Green Revolution – Was it revolutionary?

In the early 1940s, there was a great famine in India. Crops were failing, and the result was people starving. The Green Revolution started as an idea to make sure there was enough water to irrigate crops, inorganic fertilizers to fertilize crops, and so that at the end of the season, they ended up with much higher yields than before. Now, to the point, was this “revolution” truly revolutionary? Did it really change lives? I think it did.

The Green Revolution occurred so that the population of the Indian Subcontinent could be fed, and they have been fed, so isn’t the problem over? Well, after the Green Revolution, there haven’t been any famines in this region, but because of a major population growth (which probably resulted from the thought that now that there is enough food, we can have more people), there is a higher demand for food once again, so people think we are at a point once again where in a few decades, we might need another Green Revolution, and so people are now discussing whether the last Green Revolution was truly revolutionary or not.

Mostly because of the technological advances that came from the (last) Green Revolution, there is enough food on the earth to feed 9 billion people. The earth is populated by less than 9 billion, so why are we still worried about famines and people starving? Well, the problem at the moment isn’t about the amount of food we have (though we will end up needing more to ensure sustainability), it’s the amount of money people have, and without money, distribution of the food, will never be equal, and so if business isn’t good within the country, the food will simply be exported. But because of the Green Revolution, and higher yields of crops such as rice and wheat, prices for these products have been able to stay pretty low. Also because of that, many farms stopped producing, or started producing less of the other products, such as pulses or legumes, because they could earn more money by producing rice and wheat. This meant that the prices of the other products have been raised, and therefore many people especially those under the poverty line aren’t able to purchase these anymore, that is the reason for many deficiencies.

The Green Revolution might have decreased crops of other types, but the idea of genetically modifying plants will be the future of agriculture. This will mean that rice and wheat crops can have the nutrients that are missing from them added on, and so almost all the problems that the Green Revolution might have caused will have solutions, and that’s what the Green Revolution was about, it was a solution.

People were starving, crops were failing, so scientists and farmers took a step to cultivate farming. They solved the problem by genetically modifying crops to make higher yields. People around this region are benefiting from this, and it was a revolution because it changed the lives of the people who needed it. Ever since the Green Revolution, there have been no famines in this region of Asia. Because of all this, I can say that the Green Revolution was truly revolutionary because it solved what it was put out there to solve.