The Green Revolution
Dwarf wheat and rice varieties avert the famines that were confidently predicted.
- When
- —
- Duration
- 10 years
- Known to
- ± 1 year
- Era
- Contemporary, Holocene
Norman Borlaug's semi-dwarf, disease-resistant wheat, combined with fertiliser, irrigation and new rice varieties from IRRI, roughly doubles or triples yields in Mexico, India and Pakistan through the 1960s. India goes from importing grain to self-sufficiency. Borlaug is credited with saving perhaps a billion lives. The costs — fertiliser runoff, aquifer depletion, loss of crop diversity and advantage to larger farmers — are also real.