Sudip Bandyopadhyay’s Blog

In the 1960s—the time of one of the worst food crises in India—it had seemed that the Malthusian theory was correct and the country’s population was exceeding its ability to feed its citizens. With the threat of famine looming large on the country, the government solicited help from abroad. It imported huge quantities of grain from the US. This was followed by import of new varieties of wheat and grain to be grown in India’s soil. The green revolution meant development of higher-yielding seeds and unprecedented expansion in the use of irrigation, fertilizers and pesticides in developing countries.

Norman Borlaug, the father of green revolution, brought Indo-US ties to a new level. Borlaug, who died last  Saturday, was often credited with saving over a billion people worldwide from starvation. Borlaug,solved that  food shortage challenge by developing genetically unique strains of  “semidwarf” wheat, and later rice, that raised food yields as much as sixfold.  The result was that a country like India was able to feed its own people as its population grew from 500 million in the mid-1960s, when Borlaug’s “Green Revolution” began to take effect, to the current 1.16 billion. World food production more than doubled between 1960 and 1990 and in Pakistan and India, two of the nations that benefited most from the new crop varieties, grain yields more than quadrupled over the period. Today, famines – whether in Zimbabwe, Darfur or North Korea – are politically induced events, not true natural disasters. In later life, Borlaug was criticized by self-described “greens” whose hostility to technology put them athwart the revolution he had set in motion.  Borlaug fired back, warning  that fear-mongering by environmental extremists against synthetic pesticides, inorganic fertilizers and genetically modified foods would again put millions at risk of starvation while damaging the very biodiversity those extremists claimed to protect.  In saving so many, Borlaug showed that a genuine green movement doesn’t pit man against the Earth, but rather applies human intelligence to exploit the Earth’s resources to improve life for everyone.

Agriculture in India is not an occupation but rather it’s a way of life as more than 65% of the population is directly employed in it. It may contribute only 17% to GDP but the challenges faced by it are as gigantic as faced by physical infrastructure. Green revolution had created a sense of elation that we have resolved our production problem. But, now we have reached a plateau in production and productivity. There is a dire need to follow a multidimensional approach towards agriculture. Indeed, what is now required is a second green revolution to increase productivity and take people out of low returns farm jobs. We need another Borlaug-like inspiration.