This is world civilization.
My name is Dr. Long; this video is entitled the Green Revolution.
The Green Revolution is a term that refers to major changes in agriculture from the 1930s
to the 1960s, and these changes led to significant improvements in crop yields worldwide – especially
in developing nations, for malnutrition and even famine were major problems.
Now agriculture is sometimes taken for granted today, and we live in a society where food,
you know, is very common and very cheap in many ways.
But agriculture is extremely important to civilization.
In fact, it is agriculture that makes cities and civilization possible in the first place,
as food is the most basic of human needs.
Agriculture is also big business – even today.
It is still the largest sector of the economy in the state of Georgia, contributing nearly
74 billion to the state's economy in 2015 and accounting for over 410,000 jobs.
Georgia is also the nation's top producer of pecans and peanuts and it is among the
top producers of poultry and cotton – and these are just a few examples of agricultural
production in Georgia.
The modern world did experience improvements in agriculture leading up to the Green Revolution
that began in the 1930s.
Agriculture and food supply was a major concern during the 17th and 18th centuries in Europe
– for example, the Reverend Thomas Malthus – who lived from 1766 to 1834 – was an
important British minister; scholar; and thinker who wrote extensively about agriculture and
population.
Malthus was especially interested in population growth.
He noted that the human population grows until it reaches a point in which the population
outstrips the food supply ¬– and he thought that population grew faster than agricultural
improvements – and this in his view would lead to disaster.
In other words, the population will grow faster than the some food supply rose, and this at
some point will lead to a crisis and famine and a crash in the population – and for
Malthus, the cycle will repeat itself – growing population; outstripping the food supply;
a crash; and then population growing again – and so forth and so on.
This cycle of population growth, outstripping the food supply, and then a crash has been
called the Malthusian Trap.
Now Malthus contributed to many of the debates about economics and population during the
Industrial Revolution, but improvements in agriculture over time led many to view his
ideas as overly pessimistic, and there were several improvements in agriculture from the
18th through the 19th centuries.
First, in the decades prior to the beginning of the Industrial Revolution in Britain in
the 1780s, farmers in countries such as Britain and the Netherlands made better use of fertilizer
and drained swamps that put more land to use.
They also discovered the selective breeding of cattle and sheep, that increased dairy
and meat production.
Now these techniques spread to the rest of Europe and the United States, leading to improved
diets and massive population growth during the 19th century.
The population growth in Europe was an important factor in the Industrial Revolution – as
previously noted.
While China adopted crops from the New World – for instance, corn; sweet potato; and
peanuts.
These crops were very important in China as they led to great population growth there
as well.
In the 19th century, there were further improvements in agriculture – including in technology,
for instance – in 1831, American inventor Cyrus McCormick ended the mechanical reaper.
Likewise in 1837, an American blacksmith by name of John Deere invented the first steel
plow – and the reaper and the steel plow were major improvements for farmers.
Also in the 1860s and 1870s, barbed wire was developed, which greatly helped ranchers.
By the late 19th century, improvements in shipping and refrigeration created a world
market for agricultural products – a market that had had never been seen on that scale
before for agriculture.
Countries such as the United States; Canada; and Russia became major exporters of grain
– while Australia came to export wool and mutton.
At the same time, Argentina – which has extensive grassland for ranching and its own
cowboys called gauchos – became a major exporter of beef worldwide and Argentinian
beef became very famous in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
In large part due to its impressive beef industry, Argentina experienced tremendous economic
growth in the same period and it put it among the top wealthiest nations in the world at
the time.
As a result of its economic growth, due to agriculture, Argentina experienced a lot of
immigration in this period – particularly from Italy.
Italians, who were seeking to immigrate, in the late 19th and early 20th century had two
main choices – the United States, particularly New York City and Argentina, especially the
city of Buenos Aires – and those two choices were often difficult for many Italians.
They were both considered good places to go.
Now that would eventually change and after the 1930s, Argentina's economy would decline.
So clearly much – although not all – the world saw serious agricultural improvements
from the 1750s until the 1930s, improvements that led to better diets in much of the Western
world and resulted in food prices dropping.
However, despite the major improvements in agriculture between the 1750s and the 1930s,
there were still major limitations.
Take the example of the United States; by 1930 the United States had some of the most
advanced agriculture in the world – yet farmers were still 21 percent of the labor
force, meaning that nearly one and out of five workers were farmers.
Today this would be considered very inefficient because only two percent of the labor force
in the United States is needed for agriculture today.
One big problem in the 1930s was the tractors and other mechanical equipment existed, but
they were simply too expensive for most farmers at the time.
Most farmers – here in Georgia in the 1930s – continued to plow with mules and horses.
Now not only are mules and horses less efficient than tractors, but they consume a great deal
of food as well.
The average farmer in the 1930s had to devote 25 percent of his or her land to past – just
to keep his or her horses and mules fed, and this was land devoted to pasture that could
be used to grow other crops.
Now several major changes to agriculture occurred between the night the 1930s and 1960s that
have been dubbed the Green Revolution and this is a revolution that took worldwide agricultural
production to levels completely unimaginable in years before.
Many of these major changes took place because of new products that companies brought to
market.
Now one major change that was part of the Green Revolution was mechanization.
The Green Revolution included the use of machines such as tractors; harvesters; pickers; and
combines – all of which became more affordable for farmers by the 1950s.
By the end of the 1950s, almost all farmers in the United States were using tractors.
Still, another important change was the electrification of farms – the spread of electricity to
farms.
This allowed for the use of electric motors – including for water pumps and hay bale
elevators, as well as better heating and cooling for livestock in big barns – and it allowed
for the removal of manure for livestock farmers, as well, from barns.
The electrification of farms led to productivity gains for livestock farmers – particularly
dairy; beef; poultry; and pork.
In addition to the electrification of farms, the use of antibiotics; steroids; and better
breeding techniques gave a huge boost to livestock production as well.
To give one example, milk production in the United States has more than doubled since
1950.
One other big improvement that is part of the Green Revolution was the use of insecticides;
herbicides; and fungicides.
Now historically, insects and fungi often devastate crops, greatly reducing crop yields
for farmers – and because of the use of insecticides; herbicides; and fungicides this
became less and less of an issue after the 1950s.
Finally, one of the big hallmarks of the Green Revolution was the breeding of high-yield
crop varieties.
A major pioneer in this was the American plant scientist Norman Borlaug, who lived from 1914
to 2009.
Borlaug was a scientist, who has sometimes been called the father of the Green Revolution.
In the 1940s, Borlaug worked as a plant scientist at a research lab supported by the Rockefeller
Foundation in Mexico and he was sent to Mexico to try to combat hunger that was very prevalent
in Mexico at the time.
Now Borlaug developed different varieties of wheat – to develop one that was resistant
to a fungus called rust, that was very devastating in Mexico at the time.
In addition, he developed wheat with huge heads leading to a an increase in the amount
of wheat output on the same land – even tripling or quadrupling wheat production in
Mexico.
Now later – these techniques of different breeds, of high-yield wheat and wheat resistant
to fungi, was later applied to rice with similar results.
Borlaug's work in Mexico – in tripling or quadrupling wheat production – was thus
very successful and in the long run help combat hunger.
Consequently, Borlaug and his colleagues spread their ideas about the breeding of high-yield
crop varieties to other countries besides Mexico, and these were also other countries
that were struggling to feed their people – and these countries include India; Pakistan;
the Philippines; Colombia; Chile; and Brazil.
Now by the late 1960s and a decade or two after Borlaug's work, many observers came
to conclude that Borlaug's discoveries may have prevented the deaths of hundreds of millions
of people from starvation.
Borlaug won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970 for his work in the Green Revolution.
According to the 2009 calculation of Gary H. Toenniessen, who's a director of agricultural
programs from the Rockefeller Foundation, each day half the world's population consumes
grains that are descended from one of the high-yield grain varieties developed by Borlaug
and his colleagues.
Now since the 1960's, the Green Revolution has also come to include the use of computers.
Farmers in the United States today work in air-conditioned tractors and use GPS and other
technologies to best plant the seeds for their new crops.
On the whole, the Green Revolution has had an enormous impact on the lives of billions
of people across the world – and while agriculture is sometimes seen as backward, it’s actually
one of those high-tech sectors of the global economy today.
Food has become much more plentiful because of the Green Revolution and prices have dropped.
In First-World nations, food selection has greatly expanded to a degree unimaginable
in the past.
Consider for the moment the average grocery store in the United States – the average
grocery store in the United States contains between 40 and 50 thousand different food
items.
This is just an unimaginable variety of choices and this staggering amount of choices would
be completely unimaginable to our ancestors.
Developing or Third-World nations that once struggled to feed their people have experienced
arguably even more dramatic change Countries such as China and India were actually known
for famine in the 1960s, but today India has become a breadbasket.
China, for its part, has seen its meat production triple since 1996.
Eating meat was once a luxury in China and now it is commonplace.
And remember, there are over a billion people in China and India each; so these are very
important nations – and these are just two examples.
Today famine, which has been a major concern throughout much of human history, is largely
a thing of the past – except during wartime in Third-World nations in which governments
use famine and food as a political tool.
Now despite its accomplishments, the Green Revolution also has its critics.
Improvements in food supplies have downsides, such as obesity and diabetes.
Obesity and diabetes aren't simply a problem in the United States; they have increased
dramatically worldwide over the last thirty years and are significant problems today in
countries as diverse as in Western Europe and Saudi Arabia and Mexico.
Diabetes is now the leading cause of death in Mexico.
Also Saudi Arabia has has been noted for having a major increase in obesity.
Besides health concerns related to food and the lack of healthy food or the lack of consumption
of healthy food in many countries, many critics also worry about the health effects of the
use of antibiotics on livestock and the use of pesticide on crops.
How will that impact human health in the coming decades?
Many people are concerned about that – and this has caused a huge surge in organic foods.
They’ve become much more popular; although a problem with organic foods is not everyone
can afford them.
Now critics of the Green Revolution also point out that the use of tractors and other machines
– as well as the use of manure that livestock naturally produce – has increased the pollution
from farms, and this in turn – the agriculture pollution, from equipment and from livestock
– this in turn contributes to global warming and global warming itself may be a huge threat
to agriculture, to water supplies and even to issues of food security in the coming decades.
Before his death in 2009, Norman Borlaug complained that that the global population growth threatened
to undo the real and positive impact that the Green Revolution had had.
Borlaug especially criticized governments for not doing enough to promote birth control
in order to curb population growth – population growth that he dubbed ‘the population monster’.
So there are 7.6 billion people in the world today.
The world population is expected to rise to 9.7 billion by 2050.
Will this put a strain on the global food supply – even with all the advances of the
Green Revolution?
Can the earth – even with the Green Revolution – support so many people?
Well this is currently unclear – and perhaps Thomas Malthus, who I mentioned at the beginning
of this video, who was worried about population growth and food supply – perhaps Malthus
was on to something after all.
So let's draw a few conclusions.
The Green Revolution has completely transformed agriculture since the 1930s and this has had
an impact worldwide.
It has greatly reduced famine and malnutrition, which were once major problems for humanity.
But the Green Revolution is not without its own problems – including contributions to
health issues, such as obesity and diabetes, as well as major environmental problems as
well.
Moreover, it is unclear if the advances of the Green Revolution can be sustained and
continue into the future and can continue to support billions of people on the earth,
especially with an expected population increase in the coming decades.
So we'll have to wait and see.
I'll stop with this observation.
Thanks for watching.