The first Green Revolution •In 1940’s plant geneticists, began using traditional methods of cross- breeding to create plants with desirable traits • Larger, more nutritious seeds, fruit and/or for resistance to pest and disease • Focused chiefly on wheat, corn, and rice Norman Borlaug
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The first Green Revolution In 1940’s plant geneticists, began using traditional methods of cross-breeding to create plants with desirable traits Larger,
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The first Green
Revolution• In 1940’s plant
geneticists, began using traditional methods of cross-breeding to create plants with desirable traits
• Larger, more nutritious seeds, fruit and/or for resistance to pest and disease
Uneven development• Crop yields average 1,500 pounds of cereals per acre in
Africa compared with 2,300 pounds in India and 4,900 pounds in China in 2004.
• Africa lagged in part because of • Diversity of crops for breeding• Lack of elite germplasm to initiate breeding• Political instability and the lack of infrastructure. • Green Revolution breeding targeted only certain crops that
grow in rich soils with ample access to water. Plants for marginal lands not targeted
• Asking many African farmers to invest in Green Revolution technology meant asking them to invest in fragile plants in a harsh landscape.
• Monoculture export crops grown on plantations replaced diverse types of traditional agriculture
• Food crops replaced by export products. • Land became concentrated with large landholders who
can afford land and the cost of inputs• Subsequent neoliberal economics and free trade forced
small farmers to participate in global markets often to their detriment.
Haber process of fertilizer production
Greater dependency on fossil fuels
• Increased dependency upon
• Irrigation• Fossil fuels for tractors,
production of chemical inputs (pesticides), and for fertilizer production
Price of food tied to price of fuel
Increased pesticide use
Changes in plants and their foods• Loss of nutritional content
Loss of genetic diversity
• Uniformity in genetic makeup increases susceptibility to disease
• On average, across all crops grown in the US. over 90% of the varieties grown 100 years ago are no longer in commercial production or maintained in major seed storage facilities.
• In 1903, US seed catalogs listed 408 pea varieties; only 25 can be found now (a 95% decrease) and by 1970, just two pea varieties comprised 96% of the US commercial crop.
• Nine varieties of wheat occupy half of all the wheat land in the US.
Citrus greening
Fusarium wilt
Loss of genetic diversity• On average, across all crops grown
in the US. over 90% of the varieties grown 100 years ago are no longer in commercial production or maintained in major seed storage facilities.
• In 1903, US seed catalogs listed 408 pea varieties; only 25 can be found now (a 95% decrease) and by 1970, just two pea varieties comprised 96% of the US commercial crop.
• Nine varieties of wheat occupy half of all the wheat land in the US.
Loss of genetic diversity• A landrace is a local variety
of a domesticated animal or plant species which has developed largely by adaptation to the natural and cultural environment in which it lives.
• More genetically and phenotypically (physically) diverse than formal breeds.
• Analogous to heirloom varietals
In India farmers have planted 30,000 different varieties of rice over the past 50 years, with the varieties grown in a region closely matched to its soils, climate and so forth. With the advent of green revolution varieties, this has changed. It is estimated that 75% of all rice fields in India were planted to just 10 varieties in 2005.