Why did the “Green Revolution” happen? Why was it necessary for an intensification of agriculture?
PETER: Demographic transition, which is when things like basic nutrition and medical care and public health interventions hit a country where they haven’t been. So you get a quick increase in the survival rate, particularly infant survival and child survival; you get an increase in the number of kids that each family has. The death rate’s gone down. The birth rate goes up. And population grows very quickly. That happened to a good deal of the world with the end of colonialism after World War Two. Population zoomed up and began to outpace food production. So the Green Revolution was a way to use plant breeding, to change the architecture of particularly wheat and rice, to a lesser extent maize, but particularly wheat and rice, by putting in more grain, less straw, better light penetration of a shorter stalk, much better conversion of light energy through photosynthesis into plant tissue, and by being non-photo period sensitive so that you could grow it starting any day of the year. In m
