The end of abundance: Food panic brings calls for a second 'green revolution'
Javier Blas | Friday, 6 June 2008
THE world stood on the brink of starvation and, warned doomsday forecasts in the 1960s, the battle to feed all of humanity was already lost. Famine was common in some of the most populated countries. Predictions of Malthusian catastrophe made the bestseller lists, with Paul R. Ehrlich writing in The Population Bomb that by the 1970s and 1980s the victims would number in the hundreds of millions.
But human ingenuity saved the day. A massive programme of investment in agricultural research and infrastructure - avidly supported by the US out of a cold-war-fuelled fear that hungry countries could fall into the arms of the Soviet Union - led to an explosion in farm productivity. Nations that never dreamt of being able to feed themselves were transformed into net exporters of food.
Those efforts, led by Norman Borlaug, an American agronomist who was later awarded the Nobel peace prize, resulted in the development of higher-yielding seeds and an exceptional expansion in the use of irrigation, fertilisers and pesticides in developing countries.
By 1968 the jump in farm productivity was so clear - India, for example, harvested a record wheat crop, as did the Philippines for rice - that William Gaud, administrator of the US Agency for International Development (AID), said the world was witnessing the "makings of a new revolution".
"It is not a violent red revolution like that of the Soviets, nor is it a white revolution like that of the Shah of Iran," Gaud said in a speech 40 years ago. "I call it the green revolution," he added, coining a term that has long survived him.
Yet, like its counterparts elsewhere on the spectrum, the green revolution eventually lost momentum. Today, the world stands on the brink again as agricultural commodity prices surge, triggering food riots in countries from Haiti to Bangladesh. This time, however, efforts to increase supply - and the political backing in Washington and other capitals - appear far weaker. The task of raising productivity is meanwhile rendered more difficult by record oil prices, which make fertiliser more expensive.
In dozens of interviews with agriculture officials and experts, a consensus emerges: even if the current food crisis is the result of multiple factors, such as biofuel demand or extreme weather, its roots are in the waning green revolution. "The foundation of the current crisis is the slowdown in farm productivity," says Lennart B
But human ingenuity saved the day. A massive programme of investment in agricultural research and infrastructure - avidly supported by the US out of a cold-war-fuelled fear that hungry countries could fall into the arms of the Soviet Union - led to an explosion in farm productivity. Nations that never dreamt of being able to feed themselves were transformed into net exporters of food.
Those efforts, led by Norman Borlaug, an American agronomist who was later awarded the Nobel peace prize, resulted in the development of higher-yielding seeds and an exceptional expansion in the use of irrigation, fertilisers and pesticides in developing countries.
By 1968 the jump in farm productivity was so clear - India, for example, harvested a record wheat crop, as did the Philippines for rice - that William Gaud, administrator of the US Agency for International Development (AID), said the world was witnessing the "makings of a new revolution".
"It is not a violent red revolution like that of the Soviets, nor is it a white revolution like that of the Shah of Iran," Gaud said in a speech 40 years ago. "I call it the green revolution," he added, coining a term that has long survived him.
Yet, like its counterparts elsewhere on the spectrum, the green revolution eventually lost momentum. Today, the world stands on the brink again as agricultural commodity prices surge, triggering food riots in countries from Haiti to Bangladesh. This time, however, efforts to increase supply - and the political backing in Washington and other capitals - appear far weaker. The task of raising productivity is meanwhile rendered more difficult by record oil prices, which make fertiliser more expensive.
In dozens of interviews with agriculture officials and experts, a consensus emerges: even if the current food crisis is the result of multiple factors, such as biofuel demand or extreme weather, its roots are in the waning green revolution. "The foundation of the current crisis is the slowdown in farm productivity," says Lennart B