Norman Borlaug and the Green Revolution
Improved crop varieties raised yields while intensifying questions about water, inputs, and distribution.
Norman Borlaug and research teams developed high-yielding wheat varieties with disease resistance, and related work spread through international agricultural programs. In parts of South Asia and elsewhere, improved seeds and farming methods contributed to large increases in grain production.
The Green Revolution helped avert some feared shortages, but its gains were uneven. Irrigation, fertilizer, pesticides, credit, land access, and crop prices shaped who benefited; intensive methods also created environmental costs in some places.
Without these advances, food production might have grown more slowly, but the claim that a billion people would certainly have starved is not supportable. Imports, policy, other research, diets, conflict, and distribution would all have influenced hunger.
Yield is one measure of food security, not the whole of it. The counterfactual asks how innovation can expand supply while protecting soil, water, farmers' livelihoods, and people's ability to afford food.
The counterfactual asks how innovation can expand supply while protecting soil, water, farmers' livelihoods, and people's ability to afford food.
When I praise an innovation for increasing output, what costs and distributional effects should I also measure?