Green Revolution

The Green Revolution is the process of technological development of agricultural techniques that began in the northern Mexican state of Sonora in 1944 and has since spread throughout the world. The goal of the Green Revolution was to increase the efficiency of agricultural processes so that the productivity of the crops was increased, and to help developing countries face their growing populations' needs.

Achievements of the Green Revolution

Increased yields

Green Revolution techniques, on average, tripled wheat and other food crops harvests per hectare in some major development countries like India. Because of this, food security of large areas, such as the developed world, South America, South Asia, East Asia, South East Asia and large portions of Africa has been achieved.

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The Green Revolution resulted in a record grain output of 131 million tons in 1978-79. This established India as one of the world's biggest agricultural producers. No other country in the world which attempted the Green Revolution recorded such level of success. India also became an exporter of food grains around that time.

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The Green Revolution in agriculture helped food production to keep pace with population growth. Many people believe a second Green Revolution is likely to take place, and should focus on the food crops grown by the 2,000 million people in the world who lack food security.

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Without the Green Revolution, agriculture would not be able to meet the basic food requirements of the world's current population. According to some estimateshttp://www.soils.wisc.edu/courses/soils326/borlaug.pdf, the Green Revolution has saved almost a billion human lives.

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More stable yields

The high level of crop control brought more stable and predictable yields. This increased food security as well. High yielding varieties, however, are much more vulnerable for suboptimal production environments than traditional cultivars. A notorious example was the fate of the new dwarf IRRI rice varieties in Bangladesh at water-logged areas, which didn't survive the annual floods as the local deep water rice cultivars did.

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Labour saving

The high level of mechanisation associated with Green Revolution techniques led to a reduced dependance on low-skilled human labour. As a result, farmer and agricultural worker incomes rose substantially and production costs plummeted. The efflux of labour, however, brought problems at its own, like the increased migration to the cities and creation of massive slums.

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