The Green Revolution, also known as the Third Agricultural Revolution, was a time when new farming technologies were shared widely, leading to much higher crop production. These changes first began in developed countries in the early 1900s and later spread around the world until the late 1980s. In the late 1960s, farmers started using new tools and methods, such as high-yielding cereal plants like dwarf wheat and rice, chemical fertilizers (which are needed in much larger amounts than older plant varieties), pesticides, and controlled water systems for crops.
At the same time, new farming practices, such as using machines, were introduced as a group of methods to replace older farming techniques. These changes often came with loans that required developing countries to make certain policy changes, such as allowing private companies to produce and sell fertilizers.
The Ford Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation played major roles in starting the Green Revolution in Mexico. A key person was Norman Borlaug, an agricultural scientist known as the "Father of the Green Revolution," who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970. He is credited with helping over a billion people avoid starvation. Another important scientist was Yuan Longping, whose research on hybrid rice helped save many lives. The main goals of the Green Revolution included creating high-yielding cereal crops, improving irrigation systems, modernizing farming methods, and giving farmers access to hybrid seeds, fertilizers, and pesticides. When crops reached their limits through traditional breeding, scientists developed genetic modification techniques to continue improving them.
Studies show that the Green Revolution helped reduce poverty, prevented hunger for millions of people, increased incomes, raised the amount of greenhouse gases released, reduced the land needed for farming, and lowered infant deaths.
History
The term "Green Revolution" was first used by William S. Gaud, the administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), in a speech on March 8, 1968. He described the spread of new technologies as:
Mexico is often called the "birthplace" and "end" of the Green Revolution. It began with great hope, and some say that during the twentieth century, two major changes in rural Mexico happened: the Mexican Revolution (1910–1920) and the Green Revolution (1940–1970).
The Green Revolution started in 1940 when U.S. Vice President-elect Henry A. Wallace visited Mexico. Wallace had previously worked as the U.S. Secretary of Agriculture under President Franklin Roosevelt and had founded a company, Pioneer Hi-Bred International, that improved seed corn to increase crop production. He was shocked by the low corn yields in Mexico, where 80% of people lived off the land. A Mexican farmer needed to work 500 hours to produce one bushel of corn, which was 50 times longer than the time needed by an Iowa farmer using hybrid seeds. Wallace convinced the Rockefeller Foundation to fund an agricultural station in Mexico to develop hybrid corn and wheat for dry areas. He hired Norman Borlaug, a young agronomist from Iowa, to lead the project.
The project received support from the Mexican government under President Manuel Ávila Camacho, the U.S. government, the United Nations, and the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). For the U.S., Mexico was an important test case for using technology and science in agriculture, which later became a model for global farming. Mexico aimed to increase food production, especially in its northwest region, to become self-sufficient in food. In central and southern Mexico, large-scale farming faced challenges, and production was low. The Green Revolution promised to provide enough food for Mexico’s growing population by increasing calorie consumption. Scientists believed hybridization could help feed the poor and reduce pressure on land redistribution. The success of the Green Revolution depended on using machinery, large-scale farms with access to credit (often from foreign investors), government-funded infrastructure, and access to low-wage workers.
Within eight years of Wallace’s visit, Mexico no longer needed to import food for the first time since 1910. In 20 years, corn production tripled, and wheat production increased five times. In 1943, Mexico imported half of its wheat, but by 1956, it became self-sufficient and was exporting 500,000 tons of wheat by 1964. Within 30 years, Borlaug received the Nobel Peace Prize for helping save two billion people from starvation.
Mexico received knowledge and technology from the Green Revolution and supported it with government funding and Mexican scientists. After the Mexican Revolution, the government redistributed land to ejidatarios, breaking the power of large estates. During the presidency of Lázaro Cárdenas (1934–1940), land reform reached its peak in central and southern Mexico. By the 1940s, agricultural productivity had dropped significantly.
In 1941, a team of U.S. scientists, including Richard Bradfield, Paul C. Mangelsdorf, and Elvin Charles Stakman, studied Mexican agriculture to suggest policies. In 1943, the Mexican government created the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT), which became a hub for global agricultural research.
Agriculture in Mexico was a major sociopolitical and technical issue. After World War II, the government focused on improving technology in areas not dominated by small-scale farmers. This effort helped Mexico become self-sufficient in food and reduced unrest during the Cold War by limiting the appeal of communism.
The Mexican government established the Mexican Agricultural Program (MAP) to lead efforts to increase productivity. Mexico became a model for spreading the Green Revolution to other parts of Latin America, Africa, and Asia. New crops like maize, beans, and wheat produced higher yields with fertilizers, pesticides, and careful farming. Many Mexican farmers, who were initially skeptical of scientists, later adopted their methods.
However, the Green Revolution required expensive inputs like new seeds, fertilizers, pesticides, and water, which small-scale farmers often could not afford. Pesticides posed risks to farmers and damaged local ecosystems by polluting water and harming workers and newborns.
Edwin J. Wellhausen, a participant in the Mexican experiment, noted factors that contributed to its early success, including disease-resistant, high-yield plants; improved soil use and weed control; and a balance between fertilizer costs and crop prices.
In 1960, during the presidency of Carlos P. Garcia, the Philippine government, with support from the Ford and Rockefeller Foundations, created the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI). In 1962, IRRI developed a new rice variety, IR8, which required fertilizers and pesticides but produced much higher yields than traditional rice. Annual rice production in the Philippines rose from 3.7 to 7.7 million tons in two decades. The Philippines became a rice exporter for the first time in the 20th century, though imports still exceeded exports. By 1980, problems with a credit program made loans accessible only to wealthy landowners, leaving poor farmers in debt. The program also became a tool for political favor.
In 1961, Norman Borlaug was invited to India by Dr. M. S. Swaminathan, an adviser to the Indian Minister of Agriculture. Despite challenges from India’s grain monopolies, the Ford Foundation and Indian government worked together to bring wheat seeds from CIMMYT to India. Punjab was chosen as the first location to test the new crops because of its reliable water supply.
Agricultural production and food security
According to a 2012 review in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the Green Revolution "helped reduce poverty for many people, prevented hunger for millions, and stopped the need to turn thousands of hectares of land into farmland."
The Green Revolution used technologies that already existed but were not widely used outside industrialized countries. These technologies focused on two areas: cultivation and breeding. Cultivation technologies aimed to improve growing conditions, such as modern irrigation systems, pesticides, and synthetic nitrogen fertilizer. Breeding technologies focused on creating better crop varieties through science-based methods, such as hybrid plants that combine modern genetics with selected plant traits.
A major technological achievement of the Green Revolution was the creation of new wheat varieties. Agronomists developed high-yielding varieties of corn, wheat, and rice. These varieties can absorb more nitrogen than traditional crops. However, crops that absorb too much nitrogen often fall over before harvest, so scientists introduced "semi-dwarf" genes into their genomes. A Japanese wheat variety called Norin 10, developed by agronomist Gonjiro Inazuka and shared with researchers in the United States, played a key role in creating Green Revolution wheat. In the 1960s, during a food crisis in Asia, high-yielding rice varieties were widely adopted.
Dr. Norman Borlaug, known as the "Father of the Green Revolution," bred wheat varieties that resist disease and have strong stems, preventing them from falling over during heavy rains or high fertilizer use. CIMMYT (International Center for Maize and Wheat Improvement) led breeding programs and helped spread high-yielding crops in Mexico, India, and Pakistan. These efforts doubled harvests in these countries.
Plant scientists identified genes linked to high yields, such as those controlling plant height and the number of stems. With advances in genetics, scientists cloned genes related to plant growth in species like Arabidopsis thaliana (GA 20-oxidase, ga1, ga1-3), wheat (Rht genes), and rice (sd1 gene). These genes are involved in gibberellin biosynthesis or cellular signaling. Shorter plants use less energy for stem growth, redirecting resources to grain production, which increases yields when fertilizers are used.
High-yielding varieties perform better than traditional crops when irrigation, pesticides, and fertilizers are available. Without these inputs, traditional crops may outperform them. Some researchers argue that comparing high-yielding varieties to traditional ones is not fair, as high-yielding systems often use monocultures (single crops), while traditional systems use polycultures (multiple crops).
By 2021, the Green Revolution increased crop yields by 44% between 1965 and 2010. Cereal production in developing nations more than doubled between 1961 and 1985. Yields of rice, corn, and wheat rose steadily during this time. These increases were supported equally by irrigation, fertilizers, and improved seeds, especially for Asian rice.
While the Green Revolution boosted agricultural output, the energy needed to grow crops has increased faster, reducing the ratio of food produced to energy used. Green Revolution methods rely heavily on machinery, chemical fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides, and defoliants, many of which come from crude oil.
The energy for the Green Revolution came from fossil fuels, including natural gas for fertilizers, oil for pesticides, and hydrocarbons for irrigation. Synthetic nitrogen fertilizer has helped feed nearly half the world’s population. As of 2014, about 50% of the world’s food supply depends on fertilizers.
Since the Green Revolution began, the world’s population has grown by about five billion people. In India, wheat production rose from 10 million tons in the 1960s to 73 million tons in 2006. People in developing nations now consume about 25% more calories daily than before the Green Revolution. Between 1950 and 1984, global grain production increased by 160% as the Green Revolution expanded.
The Green Revolution is often credited with preventing widespread famine and feeding billions of people.
Some critics argue that the Green Revolution is unsustainable, linking it to concerns about overpopulation and the Earth’s ability to support human needs. A 2021 study found that the Green Revolution actually reduced population growth, contrary to predictions made by some Malthusian thinkers.
Thomas Malthus predicted in 1798 that food shortages would lead to famine, but the world’s population doubled by 1923 and again by 1973 without fulfilling his predictions. In 1968, Paul R. Ehrlich warned that India would not be able to feed its population by 1980, but by 1974, India became self-sufficient in cereal production due to the introduction of high-yielding wheat varieties.
Dr. Borlaug acknowledged the challenges of population growth. In his Nobel lecture, he stated that while the Green Revolution provided temporary relief from hunger, long-term solutions require controlling population growth.
Some modern scholars argue that increasing food production does not always mean improving food security. For example, Harvard professor Amartya Sen noted that major famines in history were often caused by social and political issues, not a lack of food supply.
Second Green Revolution
Although the Green Revolution helped increase food production in some parts of the world for a time, its ability to produce more food has decreased. At the same time, the social and environmental problems caused by the Green Revolution have become more obvious. Because of this, many groups are working to create new methods to improve, increase, or replace the techniques used during the Green Revolution. Examples of these new methods include the System of Rice Intensification, marker-assisted selection, agroecology, and using existing technologies to solve agricultural challenges in developing countries. Scientists predict that the world’s population will grow by one-third by 2050, which means food production must increase by 70%. This can be achieved with proper policies and investments.
The term "Evergreen Revolution" was first used by Indian scientist M. S. Swaminathan in 1990. He said the idea began as early as 1968. The Evergreen Revolution adds an important new focus to the Green Revolution: protecting the environment. Swaminathan described it as "keeping high productivity forever without harming the environment." Over time, the Evergreen Revolution has become a mix of science, economics, and social studies. In 2002, biologist E.O. Wilson noted that: [emphasis added]
However, even though Swaminathan played a major role in promoting the Green Revolution in India, the Evergreen Revolution reflects the problems that occurred during the original project. Although the term is not widely known, its ideas match the findings in recent reports from the IPCC and other groups.