Discussion about this post

User's avatar
JJ's avatar

This was really interesting. I grew up on a farm in Iowa. Borlaug is from Iowa and he’s essentially our Mother Theresa. He is saintly and exalted and we name things after him like the World Food Prize. But at the same time we have a HUGE nitrates problem in our water supply (not entirely from crops, but from commercial ag in general) and we also have the systemic dismantling of the family farm that has been playing out for about three generations. I can’t wait to send this to my dad.

Expand full comment
Kaleberg's avatar

I'd give Borlaug and the green revolution a lot more credit. There actually was a rapidly growing population and a need to improve agricultural yields world wide. There actually was a successful model for improving agricultural yields. There actually is a reason for concentrating on grain production since grains provide most of the calories in most humans' diets. There actually is a successful development model involving consolidated, capital intensive agriculture and urbanization. The world population doubled between 1960 and 2000, and contrary to the predictions and thanks to the green revolution, there were no widespread, deadly famines.

Unlike trickle down economics, the green revolution worked. That's why I think it's a bad analogy. The caloric challenge driven by rising population was met, and, now, falling fertility rates mean we have time and resources to further improve and tune agriculture. Current agricultural research places a lot more emphasis on cutting the use of fertilizer and, especially, insecticides. There is a lot more work on improving local crops and developing local variants, and we now have much better tools for doing so. There are a lot more local institutions around the world dedicated to improving local agriculture.

I've seen enough farms around the world not to romanticize farming life. Some friends of mine quit "suit jobs" to run a local farm, and, even with a side job and modern farming practice, it is a lot of hard work. At a subsistence level, it is much worse and the consequences of failure more dire. I agree that we need a second green revolution and that it should have a different focus from the first one, but, like the industrial revolution, the green revolution deserves some respect.

Expand full comment
10 more comments...

No posts