During the 1950s, India was on the brink of mass famine. Dr. Norman Borlaug was invited to India to solve the food problem. Despite bureaucratic hurdles imposed by India’s grain monopolies, the Ford Foundation, Indian agriculture scientists and Indian Government collaborated to import wheat seed from the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Centre (CIMMYT) Mexico. Punjab was selected by the Indian Government to be the first to try heavy yielding crops because of its reliable water supply, the presence of Indus plains which make it one of the fertile plains on earth, and a history of agricultural success. Moreover, land consolidation was already done by the Chief Minister Sardar Partap Singh Kairon, and farmers were very receptive and hard working. Sardar Partap Singh Kairon, Chief Minister, and Jawaharlal Nehru, Prime Minister took the decision to establish Punjab Agricultural University Ludhiana to provide proper technical knowledge to farmers to make the Green Revolution successful. Studies show that the Green Revolution contributed to widespread reduction of poverty, averted hunger for millions, raised incomes, reduced greenhouse gas emissions, reduced land use for agriculture, and contributed to a decline in infant mortality. But Punjab had to pay a heavy price for Green Revolution; 1 the water level lowered down significantly to a dangerous level. 2 pollution of soil, water and air. 3 depletion of soil. 4 increase in farmer’s suicide, debt and cancer.
Dr. Norman Borlaug, “Father of the Green Revolution“ bred rust-resistant cultivars which have strong and firm stems, preventing them from falling over under extreme weather at high levels of fertilization and irritation. International Maize and Wheat Improvement Centre Mexico conducted these breeding programs and helped to spread high yielding varieties in Mexico and other countries like India and Pakistan. These programs successfully led the harvest to double in these countries. In Punjab, Snora 63 and Snora 64 wheat varieties were introduced and Dr. GS Athwal improved these varieties and released PV 18, Kalyan and Sonslika wheat varieties with better yields and qualities. In the case of rice crops, Punjab (India) adopted IR 8, a semi-dwarf variety developed by the International Rice Research Institute (I R R I) Philippine, that could produce 10 times the yield of traditional rice. Rice variety IR 8 was a success throughout Asia. IR 8 was also developed into semi- dwarf IR 36. In 1960s, rice yields in India were about 2 tons per hectare; by mid 1990s, they had risen to 6 tons per hectare. India become one of the world’s most successful rice producers, and is now a major rice exporter, shipping 4.5 million tons in 2006.
Punjab is known as the “Granary of India “, producing 20% and 9% of India’s wheat and rice respectively. At the international level, this represents 3% of the global production of these crops. The state is responsible for 2% of the world’s cotton and wheat production and 1% of the world’s rice production. This is possible because of the Green Revolution, a period when India was converted into an industrial system. Modern methods of technology, including high yielding varieties seeds, tractors, irrigation facilities, pesticides, weedicides, and chemical fertilizers were adopted on a large scale.
India holds the second-largest agricultural land in the world, with 20 agroclimatic regions and 157.35 million hectares of land under cultivation. Thus, agriculture plays a vital role with 58% of rural households depending on it even though India is no longer an agrarian economy. Now India is self-sufficient in food production, it’s food production between 1947 and 1960 was so bad that there were risk for occurrence of famine. Therefore the Green Revolution was initiated in the 1960s in order to increase food production, alleviate extreme poverty and malnourishment in the country, and to feed millions.
The major crops cultivated in India before the Green Revolution were rice, millets, sorghums, wheat, maize, and barley, and the production of rice and millets were higher than the production of wheat, barley, and maize combined all together. But production of millets has gone down, and the crops that were once consumed in every household became a fodder crop in just a few decades of the Green Revolution. India has lost large numbers of indigenous varieties that took several hundred years to evolve. This loss of species is mainly due to the focus given to the production of subsidized high-yielding hybrid crops and the emphasis of monoculture by the government. In the past, Indian farms were small plots of land protected by windbreaks and tree cover. For centuries, the farmers employed several methods of organic husbandry, crop rotation, and leaving fields fellow for long periods of time in order to allow the soil to retain its nutrients. These practices lowered the demand on the land and maintained the equilibrium of soil.
The Green Revolution is the set of research technology transfer initiatives occurring between 1950 and the late 1960s, that increased agricultural production in parts of the world, beginning most markedly in the late 1960s. The initiatives resulted in the adoption of new technologies like 1. Use of the latest technology and capital inputs 2. Adoption of modern scientific methods of farming 3. Use of high yielding varieties of seeds 4. Proper use of chemical fertilizers 5. Consolidation of land holdings 6. Use of various machineries. Both the Ford Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation were heavily involved in its initial development in Mexico. One key leader was agricultural scientist Norman Borlaug, who received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970. He is credited with saving over a billion people from starvation.
Impact of Green Revolution
Green Revolution solved the food problem all over the world and people are getting food at significantly low prices. There is no fear of famine. It reduced infant mortality in rural children, specifically for poor people.
High yield-cereal crops have low quality proteins with essential amino acid deficiencies, and a lack of balanced essential fatty acids, vitamins, minerals and other quality factors.
Provide food for the populace in undeveloped countries and weaken the fermenting of communist insurgency.
Increase in food production led to cheaper food for urban dwellers and it led to increased rural-urban migration.
It affected both agricultural biodiversity and wild biodiversity.
It has substantially reduced emissions of the greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide.
Nitrogen fertilizer is a direct fossil fuel product processed primarily from natural gas. In the future, there may be the shortage of natural gas. Phosphorus mines are rapidly being depleted worldwide.
Large scale sue of chemicals in agriculture increased cancer cases.
According to a 2021 study, Green Revolution substantially increased income. Delay in Green Revolution by 10 years would have cost 17% of GDP per capita, where as if the Green Revolution had never happened, it could have reduced GDP per capita in the developing world by half.
Agricultural Scientists of Punjab Agricultural University Ludhiana, Indian Agricultural Research Institute New Delhi and Indian Council of Agricultural Research New Delhi played a significant role in the Green Revolution by producing better varieties of different crops and developing new technology which resulted in the success of the Green Revolution. The Agriculture Department of Punjab, Haryana and UP played an important role in transferring the technology to the farmers. They were aware about the side effects of the Green Revolution but there was pressure from the government to solve the food problem in India to avoid famine.
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