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The Green revolution is a process of technological development of agricultural techniques that began in Mexico in 1944 and has since spread throughout the world. The goal of the Green revolution was to increase the efficiency of agricultural processes so that the productivity of the crops was increased and could help developing countries to face their growing populations needs.The Green revolution has since started to face strong criticisms (discussed below), and is being replaced in some cases by integrated farming or organic farming techniques.
1 History
The revolution began in 1944 when the Rockefeller Foundation founded an institute to improve the agricultural output of Mexican farms. This produced astounding results, so that Mexico went from having to import half its wheat to self-sufficiency by 1956, and by 1964 to exports of half a million tons of wheat.
From there, the technologies were exported abroad, finding use in regions all over the world. The success in increasing yields was undisputable. The growth of crop yields was such that agriculture was now able to outstrip population growth — per capita production increased every year following 1950.
The use of genetic engineering in agriculture to create genetically modified foods is viewed by some as the natural continuation of the Green revolution.
2 Technologies
The Green revolution technologies broadly fall into two major categories. The first is the breeding of new plant varieties; the second is the development of new agricultural techniques.
2.1 Hybrid strains
Most crops consumed by the public-at-large in industrialized nations are Green revolution crops. The design of hybrid strain s (so called because they were created by cross-breeding a broad range of varieties to produce the desired combination of characteristics in a single variety, although random mutagenesis was also used) was motivated by a desire to, first, increase crop yield, and also to increase durability for transport and longevity for storage. Norin 10 wheat is an example of such a strain that helped developing countries, such as India and Pakistan to increase the productivity of their crops. Since then, strains have been bred for better appearance (e.g. plumper tomatoes, straighter, more evenly-colored rows of cornMaize Scientific classification Kingdom: Plantae Division: Magnoliophyta Class: Liliopsida Order: Poales Family: Poaceae Genus Zea Species Zea diploperennis ''Zea luxurians ''Zea mays ssp. huehuetenangensis ''Zea mays ssp. mays ''Zea mays ssp. mexicana '').
Since improved crop yield was produced mostly through the use of heavy fossil fuelFossil fuels are coal and hydrocarbon fuels or hydrocarbon containing fuels such as petroleum (including natural gas). The utilization of fossil fuels has fueled industrial development and largely supplanted water driven mills and wood or peat burning for inputs (discussed below), the increased efficiency of Green revolution strains is geared towards these inputs; that is, the strains are more efficient at exploiting the chemical fertilizers used, and also are designed to be easier to harvest mechanically.
2.2 Agricultural Techniques
The techniques refined and developed by the Green revolution are, roughly:
- Extensive use of chemical fertilizers - Every plant basically relies on several basic compounds in order to grow. Primary is nitrogenNitrogen is the chemical element in the periodic table that has the symbol N and atomic number 7. A common normally colorless, odorless, tasteless and mostly inert diatomic non-metal gas, nitrogen constitutes 78 percent of Earth's atmosphere and is a cons need. Only in the nitrateNitrates are the salts of nitric acid. The nitrate ion is the polyatomic ion with chemical formula N O−; it is the conjugate base of nitric acid. The nitrate ion is planar and has the following structure: O O− \\ / N+ | O− A nitrate salt form can plants absorb the nitrogen they require. Certain microorganismA micro-organism or microbe is an organism that is so small that it is invisible to the naked eye. The term is synonymous by usage to single- celled organism and unicellular organism even though some unicellular protists are visible to the naked eye, ands found in the soil are able to convert atmospheric nitrogen into the nitrate form plants can use. Also, some biological nitrogen fixationNitrogen fixation is the process by which nitrogen is taken from its relatively inert molecular form (N) in the atmosphere and converted into nitrogen compounds useful for other chemical processes (such as, notably, ammonia, nitrate and nitrogen dioxide). can take place by microorganisms living in small nodules on the roots of certain plants, such as legumeThe term legume has two closely related meanings in botany, a situation encountered with many botanical common names of useful plants whereby an applied name can refer to either the plant itself, or to the edible fruit (or useful part). Thus, "legume" cans. Phosphates are also important, as well as numerous trace elements. Soil pH ( acidity or alkalinity ) must also be adjusted to the optimal conditions for the crop in question. Previously proper soil conditions had relied only on techniques such as crop rotation, mixing of crops, or organic fertilizers like horse manure . The major development of the Green revolution in this field was the use of chemical fertilizers to adjust the soil pH balance and achieve the right levels of all the important chemical compounds needed for the plant to grow.
- Irrigation - Although it has been in use in agriculture for thousands of years, the Green revolution further developed irrigation methods to allow for more efficient irrigation. It was possible to have more than one harvest per year with reduced dependence on monsoon seasons.
- Use of heavy machinery - Mechanized harvester s and other machinery was not new to agriculture - the McCormick reaper was developed in the nineteenth century - but the Green revolution allowed a drastic reduction in the input of human labor to agriculture by extending the use of machinery to automate every possible agricultural process.
- Pesticides and herbicides - The development of chemical pesticides and herbicides (including organochlorine and organophosphate compounds) allowed further improvements in crop yields by allowing for efficient weed control (by use of herbicide early in the growing season) and eradication of insect pests.
In recent years, genetic engineering techniques have been used to further enhance some of these Green revolution advances, especially the use of pesticides and herbicides. For example, many commercial crops these days have engineered herbicide tolerances, so that application of more herbicide will eliminate undesirables (weeds) while leaving the crop unaffected.
