­sive Usage of Chem­i­cals: The new crop vari­eties and irri­ga­tion brought large-scale use of pes­ti­cides and syn­thetic nitro­gen fer­tilis­ers.
  • How­ever, lit­tle or no efforts were made to edu­cate farm­ers about the high risk asso­ci­ated with the inten­sive use of pes­ti­cides.
    • Pes­ti­cides were sprayed on crops usu­ally by untrained farm labour­ers with­out fol­low­ing instruc­tions or pre­cau­tions.
  • This did more harm than good to crops and pol­luted the soil and the envi­ron­ment.
• Water Con­sump­tion: The crops intro­duced dur­ing the green rev­o­lu­tion were water-inten­sive crops.
  • These cere­als account for almost 50% of the dietary water foot­print.
  • Canal sys­tems were intro­duced, and irri­ga­tion pumps also sucked out the ground­wa­ter to sup­ply the water-inten­sive crops, such as sug­ar­cane and rice, thus deplet­ing the ground­wa­ter lev­els.
    • Pun­jab is a major wheat- and rice-cul­ti­vat­ing area, and hence it is one of the high­est water depleted regions in India.
• Impacts on Soil and Crop Pro­duc­tion: Repeated crop cycle in order to ensure increased crop pro­duc­tion depleted the soil's nutri­ents.
  • To meet the needs of new kinds of seeds, farm­ers increased fer­til­izer usage.
    • Heavy use of these chem­i­cals upset the chem­i­cal bal­ance of the soil.
  • Toxic chem­i­cals in the soil destroyed ben­e­fi­cial micro-organ­isms, which fur­ther led to the decline in the yield.
• Unem­ploy­ment: Except in Pun­jab, and to some extent in Haryana, farm mech­a­niza­tion under the Green Rev­o­lu­tion cre­ated wide­spread unem­ploy­ment among agri­cul­tural labour­ers in the rural areas.
  • The worst affected were the poor and the land­less labour­ers.
• Health Haz­ards: The large-scale use of chem­i­cal fer­til­iz­ers and pes­ti­cides such as Phos­phami­don, Methomyl, Phor­ate, Tri­a­zophos and Monocro­tophos resulted in a num­ber of seri­ous ill­nesses includ­ing can­cer, renal fail­ure, still­born babies and birth defects.

Con­clu­sion#

• Over­all, the Green Rev­o­lu­tion was a major achieve­ment for many devel­op­ing coun­tries, espe­cially India, and gave them an unprece­dented level of national food secu­rity.
  • It rep­re­sented the suc­cess­ful adap­ta­tion and trans­fer of the same sci­en­tific rev­o­lu­tion in agri­cul­ture that the indus­trial coun­tries had already appro­pri­ated for them­selves.
• How­ever, lesser heed was paid to fac­tors other than ensur­ing food secu­rity such as envi­ron­ment, the poor farm­ers and their edu­ca­tion about the know-how of such chem­i­cals.
• As a way for­ward, the pol­i­cy­mak­ers must tar­get the poor more pre­cisely to ensure that they receive greater direct ben­e­fits from new tech­nolo­gies and those tech­nolo­gies will also need to be more envi­ron­men­tally sus­tain­able.
  • Also, tak­ing lessons from the past, it must be ensured that such ini­tia­tives include all of the ben­e­fi­cia­ries cov­er­ing all the regions rather than stick­ing to a lim­ited field.

Com­mon ques­tions#

Who Intro­duced the Green Rev­o­lu­tion in India?#

As part of the wider effort led by Nor­man Bor­laug, M. S. Swami­nathan led the Green Rev­o­lu­tion in India. Mankombu Sam­ba­si­van Swami­nathan (7 August 1925 – 28 Sep­tem­ber 2023) was an Indian geneti­cist and the founder of the M. S. Swami­nathan Research Foun­da­tion, which works to end hunger and poverty. He played the lead­ing role in intro­duc­ing and devel­op­ing high-yield­ing vari­eties of wheat in India.