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The Green Revolution was an industrial agricultural system developed in the 1970s. It was hailed as the answer to world hunger. Perhaps a better answer would have been an equitable sharing of goods, resources and food, because this system forced the earth to grow vast mono-crops. It combined engineered High Yield Varieties of seeds with fertilisers, pesticides and hard technology irrigation systems.
These irrigation systems were more often than not reliant on large dams and irrigation canals that degraded once healthy rivers and eco-systems while reducing river flow to downstream habitats and neighbours. These heavy industrial dams also encouraged water wasteful irrigation habits such as flood irrigation.
Initially, there was a dramatic increase in yields of crops allowing better nutrition and greater access to world markets. To many, particularly those in power, this was all that mattered, less hungry people and greater GDP. As with all “quick fixes” the real implications were not apparent for a while. These implications created a matrix of inter-related problems. |
- Soil depletion leading to reduction of nutritional content in food. Food grown today can contain 30-50% less nutrients than that grown before the Green Revolution. The soil is drained of all goodness and artificial chemical fertilisers made from gas and pesticides/herbicides made from oil are used to force the earth to provide for us from soil that has become like sponge and is friable.
- Groundwater degradation and depletion due to the installation of power-driven water pumps that extract groundwater faster than nature can replace it. In many instances, such as the millions of small farms in India water is pumped 24/7 to irrigate crops. Many of these crops are thirsty, such as Indian cotton, Kenyan flowers and Ethiopian coffee. In India, China, Western USA, Palestine, Israel and many other places across the world, ground water resources are reaching critical conditions. In Jordan they may have already disappeared. In drier areas of India and on the North China Plain, there is frantic drilling deep into the earth to find water that was once accessible with an ox and bucket. All of this is due to over-abstraction. A factor that contributes greatly to this is the development of cash crops for the international market. Downsizing and self-reliance is the only way forward, yet a country like the UK produces very little of the perishable goods that its society consumes - only 3.5 months worth. The entire world only produces 10 months food for the consumption of the entire world’s human population. Yet at the same time, fruit trees are left unharvested in the Global North while we import from poor countries. Similarly, small farmers in the Global South are being put out of business so that the USA can have a market for their exports, such as potatoes.
- Mono-cropping results in greater pest and disease attacks which are being met with pesticides that are endocrine disrupters...for starters. That is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to spraying our food with concoctions developed from nerve gas and oil. Smaller developments and inter-cropping confuses the bugs. There are too many smells for them to focus on digging in to any particular food source.
- Loss of seed varieties that are needed for cross-breeding in order to create hardier varieties that have resilience against disease, pests and harsh growing conditions. A few years ago, the world wheat crop was nearly lost due to a fungal root infection. Wild varieties of wheat were needed to cross-breed into the seeds to give them resilience. These wild varieties are found only in Iraq. Weeks before Iraq was attacked by the USA, wild wheat plants were found to crossbreed into the commercial wheat strains. The frightening thing is that only six plants were found. GMO seeds are adding to this problem, as natural seeds are becoming compromised with seeds engineered to only respond to certain pesticides and ones that are engineered to be infertile.
- Loss of bio-diversity due to mono-cropping. Inter-cropping with different species of plant can confuse insects looking for a particular aroma. It also does not allow disease to spread as easily through a field as many diseases are species-specific. Mono-cropping results in greater pest attacks and fungal diseases requiring more pesticides and fungicides.
The Green Revolution heyday of increased yields only lasted a couple of decades. Furthermore, in many parts of the world inordinate increases in the amounts of fertiliser and pesticides were required to maintain these yields. Eventually, the failure of the first Green Revolution was hall-marked by the absolute drop in crop yields per unit of fertiliser, in some places by two-thirds. Where yields have not actually declined, the rate of growth has slowed.
The slowing of production and drop in yields has resulted in a fall in world grain production since 2000 that has taken global production below consumption for 6 out of seven years. Coupled with (1) demand for bio-fuels, (2) countries such as China buying up world surplus so that the water used for their agricultural base can be used for industry and (3) depleting groundwater sources causing reduction in growing possibilities; world grain stores have dropped lower than any time in 30 years, or when global grain records first began.
So, rather than bring in more diversity to ensure the healing of our global support systems, we are being encouraged to partake of the “Second Green Revolution” consisting of super-engineered GMO strains of staple crop seeds that are also super thirsty. Again, GDP and hungry people are hailed as the drivers for this revolution in the halls of power. Hell is repetition.
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