Against the Grain: Why Failing to Complete the Green Revolution Could Bring the Next Famine
![handle is hein.journals/fora89 and id is 14 raw text is: Against the Grain
Why Failing to Complete the Green Revolution
Could Bring the Next Famine
Carlisle Ford Runge and Carlisle Piehl Runge
In the late eighteenth century, the English
political economist Thomas Malthus took
a look at two sets of numbers and had
an unnerving vision: with food supplies
increasing arithmetically while the number
of people grew geometrically, the world
population would eventually run out of
food. By that law of our nature which
makes food necessary to the life of man,
he wrote in 1798, the effects of these two
unequal powers must be kept equal. This
implies a strong and constantly operating
check on population from the difficulty
of subsistence. This difficulty must fall
some where and must necessarily be se-
verely felt by a large portion of mankind.
He was right, at least at the time: in
Malthus' day, food production was essen-
tially limited by the availability of land,
whereas procreation faced few restraints.
Malthus did not foresee, however, that
new technologies in the late nineteenth
century and throughout the twentieth cen-
tury would dramatically raise agricultural
productivity. Farmers worldwide learned
to use new fertilizers, petrochemical-based
herbicides and insecticides, genetically
improved plants (especially wheat, corn,
and rice), and massive diversions of
water for irrigation, notably in China
and South Asia. Crop yields soared, and
in the United States so much so that by
the 1950s chronic surpluses and low prices
were becoming problems. The economist
Willard Cochrane wrote in 1965 that
thanks to the recent technological revo-
lution in U.S. agriculture, the previous
decade had witnessed the greatest gain
in productive efficiency of any ten-year
period in the history of American farming.
Throughout the 196os, 1970s, and 1980s,
crop yields continued to rise, not only in
rich countries but also in many parts of
the developing world. In India, Mexico,
and elsewhere the green revolution was
launched by plant breeders, such as the
legendary Norman Borlaug. New varieties
of wheat, maize, and rice raised yields by
amounts that seemed miraculous at the
time. The effort provided a new model
for traditional farmers and improved their
food security. And it encouraged a sense
[8]
CARLISLE FORD RUNGE is Distinguished McKnight University Professor of
Applied Economics and Law at the University of Minnesota. CARLISLE
PIEHL RUNGE is a student at Yale University.](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.journals/fora89&div=5&collection=journals&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)
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Against the Grain: Why Failing to Complete the Green Revolution Could Bring the Next Famine
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