Friday, October 23, 2020

SOS 117 - The Dust Bowl and The Green Revolution

               Agriculture has been around for thousands of years, as humans who once foraged and hunted eventually settled down into small communities, using knowledge of the surrounding environment to create ways of growing and harvesting food supplies to feed their growing populations.  As time has marched on, those small, largely agrarian, communities started growing, and the demand for food increased.  Harnessing knowledge passed down through generations of trial and error, Indigenous communities were able to create sustainable agricultural practices that continued to feed their growing populations.  By the mid-twentieth century, the global population had grown exponentially, and the ability to provide food for such a large population that was still growing at a lightning fast rate had become a question that demanded an answer.  There were many people who were starving, and our planet was quickly running out of resources.  It soon became apparent that we needed “out of the box” solutions, utilizing the resources we had to maximize yields and increase productivity, to feed our booming population. “That single objective was driving the force of agriculture for the past 50 years.  The big change is that society has come to realize that agriculture is not only about food production (Agriculture and Ecosystem Services).” Even our founding fathers wanted increased crop yields. “Ever since colonial days, agricultural leaders have been interested in increasing the productivity of American farming (Trautmann, Porter, & Wagenet, 1985).”

One such solution to this desire for increased crop production to feed the masses was introduced by President Lincoln, who signed The Homestead Act in 1862, offering free land in the Great Plains to anyone willing to cultivate it for five years.  This attracted farmers, who began to “settle the region and cultivate the fields under the long held, but mistaken belief, that ‘rain will follow the plow’ (History Brief: the Dust Bowl, 0:37).” Prior to the settlement and cultivation of the area, tall grasses, already adapted to the cycles of  drought and moisture that were common in the region, extended long roots into the ground, keeping the loose topsoil in place against the strong winds that would sweep across that plains (1985).  In the late 1800s, production of the steel plow made farming in the Great Plains more than a pipe dream.  The dense sod and tall grasses were no match for the tractors, combines, and mechanized plowing that had become available, revealing a rich, fertile soil that was easier to farm than ever before, producing “bountiful crops,” and from 1870 to 1910, the population exploded by a factor of 10 (Trautmann, et. al., 1985).  Heavy plowing revealed a powdery soil, and farming practices of the era “deprived the soil of its nutrients and increased the possibility of erosion (History Brief: the Dust Bowl, 1:20).”  Instead of using the more sustainable practices of crop rotation, using organic compounds as fertilizers instead of chemicals, creating biodiversity among their crops, and attempting to prevent soil erosion (Industrial and Sustainable Farming), settlers of the Great Plains continued heavy plowing, exposing the already fragile soil to harsh prairie winds, growing monocultures on dramatically increasing farmland, and  that would not be able to sustain itself, should a cycle of drought return.

               Another solution, what would eventually be called “The Green Revolution,” was introduced by Norman Borlaug, a plant pathologist from northeastern Iowa, who was looking for a way to end a wheat blight in Mexico called “Stem Rust” that was starving poor farmers out of entire crops and causing severe malnutrition of the inhabitants.  Backed by The Rockefeller Foundation, Borlaug, along with two young Mexican argonomists named Pepe Rodrigez and Jose Guerva, collected and planted 110,000 seeds from different varieties of wheat indigenous to the region in the Spring of 1945.  They would monitor the crops, and weed out the ones that started showing signs of the blight. By the harvest season, only four plants remained. Devising a plan to speed up the genetic breeding process, Borlaug took seeds from his four surviving plants and headed north to Sonora, where wheat could be grown in the winter. By cross-breeding the survivors with other successful species of wheat, driving to Sonora in the winter and back to the planting fields of Chapingo in the spring, he hoped to create a strain of wheat that would become resistant to “stem rust,” thereby enabling the poor farmers to create more bountiful harvests.  Manually cross-breeding the surviving species with other varieties of wheat twice a year – a process dubbed “shuttle breeding” – his goal was to ease malnutrition in half the time it would take to grow a new generation (The Man Who Tried to Feed the World, 19:56).  Wheat breeders, the agronomic textbooks, and his boss, a man named George Harrar all believed that one should only grow wheat in the region where it is intended to grow.  They were also afraid that the Sonoran growers, who had larger plots of land for growing wheat commercially to export, would benefit from this process more than the poor Chapingo farmers, so when Borlaug decided to continue his “shuttle breeding” project, he was given no money, no vehicles, no accommodations, and no support.  By 1948, he had developed a new type of wheat that would grow anywhere and resisted the “stem rust” blight that had plagued the farmers. 

               Both solutions would become failures in their own rights, though. 

In 1930, a severe drought occurred in the Great Plains, killing crops, and exposing the loose topsoil to harsh wind conditions, creating “Black Blizzards” that reached as far east as Washington D.C. (History Brief: the Dust Bowl, 2:19).  They were “so severe that they caused virtual blackouts in the middle of the day and left houses, roads, and fields buried by dust and sand (1985).” The areas most affected were the panhandles of Texas and Oklahoma, western Kansas, and a large portion of Colorado and New Mexico.  The drought would last for the entire decade, and the more than 1 million acres affected came to be collectively known as “The Dust Bowl.” The region received anywhere from 15-25% less rain than usual, which, for an area that only sees about 20” of rain per year (and some years less than that), meant that some regions were seeing less than 15” of rain per year (History Brief: the Dust Bowl, 2:21). 

The Civillian Conservation Corps were sent into the Dust Bowl and planted over 200 million trees from Texas to Canada in an effort to block the harsh winds.  Efforts were also taken to teach farmers about soil conservation techniques such as crop rotation, contour plowing, and terracing (3:07).  In some cases, the government paid $1 per acre to farmers who practiced one of these techniques.  By the end of the 1930s, these efforts had reduced blowing dust by 65%, but by the time rainfall returned to the region, over 75% of the topsoil had been lost to blowing dust.  It would be years before the region recovered completely (History Brief: the Dust Bowl, 3:33).

As to the Green Revolution, Borlaug’s new, genetically engineered wheat could grow anywhere, but it required large amounts of fertilizer and large amounts of water, essentially shutting out the smaller farmers due to the cost of growing the new hybrid wheat plant, as his boss had feared, and getting him no closer to solving the malnutrition crisis in Chapingo. 

Around the same time, America created the “Food for Peace” program, under the idea that “nobody with a full belly joins the Communist party (The Man Who Tried to Feed the World, 27:30)” They began exporting excess grain to poorer countries, like India, as a kind of foreign policy.  Meanwhile, Borlaug was producing record yields, but his 5-foot stems started giving way under the weight of the wheat, so a new dwarf version had to be created.  In 1962, after 7 years and 8,156 crosses, Borlaug’s new dwarf wheat was successful (The Man Who Tried to Feed the World, 29:49). 

Though his wheat was a failure in Chapingo due to the high cost of fertilizer and water, his idea was picked up by an Indian agronomist named M. S. Swaminathan, who, in January 1963,  invited Borlaug to New Dehli to introduce his wheat to the leaders of India on the hopes that the region could self-sustain their own grain.  In 1965, India consumed one-fifth of the total American wheat crops and it was projected that, by 1970, that number would be up to one-half.  So, in 1966, at the height of a severe drought-borne famine in India, President Lyndon B. Johnson ended the Food for Peace program, essentially cutting off all exported grain.  India’s government funded fertilizer, irrigation, and guaranteed a sale price to all farmers who grew Borlaug’s grain.  In the spring of 1968, reports flooded in about overwhelmed grain silos, railroad depots stacking grain on the tracks because they had nowhere else to put them, and schools were closed and the classrooms were used to store grain. The total yield was 1.5 times larger than their previous record.  These successes were duplicated in with record breaking harvests in Turkey, Tunisia, and many other countries (The Man Who Tried to Feed the World, 44:48).

But there were glaring problems in The Green Revolution.  Despite record breaking harvests, the cost of the additional fertilizer and water made the crop yields cost-prohibitive to a number of people, who were still going hungry. 

“It is particularly frustration to me is that there are 700 million people who are short of food.  We have at least two different aspects of this food problem: One is to produce enough food, and two is the problem of poverty and the lack of purchasing power for a large part of the world’s population,” said Borlaug (The Man Who Tried to Feed the World, 49:37).  

In addition to the cost, by the early 1980’s, farmers and experts began noticing that the large amounts of fertilizer and water were taxing the local ecosystems (Chhetri & Chaudhary, 2011).  Degredation of the soil, reduction of the water table, and farmers no longer being needed on farms all created a perfect storm for a damaged and unsustainable ecosystem, both for the plants and the people who tend to the plants (The Man Who Tried to Feed the World, 49:01).

The methods required of the HYVs inspired by Borlaug’s dwarf wheat, and the methods of cultivation used in the Great Plains were not sustainable. 

“Too much water will seep through the soil, causing the groundwater to rise, which will saturate the soil and slow crop growth, or if the water is salty, will get into the root zone and potentially kill the crop.  Too many nutrients could flow into the groundwater or just wash off into a creek, causing ecosystem damage.  Too many chemicals could cause pollution in the waterways which will be harmful to the flora and the fauna (Industrial and Sustainable Farming, 3:49).” 

In both of these situations, taking care of the soil through crop rotation, contour plowing, interplanting, preventing wind erosion (which can ease water needs), and mulching, instead of using heavy chemicals, tons of water, and growing monocultures, would have prevented both of these projects from failing.  “Decades of research shows that rich biodiversity is essential for healthy ecosystems,” according to Dr. Mark Everard, Associate Professor of Ecosystem Services at UWE (Ecosystem services and Biodiversity - Science for Environment Policy, 1:29

“We need to make a shift in how we value landscapes and how we can balance the need to increase food production with the need to protect our landscapes. In many areas where the Green Revolution has been successful, the land is losing its value. It’s losing its quality and we have to regenerate the land.  To regenerate that land, you need to change your practices. You can’t continue doing the same thing, year after year,” states Dennis Garrity, former Director, World Agroforestry Centre (Agriculture and Ecosystem Services, 1:29)

In that regard, it is absolutely critical that we combine land stewardship, especially the ecosystem services and biodiversity, with food production. 

“Monetary valuation is not an open door to commodify and degrade nature. Ecosystem services can work alongside other tools to prioritize resources, raise awareness of the substantial benefits provided by the ecosystems, and create a common language to protect biodiversity and the many human benefits that stem from it, ensuring future wealth and abundance beyond mere monetary terms,” says Dr. Mark Everard (Ecosystem services and Biodiversity - Science for Environment Policy, 4:38)

The takeaway from both of these stories is that soil and the ecosystem matter. “The healthier our soil is, the healthier our plants will be, the less diseases, the less insects we’ll get, and the higher quality vegetable we’ll be selling so that the public, in the end, buys a vegetable that has high nutrition in them for themselves (Industrial and Sustainable Farming, 17:09).”

 

 

References

Agriculture and Ecosystem Services (n.d.). [Motion Picture].

Chhetri, N., & Chaudhary, P. (2011). Green Revolution: Pathways to Food Security in an Era of Climate Variability and Change? Review, Arizona State University; University of Massachusetts; and Royal Enclave, Srirampura, Jakkur Post, Bangalore, India, School of Geographical Sciences and Urban Planning and the Consortium for Science, Policy, and Outcomes; the Department of Biology; and the Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment.

Ecosystem services and Biodiversity - Science for Environment Policy (n.d.). [Motion Picture].

History Brief: the Dust Bowl (n.d.). [Motion Picture].

Industrial and Sustainable Farming (n.d.). [Motion Picture].

The Man Who Tried to Feed the World (n.d.). [Motion Picture].

Trautmann, N. M., Porter, K. S., & Wagenet, R. J. (1985). Modern Agriculture: Its Effects on the Environment. Cornell University, The Center for Environmental Research; and the Department of Agronomy. Cornell Cooperative Extension.

 


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Grade: 100/100

Professor Comments: Excellent work on this, (Katlin). This was a very thorough and enjoyable read. 

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