Green Revolution
Although the Green Revolution originally described developments for rice and wheat, high-yielding varieties HYVs have since been developed for other major food crops important to developing countries, including Sorghum, Millet, Maize, Cassava and beans. Moreover, a fully fledged system of international agricultural research centres now works on many aspects of developing country agriculture (the future harvest centres that make up the consultative group on international agricultural research.)
Impacts on agricultural production * The adoption of HYVs occurred quickly, by 1970 about 20% of the wheat area and 30% of the rice area in developing countries where planted to HYVs * By 1990 the share had increased to about 70% for both crops * Yields of rice and wheat virtually doubled * Higher yields and profitably also lead farmers to increase the variety of rice and wheat that they grew at the expense of other crops * With faster growing varieties and irrigation they grew more crops in their land each year – these changes more than doubled cereal production in Asia between 1970 and1995 * While population increased by 60% instead of widespread famine cereal and calorie availability per person increased by nearly 30% and rice and wheat became cheaper * Latin America experienced significant gain as well but the impact in sub-Saharan Africa was much more modest – poor infrastructure, high transport costs, limited investment in irrigation and pricing and marketing policies that penalised farmers made the Green Revolution technologies too expensive or inappropriate for much of Africa
Social Impacts * The Green Revolution led to sizable increases in returns to land and hence raised the farmers incomes with greater income to spend needs for farm inputs and milling and marketing services, farm families led a general increase in demand for goods and services this stimulated the rural non farm economy which in turn grew and generated
Impacts on agricultural production * The adoption of HYVs occurred quickly, by 1970 about 20% of the wheat area and 30% of the rice area in developing countries where planted to HYVs * By 1990 the share had increased to about 70% for both crops * Yields of rice and wheat virtually doubled * Higher yields and profitably also lead farmers to increase the variety of rice and wheat that they grew at the expense of other crops * With faster growing varieties and irrigation they grew more crops in their land each year – these changes more than doubled cereal production in Asia between 1970 and1995 * While population increased by 60% instead of widespread famine cereal and calorie availability per person increased by nearly 30% and rice and wheat became cheaper * Latin America experienced significant gain as well but the impact in sub-Saharan Africa was much more modest – poor infrastructure, high transport costs, limited investment in irrigation and pricing and marketing policies that penalised farmers made the Green Revolution technologies too expensive or inappropriate for much of Africa
Social Impacts * The Green Revolution led to sizable increases in returns to land and hence raised the farmers incomes with greater income to spend needs for farm inputs and milling and marketing services, farm families led a general increase in demand for goods and services this stimulated the rural non farm economy which in turn grew and generated