Controversy about agricultural technology lessons from the green revolution

Abstract

The development and introduction of transgenically modified organisms to enhance crop and animal production has generated considerable controversy about potential food safety and environmental impacts. The introduction in tropical Latin America and Asia of high yielding varieties of wheat, maize and rice beginning in the late 1960s was also controversial. Critics argued that the new technology was biased against the poor-would make the rich richer and the poor poorer. In this paper I review the equity and productivity impacts of the "green revolution" technology and draw several inferences about evaluation the effects of the new biotechnologies in agricultural production.

GM and Non‐GM Supply Chain Co‐Existence and Traceability: Context and Perspectives

“…Yet before addressing the issue of co-existence from a purely agricultural standpoint, that is as part of an option to maintain technological pluralism and consumers' Evenson and Gollin, 2003;Huang et al, 2002;Paul. et al, 2003;Ruttan, 2004;Swaminathan, 2010).…”

Biotechnology in Agriculture

“…Organisms whose genetic composition has been modified by moving DNA from one organism to another using DNA-based techniques, i.e., not breeding, are referred to in this review as transgenic, genetically engineered, or rDNA (recombinant DNA). These terms are preferred to genetically modified organisms (GMOs) because the genetic composition of virtually all agricultural crops and animals have been modified by human actors over the past 200 or so years (4).…”

Transgenic crops, EU precaution, and developing countries

“…The pace of improving the productive efficiency and quality of the world's food crops had been slow up until the 19th century (Diamond, 1997). Then, following a century of wheat improvements (Olmstead and Rhode, 2002), hybrid varieties dramatically increased average corn yields from the 1940s (Griliches, 1958) and dwarf varieties of high-yielding wheat and rice caused what became known as the Green Revolution in Asia and elsewhere from the 1960s (Evenson and Gollin, 2003;Ruttan, 2004). Those technological developments of the past six decades contributed to an acceleration of the long-term decline in real international food prices to below 1930s' levels by the late 1980s (Tyres and Anderson, 1992), 1 which in turn led to complacency about the need for further agricultural R&D. As a result, growth in public funding for such research fell substantially in both rich and poor countries (Falcon and Naylor, 2005) -despite overwhelming evidence that this is a very high payoff investment area (Alston et al, 2000).…”