Saby Ganguly (an Indian business writer who was a former editorial consultant to the World Organization of Building Officials (WOBO), an affiliate of the United Nations) wrote a report on the success of the green revolution in India entitled: “From the Bengal Famine to the Green Revolution”

Yield per unit of farmland, Ganguly wrote, “improved by more than 30 per cent between 1947 [when India gained political independence from the British] and 1979 when the Green Revolution was considered to have delivered its goods.”
HOWEVER
The ‘green revolution’ didn’t begin until 1967 so the writer is counting 20 years of increasing agricultural yield from India’s ‘Land Transformation Program’ and only 12 years of increasing yield from the Green Revolution. The tick for success in this period, however, is given by Ganguly to the GR. This is also irrespective of the fact that the variety of crops used in the GR needed more water, more fertilizer, more fungicides and other chemicals.

Then, later in the article, Saby Ganguly switches tack altogether and refers to the green revolution as being a success in terms of the extra gross domestic product (GDP) generated. That is, the author changes the evaluation methodology for the GR. Extra food yield per unit of land is discarded as a measurement. Instead the GR’s worthiness is now linked to the large number of new jobs created in chemical and fertilizer production and distribution, in ‘scientific’ research, in the building of dams for irrigation and so forth.

India eventually became a food exporter the writer notes. However, farmland areas were increased to grow more food under both the Indian Land Transformation Program and the Green Revolution. Saby Ganguly then makes a rather extraordinary understatement in his summation:

“Even today, India’s agricultural output sometimes falls short of demand.”

Someone had to point out to him “there are over 200 million hungry people in India today. The FAO estimate that 61% of children under the age of five are malnourished in India, ranking it second highest in the world.”

I wondered why Saby Ganguly limited his analysis of the GR to 1979 and not beyond. Very much later in the article he writes: “In 1979 and 1987, India faced severe drought conditions due to poor monsoon…”

That isn’t the end of the drought story, however. In 2004 it was written:
“In last four years India has been experiencing fluctuating foodgrains production but it had never witnessed such a steep fall as in 2002-03 when the decline in foodgrains production is apprehended to be anywhere between 13-14 percent. This is attributed to the worst drought the country has ever experienced. The month of July that normally records highest rainfall in monsoon in India, registered the lowest rainfall in the past 100 years…”[1]

And:
“In the Punjab (known as the bread basket of India), wheat yields have been dropping for a decade because the water table is also dropping – by a metre a year. Debt and farmer suicides are both rising. “[2]

I know that this year the drought in India has caused enormous distress. “A late monsoon and the driest June for 83 years in Northern India is exacerbating the effects of widespread drought.” [3]

India now has a water shortage problem and the Green Revolution was always premised on the ready availability of water. Where to now for agriculture in general in a dryer world allover and where energy scarcity also casts a long shadow?

In April last year the ‘International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development’ (IAASTD) bureau[4] issued a report entitled ‘Agriculture at the Crossroads’.[5]

The IAASTD noted that the mounting crisis in food security around the world is “of a different complexity and potentially different magnitude than the one of the 1960s.” Their report called for a paradigm shift in the way agriculture was carried out as well as in the types of technology used. Hundreds of scientists from around the world that contributed to the IAASTD report and recognized that “Knowledge systems and human ingenuity in science, technology, practice and policy is needed to meet the challenges, opportunities and uncertainties ahead.” Their reports concluded: This recognition will require a shift to nonhierarchical development models” in agriculture.

More on this report later. It can be downloaded here.

[1] Macro-economic overview of India: Agriculture
http://www.indiaonestop.com/economy-macro-agro.htm

[2] The Future of Food - episode 1
http://coopette.com/blog/the-future-of-food-episode-1

[3] http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/
jul/12/india-water-supply-bhopal

[4] The IAASTD was initiated in 2002 by the World Bank and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) as a global consultative process to determine whether an international assessment of agricultural knowledge, science and technology (AKST) was needed.

[5] http://www.agassessment.org/reports/
IAASTD/EN/Agriculture at a
Crossroads_Synthesis Report (English).pdf

<strong>The full online version of this article with links is:Here