I have to say, "people were a couple inches shorter because the relative cost of carbs dropped compared to the relative cost of protein" pales in comparison to that big a drop in infant mortality, in my book. Or at least it indicates "now you should do high yield varieties for pulses and millet too, so the relative cost of protein gets re-aligned with the relative cost of carbs, and people's diets are balanced again."
Well done piece! Thanks for helping me think about this concretely, so that I can identify why I feel as confident as I do.
Good point about how food would be expensive without the Green Revolution, so there would be much less land used for agriculture. I hadn't thought of this before. I suppose this implies that without the Green Revolution, global meat consumption would be a lot lower too - since growing animals for food is a particularly inefficient and costly use of agricultural land.
So that's a strike against the Green Revolution - it has likely enabled more factory farming and the accompanying animal cruelty.
A great read. I was particularly struck by the flip-side of the human impact on nutrition beyond calories. This dimension may explain the paradox of stunting in breadbaskets in some countries...."She shows that people exposed to the Green Revolution during early childhood in high-suitability districts are on average 0.3 cm shorter as adults, have 3 pp higher rates of hypertension and 1.5 pp higher rates of diabetes. So the criticism that the Green Revolution has made people sicker through monoculture is likely to be true."
Made me wonder if HYVs were one of the factors in the great expansion of animal agriculture in the same period, i.e., because we needed less land to grow crops to directly feed humans, we were able to repurpose more lands for animal feed.
Hi Karthik! Interesting read, I enjoyed your article.
It seems like your evaluation is missing a critical parameter - did the GR avert the population bomb? If tens of millions or hundreds of millions of deaths to famine were averted, that is a tremendous benefit. Such a global disaster would also have hugely destabilized nations, caused conflict for resources and over refugees etc etc.
(I haven't read the book, don't know if they projected anything specific about numbers of deaths)
- https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1029/2018GL081477 ""There have been no major famines since independence [1947]," said Mishra . Been years since I read this but I also wonder how much of a relationship there might be between agricultural practices and impacts on soil health/moisture along with water retention & small water cycle impacts.
Woah, 18% infant mortality in 1960s??? We have come such a long way
I have to say, "people were a couple inches shorter because the relative cost of carbs dropped compared to the relative cost of protein" pales in comparison to that big a drop in infant mortality, in my book. Or at least it indicates "now you should do high yield varieties for pulses and millet too, so the relative cost of protein gets re-aligned with the relative cost of carbs, and people's diets are balanced again."
Well done piece! Thanks for helping me think about this concretely, so that I can identify why I feel as confident as I do.
Good point about how food would be expensive without the Green Revolution, so there would be much less land used for agriculture. I hadn't thought of this before. I suppose this implies that without the Green Revolution, global meat consumption would be a lot lower too - since growing animals for food is a particularly inefficient and costly use of agricultural land.
So that's a strike against the Green Revolution - it has likely enabled more factory farming and the accompanying animal cruelty.
A great read. I was particularly struck by the flip-side of the human impact on nutrition beyond calories. This dimension may explain the paradox of stunting in breadbaskets in some countries...."She shows that people exposed to the Green Revolution during early childhood in high-suitability districts are on average 0.3 cm shorter as adults, have 3 pp higher rates of hypertension and 1.5 pp higher rates of diabetes. So the criticism that the Green Revolution has made people sicker through monoculture is likely to be true."
Found you through a blusky mention of this post. You might like a couple things:
- Nolan Monaghan's take on Green Revolution looking at both the Productivist perspective and the Socio-ecological perspective: https://headwatersblog.substack.com/p/seeds-of-prosperity-the-green-revolution
- 'The Globalization of Wheat' by Marci Baranski https://upittpress.org/books/9780822947349/
- In regards to Borlaug and the land sparing hypothesis, Dr. Gregory Thaler's work in critiquing the land sparing argument, start with this interview: https://landscapes.libsyn.com/an-alibi-of-ecocide , https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300272482/saving-a-rainforest-and-losing-the-world/
Lovely analysis of the green revolution.
Made me wonder if HYVs were one of the factors in the great expansion of animal agriculture in the same period, i.e., because we needed less land to grow crops to directly feed humans, we were able to repurpose more lands for animal feed.
Hi Karthik! Interesting read, I enjoyed your article.
It seems like your evaluation is missing a critical parameter - did the GR avert the population bomb? If tens of millions or hundreds of millions of deaths to famine were averted, that is a tremendous benefit. Such a global disaster would also have hugely destabilized nations, caused conflict for resources and over refugees etc etc.
(I haven't read the book, don't know if they projected anything specific about numbers of deaths)
You have to also ask whether the famines were human made.
See https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2019/03/29/asia/churchill-bengal-famine-intl-scli-gbr/index.html on the 1943 famine where theories suggest it had more to do with Churchill during WW2. Theres also a documentary 'Bengal shadows on this https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=T31MFNLJKJw&pp=0gcJCRsBo7VqN5tD
- https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1029/2018GL081477 ""There have been no major famines since independence [1947]," said Mishra . Been years since I read this but I also wonder how much of a relationship there might be between agricultural practices and impacts on soil health/moisture along with water retention & small water cycle impacts.
Nice! Enjoyed this. Did you read our interview with Prabhu Pingali?? Way back in issue 2 https://asteriskmag.com/issues/02/beyond-staple-grains
Interesting article.
An extended critique is in "One CGIAR is failing (and what to do about it)" at http://dx.doi.org/10.13140/RG.2.2.20565.09441