Agricultural livelihoods of green revolution & agricultural biotechnology are no ‘magic bullet’ to end global hunger

Agricultural livelihood of green revolution of 1960s and 1970s hoped to alleviate global hunger crises by improving seed qualities, farm technology, better irrigation and chemical fertilisers, which subsequently enabling developing nations to be self-sufficient. Regardless of the success of greater food production, it is highly questionable whether the lower strata of rural poor achieved greater food security or greater economic prosperity.

Parallel narrative like ‘we need new technology to end hunger’ in recent years has prompted even bigger debate with genetically modified crops. Monsanto, Novartis, AgrEvo, Dupont, Mycogen, American Home Products and other companies who are reinventing themselves as biotechnology companies with the help of international agencies having a global agenda to promote genetically modified crops to alleviate global hunger. It has been thought by these multinational companies that the second green revolution will save the world from hunger and starvation with the help of magic seeds and plants produced by genetic engineering techniques.

Before we get carried away, let us look at the facts. Proponents of green revolution technology were understandably happy to take the credit that in between 1970 to 1990 the total food available per person rose by 11 percent and estimated number of hungry people fell from 942 million to 786 million, a 16 percent drop. However, these figures can give falls assumptions. Eliminating China from this analysis showed that hungry people actually increased by more than 11 percent, from 536 to 597 million (Rosset et al, 2000). In South America per capita food supplies rose almost 8 percent but the number of hungry people also went up to by 19 percent. Even in South Asia, there was 9 percent more food per person by 1990, but there were also 9 percent more hungry people.

The agricultural progress that made green revolution possible did not take any account on equal distribution (Wolf, 1986). New seeds, fertilisers and pesticides boosted the crop yields and benefited those farmers who had the access to irrigation system and markets for their crops. Subsistence farmers remained vulnerable to crop failure, droughts, natural catastrophe and diseases. Distribution of economic power especially access to land and purchasing power was narrowly focused. It is still debateable if the poor did benefit from the technology; many poor farmers gained nothing from new technology. Indeed, they often lost (Jewitt, 2002). Farmers with ownership holdings larger acres of land got better opportunities to invest on new seeds, fertilisers and pesticides. Poor paid more and got less, as poor farmers could not buy fertilisers and other inputs. Bigger growers aimed to buy large amounts and got discounts. The relationship between small farmers and moneylenders became less traditional and more commercial, and many farmers became indebted (Conway, 1997).

Even in the case of tube wells, larger farmers could afford the initial investment and have lower costs per unit. The capital-intensive agriculture strategy tends to increase disparities within small farmers. Use of heavy machinery allowed a drastic reduction in the input of human labor. Rural people’s livelihood were affected from the impacts of green revolution in different ways; whether they were wage earners, cultivators or consumers, whether they came from landed or landless, rich or poor, male or female headed households. Final results had been massive displacement and loss of lands to the bigger growers, increasing urbanization, poverty amongst small farmers.

Impacts of green revolution were felt not only on rural livelihoods, poverty, politics and urban-rural relations but also ecological impacts were immense. Fertilizer, pesticide and herbicide runoff became a major source of water pollution. Green revolution allowed growing very fewer varieties of crops which mean fewer verities of diet and nutrient values were least than their ancestors. The introduction of green revolution staples into regions that previously had hundreds of varieties of crops and replacement of various nutrition sources, with a single green revolution alternative have led to poor nutrition diets. With the green revolution, farming became fossil fuel dependent. So the energy that must be expended to produce crops had also increased at a greater rate. Critics had charged that the green revolution destroyed soil quality over the long period by increasing soil salinity, heavy use of chemical fertilizers, killing off beneficial soil microbes and other organisms, erosion of the soil and loss of valuable trace elements.

However, the biotechnology revolution differs from the green revolution in many aspects. Major aspects of agricultural biotechnology (so called The Second Green Revolution) are to develop food crops and livestock as well as enhancing the nutritional quality of foods (value-enhanced crops) and reducing the need for toxic pesticides and herbicides. Research continues on crop varieties, which are drought tolerance and will produce their own fertilisers. Unlike the green revolution (classical or conventional plant breeding practices) where food production were increased by improving seed qualities, development of high-yielding varieties of staple crops, farm technology, better irrigation and using chemical fertilisers. As Shiva, 1991 concluded that heavy use of fertiliser had led to degraded soil with falling crop yields and polluted water sources during the green revolution. The new technology so far relies on the same chemical approach. Therefore artificial fertilizers continue to be used and pests are likely to become resistant to genetically introduced toxins with the risk of creating "super bugs” – the soil ecology is likely to be damaged (Bundell, 2004). 

Like green revolution technology, agricultural biotechnology has increased very sharply from 1.7 million hectares in 1996 to 11.0 million ha in 1997 and more than 28 million hectors in 1998 (Buttel, 1999). But despite of the 15-fold increase in GMO crop area from 1996 to 1998, crop biotechnology is still fairly limited in scope (Buttel, 1999). Will the agricultural biotechnology revolution alleviate global hunger as it was said in the case of green revolution? The answer is not very simplistic or evidential because the technology is still advancing and yet to be implemented in many countries in the world, particularly in those countries where there is more hunger. Whatever rewards it brings for humanity but its benefits are accompanied by controversy and not without problems. Scientific uncertainty, conflicting government priorities, lack of coordination among legislative bodies and the absence of civil penalty system have undermined the level of environmental protection conferred by GMO regulation. There are so many questions yet to be answered for example, do we need the product? Do we want the product? How does the product affect us? 

Private sectors are dominant for developing, promoting and commercialising of the genetic engineered varieties, whereas public and non-profit sectors played the predominant role during the green revolution. The process of new biotechnology is not very cheap. GMO technology has motivated a number of mergers and takeovers between seed and chemical companies because biotechnology requires considerable investment; the companies have attempted to exercise exceptional control over the processes, genes, and chemicals (Tripp, 1999). For example, the top 10-agrochemical companies control 85 per cent of the global agrochemical market; the top five control virtually the entire market for GM seeds. Concentration of ownership within the industry is increasing. If the new technology remains in the hand of big corporations then it will continue to reliance on external inputs, concentrate on ownership of land and resources. This will further widen the gap between poor and rich. GM technology does not address this fundamental issue of inequality of access. For example, ‘terminator technology’ or ‘the suicide seed’ will prevent farmers from saving seed for their next planting and force them to buy new seeds each year or to buy the proprietary chemicals needed to make the seeds germinate (Bundell, 2004).

Three distinct techniques such as tissue cultures, molecular markers and transgenic crops are classified as biotechnology, differing in costs and perceived risks (Byerlee and Gregory, 1999). Transgenic crops are controversial because of concerns of science, potential impacts on environment and human health and concerns about the structure of the transgenic crop industries. Growing number of biotechnology companies are trying to push forward their agenda through the government policies, USA is a good example in this regard and having trade difficulties with European Union (EU). There are conflicting regulatory approaches between EU and US, which make the whole GMO issues very controversial. The biotechnology dispute had the characteristics of a high-tech industrial dispute and this dispute had the potential to damage other countries.

Genes with specific characteristics are directly transported in the plant cells, which can be called as transgenic plants. Two well known agricultural biotechnology's first generation of products are Bt corn and herbicide resistance soybeans. Even though the success in USA, questions are always arising the capacity of existing regulatory approaches and institutions to address issues related to safety in biotechnology. It is vitally important worldwide efforts to develop and apply appropriate strategies and safety assessment criteria for GMO research and to ensure the wholecomeness and safety of its supply (FAO and WHO, 1997).

Regulatory response is not straightforward; it is as complex as GMOs. There should be provision of science-based mechanisms by which choices of acceptance can be made (Serageldin and Collins, 1999). For example, what magnitude of risk is acceptable by the government in accepting the technology? What are the likely outcomes in high-risk situations? What additional risks such as, opportunity costs and direct costs do face an individual firm?What risk do consumers face in chossing the product and how do they recognise those individual risks? Regulation in Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) remains a controversial topic. In Europe particularly, the law says that you cannot patent discoveries, you can only patent inventions (Serageldin and Collins, 1999). Genes are discoveries, therefore they cannot be patented. This argument does not apply in America because the law is differently phrased. An invention is defined as an invention or discovery (Serageldin and Collins, 1999).

But why these safety assessments are important? Because the sources of DNA are virtually coming from animal, plant, microbial or synthetic. They can mutate in response to environmental influences and thus may disturb the ecological balance.  Therefore, “Genetically modified organisms must not be released into the environment as the consequences for the environment and the evolution are unpredictable and irreversible” (Anderson, 1999). These modern techniques solely differ from the green revolution technology.

In the green revolution technologies farmers required to have the knowledge about how to combine the seeds, chemical fertilisers and irrigations but in the case of agricultural biotechnology farmers are facing uncertainties about the impacts. Educated and rich farmers can build up their adaptive capacity quickly than poorer farmers against uncertainties (Feder et al, 1982). Foster and Rosenzweig (1986) find that the return to schooling in India rose when green revolution varieties were introduced and that educated farmers were more benefited than uneducated farmers. Farmer’s learning will probably concentrate on knowing the plant-insect varieties instead of how much insecticide needs to be used (de Janvry et al, 1999). The major issues will be what crops should be developed and how the poor farmers will have access to those crops.

  

Regulatory concerns in developing countries are growing more and more because pressures will be applied from both domestic and foreign sources; these will include the interest of plant breeders, agriculture input and commodity firms and a range of political and advocacy groups (Tripp, 1999). To take regulatory decisions about GMOs require high quality of technical information about environmental interactions. This information is costly to acquire and most developing countries do not have adequate resources for this purposes. External funding is required to support environmental studies, as well as for the broader concerns of biodiversity conservation (Tripp, 1999). Strict regulations in some of the industrialised countries on the release of GMOs or products might encourage some biotechnology industries to conduct their experiment in developing countries without government knowledge or approval, because of lack of regulation, technical information and public accountability (Serageldin and Collins, 1999). Therefore, regulatory authorities of those countries are increasingly facing the new challenges.

Promises of green revolution were to alleviate global hunger, increasing global carrying capacity with increased yields, increasing technological knowledge and reaching the materials to the rural farmers. Primary objective of green revolution was a successful one but it did not alleviate the global hunger. It is claimed that lessons have learned from green revolution experiences. It is believed that hunger is not caused by a shortage of food and cannot be eliminated by producing more foods. Introducing any new agricultural technology into a social system without addressing the social questions of access to and who gets the benefits from it is a fundamental question. Without a strategy of addressing these issues of powerlessness of the poor, the tragic result will be more food and yet more hunger. Dubious benefits to the poor and potential risks associated with the second green revolution unfortunately will not end the hunger.