Excerpt:

The Outcome of the Green Revolution

The roles of (a) cropland area expansion, (b) extension of irrigation, and (c) cereal crop intensification have been decisive in the spectacular growth of cereal production by agricultural modernization. However, the roles of crop intensification and irrigation overlap with another significant factor, namely, (d) replacement of other crops with cereals. In Punjab, while the net crop area under rice increased ten-fold, and that under wheat increased three-fold between 1960-61 and 1999-2000, the area under pulses in the same period decreased ten-fold – from 903,000 ha to 69,000 ha. The area under maize went down from 327,000 ha in 1966-67 to 185,000 ha in 1999-2000; the crop area under oilseeds and millets also decreased (Shiva 2001: 46). Thus, the performance of the ‘miracle seeds’ of the Green revolution appears not-so spectacular. In fact, no HYVs have yet been developed that could withstand inundation, drought or salinity – the three principal limiting factors of crop production in marginal lands. Considering the fact that about 30% of India’s crop production is contributed by dry land farms where HYVs cannot fare well, the role of folk crop varieties in the country’s food security becomes obvious. The failure of HYVs in marginal environments has been more than offset by the overall increase in crop production due to the concerted effects of the four causal factors discussed above.

There has been a steady decline in both production and productivity of ‘minor’ cereals or coarse grains (millets and maize) and pulses. There has seldom been any governmental impetus for growing these minor crops, especially those locally adapted and traditionally grown. Fewer and fewer farmers are growing them on less and less farm area, because the Green Revolution boy scouts and agents have persuaded them, under the ‘Grow More Food’, ‘Food For All’ and related campaign heads, to grow more and more élite cereals at the negligence of all other subsistence crops. Nevertheless, after the initial ‘miracle’ of spectacularly high production, the yield curves for both rice and wheat show decline in subsequent decades. The yield data of the recent few years are particularly revealing (Fig. 4). Incremental rates of growth in production of all crops reveal an overall downward trend; the rates for coarse grains and pulses never registered any rise in the past, and have now dipped negative (Fig. 5).

The contribution of growth in food production to development, however, has remained illusory because the Green Revolution constituted a model of dissipative underdevelopment, where production enhancement did not entail improved entitlement and freedom of the poor. A close inspection of the fate of the calculated “surplus” over the past decades reveals that growth has engendered inequity and pauperisation of peasants. The system of food grain collection served to enrich the mediating traders who, despite the government-regulated price ceilings, controlled the market supply of the food grains, while the real economic benefit of food production remained inaccessible to the poor. Thus, "the surpluses of rice and wheat that seemed to appear after the record harvests in 1986 and 1989 were illusory, although the government had insufficient space in its famine-reserve warehouses to store all the grain the farmers wanted to sell. As Professor L.S. Venkataraman of the Institute of Social and Economic Change in Bangalore told me, the excess only arose because the people who needed it could not afford to buy" (Douthwaite 1999: 250).

... An important aspect of agro-biodiversity is the crop genetic diversity, which is threatened by industrialization of agriculture. Folk crop varieties continue to disappear with the on-going transformation of indigenous cultures and their ecosystems (Feenstra et al. 1997; Fujisaka 1999). The modern practice of monoculture of selected crops has replaced the traditional multiple cropping practices, resulting in erosion of crop diversity (Deb 2000b). Agricultural modernization has also eroded the genetic base of most cultivated crops – rice, wheat, maize, potato – through replacement with a handful of modern varieties (Fujisaka 1999). Erosion of crop genetic diversity has taken an awesome proportion in the case of the indica variety of rice. From an estimated 46,000 folk rice landraces cultivated in India till the late 1960’s, no more than a few thousands are left. In West Bengal, a predominantly rice-growing State, over 5600 were grown till the 1970, of which about 3500 landraces were sent to IRRI in the Philippines during the period from 1975 to 1983 (Deb 2000a). Today, most of these varieties have gone extinct; at most 400 folk landraces are now surviving on marginal farms of the State. An additional threat to folk crop genetic diversity from the recent introduction of GM crops will be discussed in a later section.

... Another major problem created by crop intensification is the depletion of groundwater. In addition to depletion, contamination of ground water with toxic chemicals is a great problem that has enormous economic costs in terms of long-term environmental and human health effects. Pesticide residues contaminating groundwater is a widespread phenomenon in the North and South alike. Additionally, intensive Green Revolutionary cultivation of more than two crops a year has shifted agriculture from its traditional dependence on rainwater to an increasing dependence on irrigation, with a direct consequence that groundwater is pumped up in excess of the rate of recharging. Continuous withdrawal of groundwater interferes with complex geochemical processes to release arsenic from sedimentary pyrites and iron oxy-hydroxides into aquifers, leading to increasingly high levels of arsenic poisoning of groundwater in southern Bengal Basin (Chakraborti et al. 2001; Harvey et al. 2002). Over 42.7 million people in an area of 38,865 km2 in West Bengal and 93.5 million in 112,407 km2 area in Bangladesh are exposed to severe health risks including like skin cancer from high levels of arsenic in drinking water drawn from hand tube wells (Mazumder et al. 2000; Chakraborti et al. 2001; also see West Bengal & Bangladesh Arsenic Crisis Information Centre web site ). Today using filtered water from ponds and pools is the only cheap and safe option for people in the affected region.

Where Do We Go from Here?