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The Green Revolution

How It's Used

“The reversal of the Mexican crop disaster was an early tiding of the Green Revolution. Over the next 30 years, Dr. Borlaug devoted himself to the undeveloped world, undoing crop failure in India and Pakistan, and rescuing rice in the Philippines, Indonesia and China. He has arguably saved more lives than anyone in history. Maybe one billion.”

"During the Green Revolution, scientists invented high-yielding strains of corn, wheat and rice and planted them around the third world, and they also promoted the introduction of better livestock. But then, broadly speaking, foreign-aid donors moved away from such interventions, which were viewed as meddling with the free market, and shifted financing priorities to areas like education and AIDS.”

“Sombroek had wondered if modern farmers might create their own terra preta—terra preta nova, as he dubbed it it.  Much as the green revolution dramatically improved the developing world’s crops, terra preta could unleash what the scientific Nature has called a ‘black revolution’ across the broad arc of impoverished soil from Southeast Asia to Africa.”

“Norman Borlaug, the father of the 'Green Revolution' who is widely credited with saving millions of lives by breeding wheat, rice and other crops that brought agricultural self-sufficiency to developing countries around the world, died Saturday in Texas. He was 95.”

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