[p2p-research] the new green revolution in AFrica

[Kevin Carson]

On 10/27/09, Michel Bauwens <michelsub2004 at gmail.com> wrote:
> Thanks Sam for writing that main article, perhaps Stan or Kevin can add a
> little note on the borlaugh article just mentioned?

Reading public comments by Normal Borlaug, I was often struck by his
apparent ignorance of what organic farming methods actually entail.
He made ex cathedra pronouncements that revealed an almost total lack
of awareness of what organic farmers do.

This impression was confirmed by Devinder Sharma, in "The Dr Borlaug I
knew."  http://www.stwr.org/food-security-agriculture/the-dr-borlaug-i-knew.html
According to Sharma, Borlaug displayed a rather stubborn and
irrational unwillingness to confront any information that called his
view of the world into question.

<blockquote> Dr Borlaug remained committed to his belief in the
indispensable role of chemical fertiliser and pesticides. He was so
adamant that when the Third World Academy in Italy presented a paper
on how Brazil had achieved remarkable crop yields in soybean and
sugarcane without applying chemical nitrogen, he didn’t agree. It was
only after he travelled to Brazil and saw for himself these crop yield
results that he at least acknowledged the reality. But even then, he
wouldn’t accept a vision of agriculture without chemical fertilisers
and pesticides....

He would often tell me that if India had not followed the Green
Revolution technology, the country would have needed to bring an
additional 58 million hectares under cultivation to produce the same
quantity of food that was being produced after the high-yielding
varieties of wheat were introduced. My counter argument to this was
that although the country saved 58 million hectares only 40 years
after Green Revolution, more than double -- close to 120 million
hectares -- are faced with varying degrees of degradation. Borlaug
never pardoned me for espousing the cause of long-term sustainability
in agriculture. He never accepted that the world could produce enough
food with Low-external Input Sustainable Agriculture (LEISA)
techniques. </blockquote>

In fact Borlaug's sterotyped image of organic methods as requiring
less efficient use of land was a total strawman.  He deliberately
ignored the existence of organic methods, like that of John Jeavons,
that extracted a great deal more output per acre than conventional
mechanized/chemical agriculture.

Sharma also confirms, in passing, the validity of critiques by Frances
Moore Lappe:  that Green Revolution seeds are suited mainly for land
with massively subsidized irrigation and fertilizer inputs, and are
therefore designed primarily for the needs of the privileged
landowning classes who have expropriated subsistence producers and
converted their land to cash crop production.

<blockquote> These semi-dwarf [wheat] plants developed by Dr Borlaug
responded to the application of chemical fertilisers and produced a
bountiful grain harvest. The yields multiplied under favourable
conditions...

Within a few weeks of the import [into India], the seed was made
available in 5 kg packs and distributed widely in the areas where
irrigation was abundant....

Agricultural scientists promoted the technology worldwide –
cultivating the water guzzling high-yielding varieties of wheat (the
same technology was subsequently applied to rice), applying chemical
fertilisers and pesticides – and they were never able to understand
why the environmentalists were opposed to the technology.
</blockquote>

-- 
Kevin Carson
Center for a Stateless Society http://c4ss.org
Mutualist Blog:  Free Market Anti-Capitalism
http://mutualist.blogspot.com
Studies in Mutualist Political Economy
http://www.mutualist.org/id47.html
Organization Theory:  A Libertarian Perspective
http://mutualist.blogspot.com/2005/12/studies-in-anarchist-theory-of.html