Green Revolution

By 1942 World War II was finally over, but the after effects were no good. The war cause heavy casualties and issues such as starvation, poverty, health problems, and other difficulties. With the world’s ever-growing population, countries soon faced the facts that they simply couldn’t provide for everyone, because of this widespread famine soon occurred. Many countries like India, Mexico, Philippine and others were not able to provide the necessities for their millions of people.

They couldn’t afford the manpower, money, or complications that were required to bring their countries back to health. In 1946 President Harry S. Truman wrote in his inaugural address that to help stop communism, America should transfer its technology, especially agricultural technology, to those starving countries around the world. In 1944 the Rockefeller Foundation with the Mexican Ministry of Agriculture cooperated with the goal of boosting Mexico’s wheat production, which was importing most of its grain at the time. They hired plant pathologist George Harrar and agronomists William Colwell, Edward Wellhausen, John Niederhauser and Norman Borlaug. During the sixteen years Borlaug remained with the project, he bred a series of successful high-yield, disease-resistant, wheat. In the time his group was there they made 6,000 individual crossings of wheat. In March 1963 Norman Borlaug was sent to India because it was at war and experiencing famine and starvation.

Norman’s technology helped India avert that crisis and the technology eventually circulated all around Asia and developing countries around the world saving millions of lives. Alas, use of chemical fertilizers and herbicides and pesticides dramatically changed the environment by increasing pollution and erosion. Many did not support the new technology and wanted to stay traditional, also most small farmers were unable to afford the industrial equipment causing many to go into debt. The increase in industrial farms also caused water shortages. All these problems could lead to political unrest and start the cycle of communism again. Preventing communism was one of the main reasons this was started in the first place. The people who supported the technology were those with more money such as industrial farmers, corporate owners, or just rich people in general. Those who did not support it were people who were really traditional and refused to break their customs, also as mentioned before farmers who could not afford to make the changes, and environmentalists that did not support the use of many chemicals.

After the introduction of the new wheat, Mexico became self-sufficient, it became a major exporter of wheat. India also became a major exporter of wheat, and with the increase in food production, it was overcoming its famine issue. India later saw a substantial increase in production of wheat from 10 million tons in 1960 to 73 million tons in 2006. The introduction of this technology helped saved millions of lives in India and improved the land in Mexico, which had a lot of dry-land at the time. Also due to his contribution to humanity, Norman Borlaug was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. After the introduction of the new wheat, Mexico became self-sufficient, it became a major exporter of wheat. India also became a major exporter of wheat, and with the increase in food production, it was overcoming its famine issue. India later saw a substantial increase in production of wheat from 10 million tons in 1960 to 73 million tons in 2006.

The introduction of this technology helped saved millions of lives in India and improved the land in Mexico, which had a lot of dry-land at the time. Also due to his contribution to humanity, Norman Borlaug was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. In 1944 the Mexican Ministry of Agriculture recruited American agronomist Norman Borlaug along with other scientists with the goal of increasing its wheat production. Borlaug successfully bred a new breed of wheat which were disease-resistant and had higher yield in 1953, making Mexico self-sufficient.

And then in 1962 Borlaug was invited to India to continue his research while India was in a war at the time causing minor famine and starvation, his research allowed India to overcome this problem. With the spread of this new agricultural technology in Asia, it eventually reached more developing countries preventing starvation and saving billions of lives, becoming the “ Green Revolution”.