Lessons from the Green Revolution: Effects on Human Nutrition
Rachel Bezner Kerr
Draft, please do not cite without permission
Introduction
Current debates about the potential positive and negative implications of agricultural biotechnology for human nutrition do not seem to be well informed by lessons learned from the Green Revolution. This paper will examine the following question: what was learned from the Green Revolution concerning its effects on food consumption and/or nutrition? 2) In what respects is the agricultural biotechnology issue similar to the Green Revolution? 3) In what respects is it different? 4) Under what circumstances (if any) do you think it would be appropriate to introduce genetically engineered crops into the farming systems of developing countries? 5) What are the pros and cons of the preceding recommendation?
Conceptual Framework
The conceptual framework used for this analysis integrates the causes of malnutrition (UNICEF 1990), the extended model of care (Engle, Menon, and Haddad 1999) and the sustainable livelihood framework (Adato and Meinzen-Dick 2002). In addition, it incorporates some aspects of the framework used to assess the effects of commercialization on nutrition (Braun, Bouis, and Kennedy 1994). Starting with UNICEF’s model of the causal mechanisms of child malnutrition, the conceptual framework attributes direct child nutrition to both adequate nutrient intake and good health (lack of disease). These factors are in turn affected by a broad spectrum of caregiving behaviors, including child feeding, hygiene practices and food preparation and storage, that are found to be critical in child nutritional outcomes (Engle, Menon, and Haddad 1999). This framework then tries to break apart the ‘cultural, political and social context’ that influences the food and economic resources available for care at the household level.
In doing so, I try to integrate the broader social, economic and political processes that interact at the household level, in turn affecting child and family nutrition. In particular I emphasize the means by which changes in agricultural technology might interact with other factors that affect food consumption, such as income, prices, non-food expenditures, time allocation and other factors (Braun, Bouis, and Kennedy 1994). In addition, broader processes and structures such as government policies, international trade regimes and the private sector need to be considered in this discussion, since all of these factors influence consumption and nutrition at the household level (Adato and Meinzen-Dick 2002).
The critical component lacking from most models that examine the effect of an agricultural technology on nutritional outcomes is the political context, and the related access to power and control over resources, both within and beyond the household, that influence overall outcomes. This paper will try to integrate the broader political factors into the discussion in an attempt to break the impasse.
Green Revolution Defined
Most definitions of the Green Revolution focus on the technical aspects, in particular the high-yielding maize, rice and wheat varieties developed in the 1950s and 1960s by international agricultural research centers in Mexico and the Philippines (Conway 1997). However in this essay, the term will refer to the particular historical, technical, political and social aspects of the Green Revoluion. Many authors suggest that the Green Revolution began with a joint venture between the Mexican Ministry of Agriculture and the Rockefeller Foundation in 1943, in which American and Mexican scientists worked to develop synthetic and hybrid corn and wheat varieties that were high-yielding in comparison to local varieties (Conway 1997; Lipton 1988). In 1961, the International Rice Research Institute began operations in the Philippines with assistance from the Ford and Rockefeller Foundations, developing high-yielding hybrid rice varieties. However, the origins of the Green Revolution lay in a particular combination of business interests (i.e. agro-chemical companies), philanthropy, scientists and politics that originated primarily in the United States (Kloppenburg 1988).
The institutional approach of the Green Revolution, in which International Agricultural Research Centers (IARCs) carry out research in collaboration with national governments, is a model similar to the a US Land Grant system for agricultural research (Kloppenburg 1988). In both cases, political interests had a major influence on the plant breeding approach and outcomes to the technical intervention, as will be discussed below. Furthermore, the Green Revolution involved the dissemination of the high-yielding seeds in combination with fertilizer, pesticides and often irrigation. That is, most farmers took up a ‘package’ of inputs, including fertilizer and pesticides, and the majority of the seeds were utilized under irrigated or high rainfall conditions (Conway 1997). Although researchers later developed high-yielding seeds that performed well under moisture stress and low nutrient inputs, the highest yields were initially seen under high input water and nutrient conditions (Lipton and Longhurst 1989). The majority of high-yielding varieties were also screened for performance under herbicides, usually provided as a free service by herbicide manufacturers to the international and national research institutions, in order to help promote their herbicide products. Thus, alternative weeding control methods, including human labour, were usually not considered by researchers (Lipton and Longhurst 1989). In the minds of most farmers, development experts and government planners at the time, the seeds were inextricably linked with fertilizer and pesticide use, and often irrigation (Gupta 1998; Pearse 1980). This issue of the ‘package of inputs’ will be discussed in the light of implications for consumption and nutritional outcomes below.
Many government planners, who themselves often had political connections with large landholders, felt that the ‘Green Revolution’ should initially occur under ‘ideal’ conditions of large landholders, and the extension advice and credit opportunities were made more available to these more politically powerful groups (Gupta 1998). The Green Revolution was also an ideological approach to solving social problems with technology, and was part of a broader ‘development’ or ‘modernization’ approach to problems in the Third World. Modernization theory posits that poor countries and regions need to make the transition from backward, traditional societies to modern, advanced industrial societies through technological change(Peet and Hartwick 1999). The Green Revolution was seen as part of an overall strategy to help the Third World transition into modern societies through technological changes in agriculture.
1) Lessons learned about the GR’s effects on food consumption & nutrition
a) General arguments
Proponents of the Green Revolution argue that the high-yielding varieties of the world’s major food staples have led to an increase in total world food outputs, and a consequent decrease in world food prices, which has had a positive effect on food consumption levels (Conway 1997). Certainly there is ample evidence that agricultural yields have increased for the major staples in many parts of the world following the onset of the Green Revolution, in part due to new varietal types, in part due to increased fertilizer application and irrigation, both of which have been major features of the Green Revolution (Lipton and Longhurst 1989). However regional yield increases and outcomes for particular social groups depends on a host of other factors, and is a subject of much dispute. This section will address two related questions through an examination of several case studies: a) has producing more grain improved overall food consumption? b) Has the GR improved nutrition?
How much increased grain production has led to improvements in food consumption, particularly for the poor, is a subject of intense and polarized debate. Proponents point to average per capita increases in food consumption globally and regionally except in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia (Conway 1997). Critics argue that food consumption figures are inflated by excessive consumption in the North, including livestock feed, and that although the total food production per person has risen in the last two decades, the number of hungry people has not been substantially reduced in many regions of the world, particularly in South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa (Rosset, Collins, and Lappe 2000). Many times the numbers vary widely between the two opposing sides. One of the problems with this issue is that it is difficult to attribute causality in the analysis, because there are many other factors in addition to the Green Revolution that influenced food consumption levels, and because there are few opportunities to do empirical studies looking at regions before and after the onset of the Green Revolution. Any empirical studies undertaken look at a village or a particular region, and so generalizations are hard to make. Nonetheless, this section will examine the limited studies that have been carried out to weigh the evidence, and will include examples from Africa, Asia and Latin America, as well as different crops and social groups.
Most of the studies, which examine the causal linkages between agricultural changes, including the Green Revolution, and nutrition, are small case studies in rural communities, and focus on the effects on smallholder farmers (Braun, Bouis, and Kennedy 1994; Lipton and Longhurst 1989). Much of the critiques surrounding the Green Revolution, however, revolve around broader social trends brought about in part by the Green Revolution, including changing land tenure arrangements that favour the wealthy, widening gaps in income distribution, reduced real wages and considerable environmental effects (Griffin 1974; Pearse 1980; Shiva 1989; Spitz 1987). Although the nutritional outcomes are usually not measured in these studies, presumably changes in these social and environmental factors would have effects on nutritional outcomes, and hence will also be considered in the discussion below.
b) Case studies
A series of studies by International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) examined the effect of commercialization of cropping systems on income and nutrition (Braun and Kennedy 1986; Braun and Kennedy 1994). Although not focused on the effects of the Green Revolution technologies per se, the studies did examine the effects of changes in the agricultural system, typically towards higher yields of particular crops, in a given region in terms of income and nutrition. Overall the studies found that, although in many cases the new agricultural technologies increased the incomes of some members of a given community or region, there was a small, weak link between increased income and calorie consumption (Braun, Hotchkiss, and Immink 1989; Braun, Johm, and Puetz 1994; Braun and Kennedy 1986; Braun and Kennedy 1994; Braun, Puetz, and Webb 1989; Braun and Webb 1989). Furthermore, women’s roles in terms of agricultural labour, childcare and control over income appeared to be crucial if positive nutritional outcomes were to be found. Thus, there was no clear trend between increased commercialization and nutritional outcomes; instead, it depended on the particular historical, social and political context under which the changes took place. The importance of context will be examined in more detail in the two case studies outlined below, West Africa and South India, representing regions with different effects from Green Revolution technologies.
A study by IFPRI in the Gambia examined an irrigated rice scheme introduced in the 1980s by the Government of The Gambia. The project, owned and managed by the state, provided households with ploughing services, fertilizers and hybrid seeds on a credit basis (Braun, Johm, and Puetz 1994). The smallholder farming families associated with the project were registered as tenants, and there were multiple technological options for the farmers, including small-pump irrigation schemes and partly water-controlled conditions in leveled fields, both with modest yield increases, to fully water-controlled conditions in lands that are centrally irrigated and drained (Braun, Johm, and Puetz 1994). The project organizers specifically tried to maintain what had been traditional use rights of women farmers for rice land, by prioritizing land rights for women during official registration of plots. Although this study did not occur during the historical period associated with the Green Revolution, it does utilize high-yielding varieties, fertilizers and irrigation. The centrally managed aspect of the project makes it considerably different from the experience of the Green Revolution in many other regions, but will make for useful comparisons in terms of institutional approaches to managing technological change and the related effects on nutrition and consumption.
Two major studies were done: an extensive cross-sectional survey of 900 farmers in 10 villages in 1985-86 and 1987-88 (Braun, Puetz, and Webb 1989), and an intensive qualitative examination of intra household dynamics of 22 households over the period of one year (Webb 1989). The large survey does not have a baseline, and thus has to control for confounding variables through multivariate analysis, which makes it difficult to attribute causality. The qualitative study, with such a small sample, and with no baseline to compare to, also suffers from a problem of confounding variables, and causality is particularly difficult to attribute in this study. These research design limitations should be kept in mind in considering the authors’ findings.
The large survey found that there was a loss of 531 calories in other crops for every 1000 calories in rice production, leading to a net gain of 47% in calories produced on-farm for those involved in rice production. Rice production increased real incomes by 13% per household, and an additional 10% of income increase led to a 9.4% increase in food expenditures, and a 4.8% increase in calorie consumption. Thus, overall it appears that the use of higher-yielding rice varieties led to considerable increases in food consumption. In addition, however, there was a much higher cost per hectare to undertake the irrigated rice plots, namely 15 times the swamp rice, due to the costs of fertilizer, seeds, irrigation, hired labour, transport and threshing needs (Braun, Puetz, and Webb 1989). Thus, although the project led to increased yields, the overall benefit in terms of consumption and nutrition were limited due to the additional non-food expenditures (i.e. fertilizer, pesticides) to the household. Women’s agricultural labour was increased slightly, while men’s agricultural labour decreased slightly. Upland cereals and groundnut production were reduced due to reduced labour allocation to these crops by women, and the reduced control of women over the food crops was found to reduce consumption levels significantly (2.2%) during the wet season, the period of greatest food shortages in the Gambia. Thus the issue of intra household control of income was inextricably linked to consumption and nutritional outcomes, and in this case the ‘package’ of inputs led to negative consequences.
Women involved with the irrigated rice scheme were more likely to bring their youngest child with them to the rice fields in the wet season, but less likely to take their older children with them into the field. These aspects of childcare were not integrated into the model, so it is difficult to know what effects they had on child nutritional status. However, other studies of the effects of reduced childcare time of mothers, often replaced by older children, increases the likelihood of wasting or stunting, particularly for children ages 6 to 18 months (Begin, Frongillo, and Delisle 1999; Gryboski 1996; Kennedy and Cogill 1988).