Hidden Downsides of the Green Revolution: Biodiversity Loss and Diseases of Civilization

By Richard Manning
Published on April 22, 2014
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Industrial agriculture displaces the connections we feel with the Earth, with our food, and with each other.
Industrial agriculture displaces the connections we feel with the Earth, with our food, and with each other.
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Modern cereal varieties are bred to utilize synthetic fertilizers and pesticides, the manufacture of which pollutes land, air and sea.
Modern cereal varieties are bred to utilize synthetic fertilizers and pesticides, the manufacture of which pollutes land, air and sea.
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Despite a nine-fold increase in fertilizer application over the last 50 years, cereal production has only tripled, and that increase is due to manifold factors, including better rotation practices.
Despite a nine-fold increase in fertilizer application over the last 50 years, cereal production has only tripled, and that increase is due to manifold factors, including better rotation practices.
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The deep roots of this mature heritage wheat cultivar, 'Turkey Red,' were sketched in 1926; the dense root tangle extends down more than six feet.
The deep roots of this mature heritage wheat cultivar, 'Turkey Red,' were sketched in 1926; the dense root tangle extends down more than six feet.
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Perennial grasses, such as wheat relative Kernza (left), put down strong, deep roots, unlike the modern semi-dwarf wheat varieties (right) that make up our diet.
Perennial grasses, such as wheat relative Kernza (left), put down strong, deep roots, unlike the modern semi-dwarf wheat varieties (right) that make up our diet.
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Modern agriculture is efficient at producing and distributing calories, at the cost of fossil fuel use, heavy machine manufacturing, soil erosion and biodiversity loss.
Modern agriculture is efficient at producing and distributing calories, at the cost of fossil fuel use, heavy machine manufacturing, soil erosion and biodiversity loss.
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Industrial agriculture produces great quantities of grain, but we're losing the nutrition and resilience of traditional crop varieties, like those harvested by these women in Tamil Nadu, India.
Industrial agriculture produces great quantities of grain, but we're losing the nutrition and resilience of traditional crop varieties, like those harvested by these women in Tamil Nadu, India.
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At 18 years old, this grass-fed Angus is still nursing and calving. Industrially raised, grain-fed cows are worn out and slaughtered at a much younger age.
At 18 years old, this grass-fed Angus is still nursing and calving. Industrially raised, grain-fed cows are worn out and slaughtered at a much younger age.
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Because of the process of bio-accumulation, meat from free- and wide-ranging animals provides a variety of minerals and micronutrients, crucial elements for human health.
Because of the process of bio-accumulation, meat from free- and wide-ranging animals provides a variety of minerals and micronutrients, crucial elements for human health.

For decades, urgent international debate about whether sustainable agriculture can feed the world has foundered on a false assumption. We’ve been sucked into a game rigged by the constrained doctrine of the Green Revolution, the 20th-century shift to high-yielding rice, wheat and corn varieties that are dependent on irrigation and heavy fertilization. We’ve made the mistake of focusing on crop yield — on mere quantity — but there is so much more to this equation.

Rural India is as good a place as any to begin digging to the roots of the problems with industrial agriculture. Poor farmers there have long been offered the Green Revolution’s so-called miracle crops, and many have said, “No, thanks.” Stories such as this are legion within the vast network of breeders and agronomists charged with spreading the miracles worldwide: poor, starving farmers weeping and pleading to be permitted to keep growing their treasured local varieties of rice instead of obeying a government decree that they plant the “new and improved.” Why would a destitute farmer refuse these “blessings”?

The Root of the Matter

H.E. Shashidhar, a gene-jockey agronomist employed at a monkey-infested lab near Bangalore, India, dug until he got an answer to this question — actually, layers of answers. Each layer, peeled back, can help recast our thinking about sustainability everywhere. Shashidhar took the somewhat radical step of asking farmers who grew unirrigated, dryland rice why they persisted in cultivating long-cherished local landraces instead of science’s best varieties, which yielded sometimes four or five times as much food. Ignorance? Superstition?

For one thing, said the farmers, the landraces tasted better — but then what’s taste if you and your children are starving? A lot, it turns out, but put taste aside for a minute. Here’s the more obvious point: The miracle crop varieties do indeed yield well — most years. But they are delicate, and in more vicious drought years, they fail altogether. If a hut full of starving children depends on you, better to have a small, dependable crop year after year than to face catastrophe one year out of five. Ignorance? No. Rather, a cold calculation completely based on local realities, and one that set Shashidhar to thinking and tinkering. So why not have it both ways? Why not gather and cross-breed local landraces with the new varieties to create a high-yielding, drought-tolerant variety customized to local tastes?

To be resilient, crops — not just in India, but in desiccated areas worldwide — must be drought tolerant, requiring longer roots to reach deeper for water. The landraces do indeed have long roots. The improved varieties don’t, but they have short stems, which was what the Green Revolution was all about: short plants, dwarfing. We think it was about fertilizer, pesticides, irrigation and monocrops, but all of these were really derivative of dwarfing. By breeding plants to invest less energy in producing stems, more energy goes to grain. Further, short plants have the architecture necessary to support the extra weight of seed heads swollen fat by fertilizer and irrigation.

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