THE green revolution that boosted farm outputs around much of the world came at a price: millions of the world鈥檚 poorest farmers in Africa became poorer. This is the message of a report released this week, commissioned by government-backed international research institutes that sustained the revolution with four decades of scientific breakthroughs.
New rice and wheat varieties produced a grain glut that caused prices to fall, the report says. Farmers who could afford to plant these new varieties made up for lower prices with improved yields, but those who could not lost out. 鈥淪ome farmers experienced real losses from the green revolution,鈥� says Robert Evenson, an economist from Yale University, in the report for the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research.
The green revolution started in the late 1950s amid fears that a population boom would trigger famine. Since then, world food production has kept ahead of population growth, and high-yielding grain varieties have allowed many countries to feed themselves without destroying their remaining pristine forests.
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But the revolution has remained patchy. The new crops were mostly developed in Latin America and Asia, and did not suit African conditions. African farmers who used them did not raise yields much and saw their incomes fall as world grain prices slumped. Only in the past decade have the green revolutionaries turned their attention to producing high-yield African crops.
Did the green revolution save the world from mass famine? Maybe not, says Evenson, as without it, higher food prices would have stimulated production of the old varieties. But more of the world鈥檚 food would have been grown in the rich world; and more of the poor world鈥檚 natural ecosystems would have been ploughed up.