The Green Revolution, a transformation in agricultural production that allowed larger crop yields, is both hailed as a famine-averting life-saver and criticized as a poverty-inducing life-destroyer. What are the major arguments/facts on each side? Did the work of Norman Borlaug and others have a net positive effect on India and other nations?
What is the straight dope on the Green Revolution?
The way I see it - the GR made the future worse by doing several things:
I see the GR as a case of “attacking the symptom, not the cause” writ on a global scale. The real problem - unfettered population growth. The GR is a band-aid slapped on top that lets the real bad shit fester and grow underneath.
Plus the name-element “Green” is a misnomer (see points 2, 4) AFAIAC. But what do I know, I’m one of those lefty AnarchoGreens who prefers slow food and permaculture.
I wouldn’t worry too much. When a population exceeds the environmental carrying capacity a phenomenon called overshoot will occur, bringing the population back to an equilibrium point. In the process, the environment tends to be degraded slightly, meaning the new capacity is less than the old.
So, how many humans can the Earth hold with quasi-industrial technology? There were about a billion people on the Earth at the start of the industrial revolution, although it’s not clear if that was the limit. Maybe with added knowledge and continued renewable electrification we can bump it up to 2 or even 3 billion some day, assuming the environment is not degraded too badly during the overshoot. If something crazy occurs, like the melting of the Himalayan glaciers, well, I guess we can forget that idea. But certainly other factors such as massive amounts of top soil erosion and desertification will also be worrying. AFAIK, things like fresh water supplies and aquifers and fisheries will come back strongly if given a chance to recharge. But top soil is harder to create and we may wreck it during the overshoot (even moreso than we are now).
I just want to be clear here, but you regret that more people aren’t starving to death. Right?
What would you prefer farming to be? Farmer Bob raises a couple of pigs on his 15 acres in ‘the old way’? I like to eat and if we can feed billions of people at the expense of a few pretty forests, then I say “tough shit” to nature.
I prefer that as well. But we have the luxury of saying what we prefer because we are extremely rich. Have your slow food, your organic food, raw food and tofu if you want. It’s great if you can get it. But the clear majority of the world is one of those pesky “really fucking hungry” types who don’t have a political label but just need something to eat.
On point one, why interpret it that way in the most negative terms. Rather say, he & I regret that the population level of humans did not level off at a lower level than currently seen instead of continuing to grow. What he said is far from equaling regretting that more people aren’t starving to death.
It would be better if farming was less reliant on petroleum products. Science will need to come up with economical methods of producing nitrogen from other sources. We also need more pesticides from other sources, of course GM products are seemingly feared by much of the world. They are probably going to be absolutely required is we don’t level off and reduce the world’s population. I hope it can be reduced softly through population control and not via famine, drought and war.
Overall I agree with **MrDibble ** points. They appear to be well thought out.
Jim
The current population is approximately 6.6 billion. No one is really sure what the sustainable carrying capacity of the Earth is – 1 billion? 2 billion? When the artificial foundation that allows such a surplus crumbles there will be an enormous correction. Some forecasts say the world population of 2050 will be 9 billion. Heaven help us.
First, human population isn’t always directly correlated with food availability. You need only look at some of the wealthiest countries in the world and note their declining birth rates to see what I mean.
Regretting that a population level has not leveled off due to food shortage is regretting that more people have food to feed their children. I don’t see away around that.
It would appear that capacity is at least 6.6 billion. We have enough food for everybody, the problem is sharing and distributing it.
I will say it again with different words and in larger letters:
It is regretful that human population has not leveled off due to restraint and birth control.
I can only interpret, your interpretation as applying the nastiest standards to **MrDibble ** statement. An interpretation that is not implied by his words, only in your mind.
Jim
But aren’t you still saying it was preferable to let people starve than to feed them?
I mean, l don’t have a dog in this fight because I don’t know much about it (hence the OP). But it seems like you have to bite that bullet. It might be a rational, even compassionate position because, over the long run, it would cause less suffering. But I don’t see how you get around it.
So you’re a text book cornucopian. Fair enough. Agree to disagree and all that.
Why yes, I agree with that. But you listed a failure for the population to level off as being directly related with the sudden spike in food production in the poorest countries in the world and called that bad. This is not related to birth control. Richard Parker nailed it on the head.
You are arguing that “because less people are starving, we are now more capable of exceeding the earth’s capacity, and this is a bad thing.” You are regretting that more people have food to feed their children.
What proportion of oil imports go to agricultural use post-GR as compared to pre-GR?
Also, is the petroleum used in such a way that it releases CO2 into the atmosphere?
What a perfectly rotten thing to say. Shame on you.
Trouble is, when Mother Nature spanks, She spanks hard!
I guess the real question is: if we see a series of crop-destroying climate changes, how much starvation will there be? In the West, we eat a LOT of animal-derived protein (beef, chicken, etc.). If we all ate rice beans and vegetables, we wouldn’t have to grow so much feed corn.Also, the idea of using ethanol made from food crps strikes me as foolish-it will increase the demand for fossil fuels, and decrease the cropland available for human food. The world probably does a have a finite population capacity, but we will only find out by trial and error.
We have to own up to the uglier parts of our philosophies. You can’t say that you wish the population would stabilize without admitting that a few bad things will happen for the greater good to prevail. Withholding life saving technological advances from starving millions to protect the environment is not something I am comfortable with.
If population leveled off and start dropping due to birth control and we can handle Global Warming without droughts becoming far worse, we can hopefully avert mass starvation and begin a more rational usage of the world’s resources. Resources like Petroleum products, top soil and fresh water.
If we do nothing, and have increase droughts and can no longer sustain the GR via petroleum products, then you will see starvation on a huge level. Famine will then cause war. It could be a pretty ugly future.
At this point I have gone way beyond anything **MrDibble ** said, these are strictly my words, thoughts and fears.
Btw: You listed **MrDibble ** above on my quote, he might not agree with how I put it. I will ask a mod to fix that.
Jim
No, if you’re against the green revolution you’re for starvation, period.
You can’t limit population by limiting the food supply without starving people to death. How else could you limit population, unless people die because they don’t have enough food? It’s very simple.
If you’re concerned that future economic/ecological collapse will mean less food in the future, and that means people in the future will starve to death, how is that problem averted by starving them to death in the present?
Worldwide population growth is leveling off. In the richest countries in the world population growth is negative. People who have plenty to eat don’t respond by drastically increasing the size of their families.
Saying you’re against modern food production practices means you are in favor of starvation. Plain and simple. If you don’t like the ugly implications of that, if you think it’s rude to say that, perhaps you should take a good look in the mirror. It’s not rude to tell the truth.
Reread what **MrDibble ** posted and how. It you read it open-minded, it makes much sense. The key was his opening statement.
I don’t fully agree with this, but he does support his opinion well.
I am an optimist and I continue to hope for a soft landing. If you are pessimistic about humans changing, it is hard to disagree with his fears and concerns.
Jim
No, I’m regretting that even more people are going to get it in the neck when the unsustainable Green Revolution collapses. I’m not wishing that people would starve (talk about poisoning the debate well, there), I’m wishing they had never been born. There’s a difference.
Fallacy of the excluded middle. It’s more than possible for sustainable farming to feed the world’s pre-GR population. It’s probably possible for it to feed the current one, but I don’t have hard figures for that. And it doesn’t mean Farmer Bob, it just means less of a factory farm process. More mixed agriculture, more diversity.
But I don’t expect someone who only thinks deforestation means less “pretty” forests to understand.
I am not extremely rich by any means. I buy local and organic because it’s in fact cheaper to get better produce, more sustainable and directly benefits farmers I actually get to meet - I don’t shop at Whole Foods or some other faux-farmer’s market, I happen to live down the road from permaculture farms and in a place that has great local produce - because I chose to stay here. And I think you have me confused with a hippy with your references to raw food and tofu. That’s not what slow food is about at all - soya’s an exotic thing here, not slow food at all.