The revolution wasn’t really green
The modern agricultural complex spawned by the Green Revolution may have allowed us to grow more food, but dependence on this high-cost industrial input type of system extracts an extreme toll:
>Agricultural output did increase as a result of the Green Revolution, but the energy input to produce a crop increased faster – the ratio of crops produced to energy input has decreased. This is because High Yielding Varieties (HYVs) of seeds only outperform traditional varieties when adequate irrigation, pesticides, and fertilizers are used
>Green Revolution agriculture produces monocultures of cereal grains. This type of agriculture relies on the extensive use of pesticides because monoculture systems – with their lack of genetic variation – are particularly sensitive to bug infestations
>The transition from traditional agriculture to GR agricultural meant farmers became dependent on industrial inputs – not made on the farm inputs. Farmers faced severely increased costs because they now had to purchase such items as farming machinery, fertilizer, pesticides, irrigation equipment and seeds
>The increased level of mechanization on larger farms removed a large source of employment from the rural economy. New machinery – mass produced gas tractors, large self-propelled combines and mechanical cotton pickers – all combined to sharply reduce labor requirements
>Less people were affected by hunger and died from starvation – but many more are affected by malnutrition such as iron or Vitamin A deficiencies. Green Revolution grains do not have the same nutritional values as traditional varieties. The switch from heavily rotated multiple crops to mono-cropping or dual cropping reduces total soil fertility and the nutritional value of our food
>The Green Revolution reduced agricultural biodiversity by relying on just a few varieties of each crop. The food supply could be susceptible to pathogens that cannot be controlled by agrochemicals
>Many valuable genetic traits, bred into traditional varieties over thousands of years, are now lost
>Wild plant and animal biodiversity was hurt because the Green Revolution expanded agricultural development into new areas where it was once unprofitable or too arid to farm
>The 20/80 phenomenon – the rapid increase in farm size and the concentration of production among large producers means 20% of producers generate 80% of the agricultural output
>As a result of modern irrigation practices, aquifers in places like India (once Borlaug’s greatest triumph) and the US midwest have become depleted. There are two types of aquifers: replenishable, most of the aquifers in India and the shallow aquifer under the North China Plain are replenishable – depletion means the maximum rate of pumping is automatically reduced to the rate of recharge. For fossil or nonreplenishable aquifers – like the U.S. Ogallala aquifer, the deep aquifer under the North China Plain, or the Saudi aquifer – depletion brings pumping to an end. In the more arid regions like the southwestern United States or the MiddleEast, the loss of irrigation water could mean the end of agriculture in these areas
>Green Revolution techniques rely heavily on chemical fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides, some of these are developed from fossil fuels which makes today’s agriculture regime much more reliant on petroleum products
>Farming methods that depend heavily on chemical fertilizers do not maintain the soil’s natural fertility and because pesticides generate resistant pests, farmers need ever more fertilizers and pesticides just to achieve the same results
>The increased amount of food production and foods low price led to overpopulation worldwide
I said earlier we currently use the renewable resources of 1.6 planets and that by 2030 we’ll use the renewable resources of two planets. We do that by agricultural inputs – the massive use of fertilizers, diesel, insecticides, pesticides, fresh water for irrigation etc.
Has anyone thought about the further effects on our environment of ramping up fertilizer, pesticide, insecticide and herbicide applications even further?
How about increasing use of pollution emitting fossil fuels and fresh water for irrigation to enable big agra to feed 2.2 billion more of us?
Have you thought about the effects of the existing billions of people (who don’t live even close to a western lifestyle) all wanting to live, or at least consume, like an American or Australian does? What happens when urbanization increases all the newly minted urbanites living standards and all those new consumers start to climb the protein ladder alongside the future 2.2 billion coming to the table?
It’s obvious the world needs a new farm – one the size of South Africa.
Unfortunately, the UN also says that by 2030 an area twice the size of South Africa will become unproductive due to desertification, land degradation, and drought.
