This chapter explores the weaknesses and drawbacks of the wide adaptation approach in agriculture, especially in relation to food security and social equity. It discusses the impact of the Green Revolution on smallholder farmers, highlighting the challenges they face and the inequities caused by broad-brush technological solutions. The chapter emphasizes the need for a better approach to agricultural research and innovation, putting more power and funds back into local communities and exploring alternate pathways for agricultural development.
The Green Revolution was a program of agricultural technology transfer that helped poor countries around the world increase food production from the 1950s onward. An American agronomist named Norman Borlaug developed and popularized the central innovation of this revolution: the concept of “wide adaptation,” or the idea that plants could be bred to produce a high yield in a variety of environments, rather than in a particular region.
Borlaug’s work won him the Nobel Prize in 1970, and his agricultural insights are often credited with saving millions of people from hunger. But the legacy of Borlaug and the Green Revolution is not as straightforward as these accolades suggest.
In this episode, we caught up with interdisciplinary scientist and historian Marci Baranski to discuss her new book, The Globalization of Wheat: A Critical History of the Green Revolution. She talks with host Jason Lloyd about how a more nuanced understanding of the Green Revolution and Borlaug’s work can improve agricultural and economic development policies today.
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