50 Years of Green Revolution

The following sections are included:

• Table of Contents
• Prologue
• Acknowledgements
• About the Author
• Foreword

The following sections are included:

• Introduction
• Wheat Material obtained from Mexico
• Performance of the four released varieties
• Performance of the highest yielding lines
• Discussion
• Acknowledgements
• REFERENCES

2013 marks the 50th anniversary of the commencement of a yield revolution in wheat in India, caused by a modification in plant architecture and physiological rhythm, through the introduction of the Norin dwarfing genes. This could be achieved with the help of Dr Norman E Borlaug, who supplied in 1963 the original breeding material carrying the Norin dwarfing genes. The grains of these varieties were, however, red in colour, which was not preferred for chapati (Indian bread) making. Through careful selection amongst segregating populations and breeding, high yielding amber grain wheat varieties with good chapati-making quality were developed. By generating synergy amongst scientific skill, political action and farmers’ enthusiasm, it was possible to bring about a quantum jump in wheat production by 1968, when Ms Indira Gandhi, the then Prime Minister of India, released a special stamp titled ‘Wheat Revolution’. In 2013, wheat production is likely to be of the order of 96 million tonnes from an area of about 29 million hectares. Producing 96 million tonnes at the 1963 yield level would have required at least 100 million hectares. This is why the yield revolution in wheat, and also in rice and other crops, is referred to as land- or forest-saving agriculture. Stimulating and sustaining farmers’ interest in achieving higher productivity and production require sharply focused inter-disciplinary research, international collaboration, concerted and continuous attention to soil and plant health, and assured and remunerative marketing opportunities.

On the third death anniversary of Shri Jawahar Lal Nehru, the staff and students of the Indian agricultural research institutions feel highly privileged in being able to present to the nation some outstanding new varieties of wheat and maize. Shri Jawahar Lal Nehru made science an integral part of the new India and much of the progress made in recent years in agricultural research is due to the greater facilities made available for experimental work and to the expanding international collaboration in research. A brief description of the new varieties presented by the Union Food and Agriculture Minister, Shri Jagjiwan Ram, to Shri V. K. Malhotra, Chief Executive Councillor, Delhi State, on May 27, 1967, is given below…

Rice occupies nearly 35 million hectares in India, but the average yield is only 1.1 tonnes per hectare, in contrast to over 4 tonnes per hectare in Japan. The principal reasons for the low yield potential of our rice culture are : (a) the weak and tall straw of the indica varieties which makes the cultivation of rice under good conditions of soil fertility and the application of fertilizers difficult without causing lodging, (b) poor photo-synthesis due to the extensive cultivation of rice during the monsoon season when the sky is cloudy during most parts of the day, (c) poor utilization of sunlight due to the shading of lower leaves by the upper ones and (d) excess water during the early stages and lack of adequate water during the later stages of grain development. Some years ago, Chinese scientists discovered a spontaneous mutant in the variety Dee-gee-Woo-gen which had the following characteristics : (i) a dwarf plant habit, the plant attaining a height of about 60 cm. (ii) stiff and erect leaves, enabling the maximum interception of sunlight, (iii) insensitivity to photoperiod (i.e., length of the day) enabling the cultivation of the crop in any season and (iv) absence of seed dormancy, rendering sowing possible immediately after harvest. Using this mutant, scientists in several parts of the tropics are now developing fertilizer- responsive and photo-insensitive varieties, which have revealed enormous possibilities for increasing the yields of indica rices.

India today holds the world record for the speed with which significant research findings have been applied in the field. Within two years 20 lakh acres have been brought under newly evolved varieties of wheat.

Indian agriculture is now poised for a transition from the ‘natural’ to an ‘exploitive’ stage in which cultivated plants need not depend for their survival and productivity mainly on natural factors. The land is a capital resource which should be so exploited as to bring about a continuous appreciation in its production potential.

During the last few years we have been witnessing a rapid shift from a static to a scientific agriculture in our country. This shift gained greatly in momentum during 1967, since favourable weather conditions and high price levels provided conditions conducive to creating the motivation necessary for maximising farm production. The catalyst in this “New Frontiers’ Movement” in our agriculture is the high yielding variety. The dramatic increase in yield and income which the new varieties of rice and wheat and hybrids of jowar, bajra and maize bring about, when they are grown with adequate quantities of fertilizers and other inputs, has helped to raise the sights of the farming community and has led to the interest now evident in the seeds of new strains…

A major advance i increasing the yield of crop plants took place in the 18th century in Europe when the principle of cereal-legume crop rotation was introduced into agriculture. In the United Kingdom the average yield of wheat went up from about 8 bushels per acre to over 20 following the introduction of this practice. Even today, the highest yield of rice in the world occurs in certain parts of Australia where one rice crop is followed for about four years with legume clovers. This emphasises the crucial role of soil fertility in enabling crop plants to yield more. The next major advance in the enhancement of the yield per unit area came in the middle of the last century when fertilizers were first formulated and introduced into agriculture. The average yield of wheat in the United Kingdom went up from 20 bushels per acre to over 30 in fields which were supplied with nitrogenous fertilizers…

The recent developments in improving the yield potential of oilseeds, pulses and cotton have been briefly described in the paper. Many low-yield environments for cereals can prove to be high yield environments for oilseeds and pulses. Therefore, crop substitution initiated on considerations of both ecology and economics may provide considerable benefits to farmers in unirrigated areas.

Experience gained through commercial exploitation of hybrid vigour in maize, Sorghum and pearl millet indicates that heterosis not only results in substantial yield increases but also in stability of performance, particularly under environmental stress. Since there is further scope to exploit the full potentiality of high yielding dwarf varieties under irrigated conditions, commercial hybrids of rice, if developed, may first enable improvement and stabilisation of production levels of upland rices which form a substantial proportion of the total area under this crop…

In the light of the available information the prospects for the development of commercial rice hybrids are examined. While the dominant genes which have been reported to confer resistance to major rice diseases are a distinct advantage~ care should be exercised in the choice of male and female parents to maintain the desirable grain quality of the F, hybrid. The possibilities of developing a commercial rice hybrid using the cytoplasmic source from the West African rice variety Sakotira-55 and the restorer systems from varieties like Basmati 370 are discussed to provide a hypothetical model in such work. Reference has also been made to the availability of ancillary characters in the rice germ plasm, which would aid development of commercial hybrids.

The following sections are included:

• AGRICULTURAL EVOLUTION, PRODUCTIVE EMPLOYMENT AND RURAL PROSPERITY
• TOWARDS SELF-RELIANCE IN AGRICULTURE
• EDUCATION FOR AGRICULTURAL AND RURAL DEVELOPMENT

Until recently, famine used to be a regular feature of our history. Towards the end of the last century, several Famine Commissions were appointed and detailed codes for providing relief to the affected population were drawn up. These ‘Famine Codes’ or ‘Scarcity Manuals’ are still in use in several States. An important part of the training of local administrators consisted of making them capable of assessing the extent of crop loss caused by drought, floods or pest-epidemics. This procedure, known as the “Annawari” method, was based on the old monetary system of having 16 annas in a rupee; thus a crop which is 50 % of the normal in its yield potential was an 8-anna crop. The last major famine occurred in 1943 during World War II when the rice crop of Bengal was severely damaged by a fungal disease…

At the “Donyi-Polo” temple at Along in Arunachal Pradesh, there is a portrait of a woman who is bolieved to have been the first person to have cultivated rice. The early domestication of plants over 10,000 years ago started two significant developments. First, various forms of energy (collectively termed “cultural energy”) were introduced to enable green plants to give stable and higher yields. Secondly, from the millions of species of world flora and fauna, only a few plants and animals were chosen for domestication. There are now only about 30 plant species whose individual world production exceeds 10 million tonnes per year and 6 animal species whose production in the form of meat exceeds 1 million tonnes per year. Such dependence on a few species has increased the vulnerability of food production systems to weather aberrations and pest epidemics. Compounding this problem of dependence is the fact that at present less than 10 countries in the world have surplus food grains for the export market. In recent years steps have been initiated to develop global and national food security systems. I would like to discuss briefly some aspects of a national food security system further. Some of the major components of an effective national food security system are: (a) ecological security, (b) technological security, (c) building up food reserves, (d) social security, and (e) nutrition education and finding agricultural remedies for nutritional maladies. Each will now be considered further.

The following sections are included:

• Introduction
• Green Revolution Balance Sheet
• Sustaining the Green Revolution and Expanding its Benefits

The 40th anniversary of our independence is a good occasion both to look back and forward. Looking back, there can be nothing but pride in the achievements of our farmers. Progress has been good in achieving self-sufficiency in statistical terms both with reference to major staples and industrial raw materials like cotton and sugarcane (Table 1). However, statistical food self-sufficiency does not imply the elimination of hunger, which now co-exists on a fairly large scale with food grain surpluses. This is why FAO has defined food security as “physical and economic access to food to all people at all times”…

The following sections are included:

• Introduction
• Achieving Sustainability
• New Paradigm of Development
• Impact on Employment
• Principles of Sustainability Basic Principles
• Sustainable Forestry
• Achieving Sustainability
• Monitoring Sustainability
• Sustaining and Extending the Green Revolution
• Pathways of “Greening” the Green Revolution in Industrialised Nations
• Achieving Sustainable Advances in the Productivity of Small Scale Farming
• Where do we go from here?
• References

The following sections are included:

• INTRODUCTION
• MAKING THE GREEN REVOLUTION “GREENER”
• PATHWAYS TO IMPROVED AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTIVITY IN DEVELOPED COUNTRIES
• PATHWAYS FOR DEVELOPING COUNTRIES
• WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?
• CONCLUSION
• REFERENCES

The following sections are included:

• INTRODUCTION
• HISTORY OF SOME PAST AGRICULTURAL REVOLUTIONS
• WHEAT REVOLUTION IN INDIA
• PROGRESS IN OTHER COUNTRIES
• BALANCE SHEET OF PHASE I OF THE GREEN REVOLUTION
• PRODUCING MORE WHEAT
• INCREASING INCOME OF WHEAT FARMERS
• STIMULATING CONSUMPTION
• IMPACT OF THE GREEN REVOLUTION
• PHASE II OF THE GREEN REVOLUTION
• REFERENCES

The following sections are included:

• INTRODUCTION
• NATIONAL TRUST FUND FOR ECOTECHNOLOGY
• CONCLUSION

The following sections are included:

• PROLOGUE
• INTRODUCTION
• FOOD SECURITY, ET AL
• MEETING THE CHALLENGE
• PRECISION AGRICULTURE
• SHAPING THE FUTURE OF OUR AGRICULTURE
• REFERENCES

The year 1968 marked the beginning of the green revolution leading to quantum jumps in the productivity and production of wheat and rice. The last 10 years have witnessed a fatigue in the green revolution with the growth rate in foodgrain production falling below population growth. Thus, human numbers are increasing faster than our capacity to make, the goal of ‘Food for All’ a reality. At the same time, consumption is not going up due to inadequate purchasing power at the household level. A famine of jobs/livelihoods as a result of poor growth of opportunities for employment in the rural non-farm and off-farm sectors is leading to a famine of food at the household level…

The green revolution of the 1960s and 1970s which resulted in dramatic yield increases in the developing Asian countries is now showing signs of fatigue in productivity gains. Intensive agriculture practiced without adherence to the scientific principles and ecological aspects has led to loss of soil health, and depletion of freshwater resources and agrobiodiversity. With progressive diversion of arable land for non-agricultural purposes, the challenge of feeding the growing population without, at the same time, annexing more forestland and depleting the rest of life is indeed daunting. Further, even with food availability through production/procurement, millions of marginal farming, fishing and landless rural families have very low or no access to food due to lack of income-generating livelihoods. Approximately 200 million rural women, children and men in India alone fall in this category. Under these circumstances, the evergreen revolution (pro-nature, pro-poor, pro-women and pro-employment/livelihood oriented ecoagriculture) under varied terms are proposed for achieving productivity in perpetuity. In the proposed ‘biovillage paradigm’, eco-friendly agriculture is promoted along with on-and non-farm eco-enterprises based on sustainable management of natural resources. Concurrently, the modem ICT-based village knowledge centres provide time- and locale-specific, demand-driven information needed for evergreen revolution and ecotechnologies. With a system of ‘farm and marine production by masses’, the twin goals of ecoagriculture and eco-livelihoods are addressed. The principles, strategies and models of these are briefly discussed in this paper.

The Bicentenary of Charles Darwin’s Life and Work reminds us that the great biodiversity on Earth underlies natural selection, selective breeding, and the biotechnologies required to provide humanity with food, fiber, fodder, and fuels. In particular, biodiversity affords the development of plant varieties with novel genetic combinations, which will be required to meet the challenges arising from adverse alterations in temperature, precipitation, sea level, and the frequency of drought and floods—all of which are anticipated from human-induced climate change. The loss of each gene and species therefore limits our options for the future…

At the close of the recent London Olympics, the United Kingdom announced a program designed to rescue 25 million children worldwide from malnutrition by the time of the next Olympics in Brazil. In May 2012, the World Health Assembly agreed to a target of reducing the number of stunted children by 40% (a reduction of about 70 million children) by 2025. To meet these targets and nourish the 870 million hungry people in the world, the world’s leaders will need to prioritize an innovative science-based marriage of nutrition and agriculture…

I believe that the current concerns of biosafety and the impact of GMOs on biodiversity will soon give way to an appreciation of the potential benefits that the new genetics can confer on humankind. Agricultural science and genetics together have fed the world and will continue to feed the world…

Food and nutrition security are intimately interconnected, since only a food based approach can help in overcoming malnutrition in an economically and socially sustainable manner. Food production provides the base for food security as it is a key determinant of food availability. This paper deals with different aspects of ensuring high productivity and production without associated ecological harm for ensuring adequate food availability. By mainstreaming ecological considerations in technology development and dissemination, we can enter an era of evergreen revolution and sustainable food and nutrition security. Public policy support is crucial for enabling this.

Agriculture is the primary livelihood of a majority of the population in South Asia. The region also houses a large population of undernourished people. The farming system for nutrition (FSN) model envisages developing and demonstrating a sustainable framework of farming to improve nutritional outcomes that can be used for upscaling and wider adoption. Agricultural intervention and farming systems research in India has been largely focused on enhancing production, productivity and profitability of crop and animal resources without much emphasis on better nutritional outcomes. The FSN model has been conceptualized to develop location-specific inclusive models to address the nutritional needs of farm and non-farm families based on their resource endowments and surrounding environment. The main components of the model are as follows: (1) survey to identify the major nutritional problems, (2) design suitable agricultural interventions to address the problems, (3) include specific nutritional criteria in the design, (4) improve small farm productivity and profitability, (5) undertake nutrition awareness programmes and (6) introduce monitoring systems for assessing impact on nutrition outcomes. The objective is to demonstrate feasibility of nutrition-sensitive agriculture. The proposed model is being tested in two select locations to demonstrate improvement in nutrition status through improved agricultural production system, dietary diversification, income enhancement, greater nutrition awareness and changed behaviour patterns, to be evaluated through a set of objective indicators.

The United Nations (UN) designated 2014 as the International Year of Family Farming, recognizing that an estimated 500 million family farms, involving over 2 billion people, play a key role in food production and consumption worldwide. It is thus an opportune time to encourage a shift in tackling global hunger—from a “food security” focus to an agenda that promotes “nutrition security” instead. The drive to reduce hunger in the world has largely relied on crops such as wheat and rice that provide calories. But an increase in calories alone is not good enough. Improved diets and good health require bolstering nutrition…

The evergreen revolution aims at achieving productivity in perpetuity without accompanying ecological and social harm. The smallholder family farms with pro-nature, pro-poor and pro-women orientation provide a boost to the evergreen revolution. Revitalization of family farming traditions with emphasis on the empowerment of women and youth will enhance small farm productivity and profitability on the one hand, and nutrition-sensitive agriculture on the other. Family farms enhance the rural livelihoods. Corporate farming displaces three to four jobs for every single job created. Monocropping largely practiced by the corporate farms is not conducive to develop strategies to provide agricultural remedies to nutritional maladies in different agro-ecological regions.

The Zero Hunger Challenge outlined by the UN Secretary General has the following five components:

• 100% access to adequate food all year round
• Zero stunted children less than 2 years of age
• All food systems are sustainable
• 100% increase in smallholder productivity & income
• Zero loss or waste of food

One of the first requirements for societal well being is elimination of hunger and poverty. I shall, therefore, deal with few issues connected with achieving the goal of a zero hunger country.

From the historical data of the post independent India, with special reference to agriculture and food scenario, it was evident that early 1960s had bad years due to drought which adversely affected food production. Even for the then population of around 450 million, food availability was a serious problem and the fear of people going without food was bothering the minds of the Prime Minister, Agriculture Minster and officials. At that time, the country was depending on the US based PL 480 scheme to import food grains to meet the demand of public. That period was literally ‘ship to mouth’ existence, meaning whatever was shipped from USA was enough just to feed, with no stock to face problems of poverty staring at the country. If the problem had prevailed for long, starvation and hunger deaths would have been the worst possible scenario. That was the most challenging period. Some misconceptions need to be corrected.

The following sections are included:

• Why Sustainability Science ?
• Sustainable Food Security in an Era of Climate Change
• The Food Crisis: The Way Out

The agrarian crisis sweeping the country underlines the need for attending to the problems of farmers and farming with the same seriousness as we did in the early sixties. According to most estimates, farming is no longer remunerative and over 40 per cent of farmers will like to quit farming if they have an alternative option. Farming is both a way of life and the principal means to livelihood to nearly two-thirds of our population. It is clear that we will not be able to make progress in improving our per capita income or human development indicators, if agriculture continues to stagnate. This is why our Prime Minister is calling for a second green revolution. Green revolution is another term for improving production through productivity enhancement. The first green revolution was based on the development and spread of new genetic strains of wheat, rice, maize and other crops characterised by their ability to utilise irrigation, water, sunlight and plant nutrients effectively and convert them into grains. This revolution was confined to areas with assured irrigation. However, even in these areas like Punjab, farming is becoming unremunerative due to adverse ecological and economic factors and farmers are getting heavily indebted. The challenge now is to fight and overcome the fatigue of the green revolution in its heartland…

The loss of every gene and species limits our options for the future particularly in an era of climate change. Fortunately, Norway has created a Noah’s arc in the form of the Svalbard Global Seed Vault…

The Green Revolution of the sixties helped to instil self-confidence in our agricultural capability and also to purchase time in relation to achieving a balance between population growth and food production. Such a revolutionary progress particularly in the production of wheat and rice became possible through synergy between technology and public policy supported by farmers’ enthusiasm generated through national demonstrations in the fields of resource poor farmers with small holdings. From the nineties onwards, there has been deceleration in the rate of growth of food production. It is widely felt that there has been a fatigue of the green revolution. Simultaneously, several enviromnental and econmnic problems hampering agricultural growth appeared. Obviously, if farm economics and ecology go wrong, nothing else will go right in agriculture…

The World Food Summit (WFS) convened by the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) in Rome in 1996 resolved to bring down the number of hungry and malnourished from 816 million in 1990-1992 to 408 million by 2015. This involves reducing the number of undernourished people by 22 million every year. In 2002, a meeting of Heads of States and Governments and Ministers for Agriculture was convened by the FAO in Rome from June 10-13, to review the progress made since 1996 in achieving the targets set at the WFS. The survey at the “WFS—Five Years Later” meeting in Rome indicated that the actual achievement in hunger reduction was only 6 million per year. Over 200 million people or 28 percent of the entire population of Africa were found to be chronically hungry. And 24,000 children, women and men die every day due to hunger related causes…

The first 60 years of the 20^th century were marked by a sense of despair and frustration regarding our capability to achieve a balance between human numbers and the production of food grains and other agricultural commodities. In 1968, this mood of despair and diffidence gave wave to one of optimism and self-confidence in relation to our agricultural potential and our farmers ability to adapt and adopt new technologies, a phenomenon which was christened in that year as “Green Revolution”. This agricultural transformation helped to strengthen our national sovereignty in foreign policy…

The term “Green Revolution”, coined by Dr. William Gaud of the US Department of Agriculture in 1968, has come to be associated not only with higher production through enhanced productivity but also with several negative ecological and social consequences. There is also frequent reference to the “fatigue of the green revolution”, due to stagnation in yield levels and to a larger quantity of nutrients required to produce the same yield as in the early 1970s…

NR:While there is sufficient food production now, we find that inequalities have increased between the rural and urban. Many small and marginal farmers are forced to migrate to the towns to earn a living as rickshaw pullers or other manual workers. Santals and other tribal groups from Jharkhand work as agricultural labour in the sugar cane fields of western Uttar Pradesh, or in the construction of border roads, year after year, despite owning land at home. Extension services elude them; they are not seen as motivated because they are unable to pay the costs of transportation to travel for extension meetings and demonstrations.

Farmer suicides have increased over the last decade. According to the National Crime Records Bureau, more than 10 per cent of all recorded suicides between 2010 and 2012, that is, roughly 14,000-15,000 per year, has been that of farmers. Clearly the reality is one of agrarian distress. How and why do you think this has happened, after the euphoria of the 1960s and the 1970s…

Mr Ban Ki-moon, Secretary General of the UN, launched the Zero Hunger Challenge at the Rio+20 Conference on Sustainable Development held in Brazil in June 2012. At a high level consultation held in Madrid in April 2013, it was agreed that the global community should commit to a common vision that hunger, food insecurity and malnutrition should be ended by 2025. At these meetings, governments were requested to pay concurrent attention to the following five pillars of the Zero Hunger Challenge:

• 100 per cent access to adequate food all year round;
• zero stunted children less than two years of age;
• all food systems made sustainable;
• 100 per cent increase in smallholder productivity and income; and
• zero loss or waste of food…

The following sections are included:

• INTRODUCTION
• NATIONAL COMMISSION ON FARMERS AND DRAFT NATIONAL POLICY FOR FARMERS
• UNION BUDGET 2016-17: DOUBLING THE INCOME OF FARMERS IN FIVE YEARS
• THE NEW IPR POLICY
• EFFECTIVE CROP INSURANCE
• PRICING AND PROCUREMENT
• ATTENTION TO WOMEN FARMERS: A PRIVATE MEMBER’S BILL
• FROM AGRARIAN CRISIS TO AGARIAN PROSPERITY
• ECOLOGICAL FOUNDATIONS OF SUSTAINABLE AGRICULTURE
• MANAGING PRICE VOLATILITY
• IMPLEMENTING THE FOOD SECURITY ACT
• REFERENCES

The following sections are included:

• India’s Green Revolution
• Ending World Hunger
• Investing in Technology for Value Addition in Agriculture
• Role of Public and Private Sectors in Agricultural Research
• Food Self-Sufficiency in the Era of Globalisation
• India’s National Food Security Act
• Role of CFS in Eradication of World Hunger
• Future Directions for the Work of FAO

The following section is included:

• Epilogue