Back to the Land: The New Green Revolution
Anyone walking through Prashant Thakare's freshly planted cotton field in the central Indian village of Takarakhede Shambhu could easily mistake a 65-ft.-wide (20 m) pool of murky water for, well, a pool of murky water. Yet that simple pond has transformed Thakare's 22-acre (9 hectare) farm and, indeed, his life.
Thakare, like nearly all the farmers in this arid region of Vidarbha in the state of Maharashtra, is dependent on India's annual monsoon to provide the water necessary to grow his cotton and soybeans. A failed monsoon meant disaster. Without the rain, the crops withered, and so did his primary source of income. Every year, all Thakare could do as the midyear planting season approached was wait and hope that the monsoon would deliver enough rain so he could support his family...
... With so much yield for so few bucks, it might seem surprising that Indian authorities hadn't dug Thakare a pond long before now. But small farmers like Thakare have been neglected for much of the past three decades — and not only in India. Throughout the developing world, agriculture was the also-ran of the global economy. Governments equated economic progress with steel mills and shoe factories. While urban centers thrived and city dwellers got rich, hundreds of millions of farmers remained mired in poverty. Agriculture in many developing nations stagnated.
Now the farm is back. Fears of food shortages, a rethinking of antipoverty priorities and the crushing recession are causing a dramatic shift in world economic policy in favor of greater support for agriculture. Farmers like Thakare are being showered with more aid and investment by governments and development agencies than they have in decades in a renewed global quest for food security and rural development. The effort is still in its early stages, and some promises made have yet to be translated into real results. Some programs already in place may prove to be flawed. But a new commitment to agriculture by the global community is clearly emerging. The latest G-8 summit of the world's largest economies, held in Italy in July, declared"there is an urgent need for decisive action to free humankind from hunger" and, citing the sector's perennial neglect, pledged $20 billion for agriculture."Since 2007, we have seen greater attention from world leaders on food security, in developed and developing countries alike," says Kostas Stamoulis, director of agricultural-development economics at the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) in Rome. The resources being committed to farming"is putting-your-money-where-your-mouth-is kind of money."
Seeds of Disaster
The world's farmers haven't felt such love since the 1970s. Then, as food prices spiked, there was real concern that the world was facing a Malthusian crisis in which the planet was simply unable to produce enough grain and meat for an expanding population. Governments across the developing world and international aid organizations plowed investment into agriculture in the 1960s and 1970s, while technological breakthroughs, like high-yield strains of important food crops, boosted production. The result was the Green Revolution. Food production exploded. In India, for example, grain output more than doubled between the late 1960s and the mid-1980s.
But the Green Revolution became a victim of its own success. Food prices plunged by some 60% (when adjusted for inflation) by the late 1980s from their peak in the mid-1970s. Policymakers and aid workers turned their attention to the poor's other pressing needs, such as health care and education. Farming got starved of resources and investment. In 1979, 18% of official development aid worldwide was directed at agriculture; by 2004, that amount sank to 3.5%."Agriculture lost its glitter," says the FAO's Stamoulis."The world didn't think that food was a major issue. There was plenty of food, at low prices."...
Read entire article at Time (for the week of Oct 26th)
Thakare, like nearly all the farmers in this arid region of Vidarbha in the state of Maharashtra, is dependent on India's annual monsoon to provide the water necessary to grow his cotton and soybeans. A failed monsoon meant disaster. Without the rain, the crops withered, and so did his primary source of income. Every year, all Thakare could do as the midyear planting season approached was wait and hope that the monsoon would deliver enough rain so he could support his family...
... With so much yield for so few bucks, it might seem surprising that Indian authorities hadn't dug Thakare a pond long before now. But small farmers like Thakare have been neglected for much of the past three decades — and not only in India. Throughout the developing world, agriculture was the also-ran of the global economy. Governments equated economic progress with steel mills and shoe factories. While urban centers thrived and city dwellers got rich, hundreds of millions of farmers remained mired in poverty. Agriculture in many developing nations stagnated.
Now the farm is back. Fears of food shortages, a rethinking of antipoverty priorities and the crushing recession are causing a dramatic shift in world economic policy in favor of greater support for agriculture. Farmers like Thakare are being showered with more aid and investment by governments and development agencies than they have in decades in a renewed global quest for food security and rural development. The effort is still in its early stages, and some promises made have yet to be translated into real results. Some programs already in place may prove to be flawed. But a new commitment to agriculture by the global community is clearly emerging. The latest G-8 summit of the world's largest economies, held in Italy in July, declared"there is an urgent need for decisive action to free humankind from hunger" and, citing the sector's perennial neglect, pledged $20 billion for agriculture."Since 2007, we have seen greater attention from world leaders on food security, in developed and developing countries alike," says Kostas Stamoulis, director of agricultural-development economics at the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) in Rome. The resources being committed to farming"is putting-your-money-where-your-mouth-is kind of money."
Seeds of Disaster
The world's farmers haven't felt such love since the 1970s. Then, as food prices spiked, there was real concern that the world was facing a Malthusian crisis in which the planet was simply unable to produce enough grain and meat for an expanding population. Governments across the developing world and international aid organizations plowed investment into agriculture in the 1960s and 1970s, while technological breakthroughs, like high-yield strains of important food crops, boosted production. The result was the Green Revolution. Food production exploded. In India, for example, grain output more than doubled between the late 1960s and the mid-1980s.
But the Green Revolution became a victim of its own success. Food prices plunged by some 60% (when adjusted for inflation) by the late 1980s from their peak in the mid-1970s. Policymakers and aid workers turned their attention to the poor's other pressing needs, such as health care and education. Farming got starved of resources and investment. In 1979, 18% of official development aid worldwide was directed at agriculture; by 2004, that amount sank to 3.5%."Agriculture lost its glitter," says the FAO's Stamoulis."The world didn't think that food was a major issue. There was plenty of food, at low prices."...