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.
--------------------
Grade: 100/100
Professor Comments: Excellent work on this, (Katlin). This was a very thorough and enjoyable read.
