The
term “Green Revolution” is used for big increases in wheat and rice yields in
developing countries from the 1960s brought about by new high-yielding crop
strains combined with the use of fertilizers and agricultural chemicals. It was
launched in Asia in 1960 at the International Rice Research Institute in the
Philippines; rice is the staple food for people living in Southeast Asia.
Southeast Asia discussed herein consists of Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos,
Malaysia, Myanmar (Burma), the Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam but excludes
Brunei and Singapore. The Green Revolution in Southeast Asia was a technology
package comprising improved high-yielding varieties of rice, irrigation or
controlled water supply, improved moisture utilization, fertilizers and
pesticides, and associated management skills. Some two decades later, several
Southeast Asian countries adopted more of a market approach to rural finance.
At the same time, local governments improved rural infrastructures such as
transportation, telecommunication, postal, irrigation, and electrical systems
to assist large and small farmers previously beyond the reach of technological
innovations. The utilization of this technology package in suitable
socioeconomic environments has resulted in greatly increased yields and incomes
for many farmers in Southeast Asia.
Results
The
beneficiaries of the Green Revolution have been the farmers and the consumers.
Southeast Asia’s population increased by 68.2 percent, or 139.3 million people,
between 1970 and 1995. Cereal production in Southeast Asia more than doubled
from 33.8 million metric tons to 73.6, and cereal yield increased from 1,352 to
2,237 metric tons per hectare. Food availability (measured as calories
available per person per day) increased by 34 percent. Rural incomes (measured
as per capita gross domestic product) increased by 193 percent, driven
increasingly by urban-industrial growth from the 1980s onwards and by growth in
the rural nonfarm economy. Using a benchmark of the international poverty line
of US$1 per day (purchasing power parity, 1985 dollars), the absolute number of
poor declined by 41.4 percent from 108 million in 1975 to 40 million in 1995.
Real
food prices in Southeast Asia, indeed throughout the world, have steadily
declined over the last thirty years as a result of the Green Revolution. Lower
real food prices benefit the poor relatively more than they do the rich, since
the poor spend a larger portion of their available income on food. Stationary
threshers, tube wells, and flour mills have all reduced the drudgery of women.
Recent studies of the impacts of the Green Revolution also suggest that it
extended beyond the rice producers of Southeast Asia to include other crops and
other socioeconomic settings.
The
Green Revolution clearly averted a major food crisis in Southeast Asia.
Indonesia attained rice self-sufficiency in 1984. Several Southeast Asian
countries<M>Indonesia (pre-1997 crisis) and Vietnam, for example - went
from running food deficits in the 1960s to being surplus producers in the late
1980s, despite increasing population. The Green Revolution was the foundation
for startling economic growth in Southeast Asia. Since Green Revolution
technologies boosted production using less labor without requiring a lot of
capital, agricultural labor could easily flow to other sectors. As economies
ceased to need to import food, foreign exchange was freed up for other uses.
Higher incomes from agriculture caused domestic markets to expand. Indonesia,
with the most rapid agricultural growth, has had the most rapid reduction in
total poverty. In the Philippines, agricultural growth has been highly
inequitable due mainly to the skewed distribution of land holdings and poor
rural infrastructure. Overall performance in poverty reduction there has been
disappointing because of the unequal distribution of wealth.
The
use of high levels of inputs and the achievement of relatively high rice yield
in Southeast Asia have made it more difficult to sustain the same rate of yield
gains, as yields approach the economic optimum yield levels. Indeed, increased
intensity of land use has led to increasing input requirements in order to
sustain current yield gains. Environmental pressures are increasing as existing
land and water resources come under threat from rapid urbanization, which
increasingly withdraws land from agricultural production and create pressure
for reallocation of water now used in agriculture.
Furthermore, the Green Revolution technologies were
not without their problems. The necessity of using large amounts of
agrochemical-based pest and weed control in some crops has raised environmental
concerns as well as concern about human health. The chemicals applied as
fertilizer and as pest and weed control can pollute rivers and lakes through
runoff, and can pollute groundwater through leaching.
The land is increasingly unable to support the
burden of intensive agriculture. Intensive farming practices have virtually
mined nutrients from the soil. When fertilizers are added to a crop, a plant
absorbs not only the extra nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium from the
fertilizer, but also proportionately increased levels of micronutrients from
the soil, including zinc, iron, and copper. Over time, the soil becomes
deficient in these micronutrients. Their lack, in turn, inhibits a plant’s
capacity to absorb nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium. Consequently, crop
yields are declining alarmingly. Many farmers are heavily in debt from their
investments in new equipment and reliance on chemicals, and rural unemployment
is increasing. These are ominous signs of a deteriorating farm economy.
The
move to a higher-input environment naturally favored those farmers who had
access to capital and skills. They strengthened their roles in society,
sometimes at the expense of less well-endowed groups. Many studies have claimed
gender bias in the development of the Green Revolution. The established roles
of women in the farming systems were challenged by the new technology and the
new economic structures, as work performed by women was now handled by
machines.
A
limitation of the Green Revolution has been its inability to have much direct
influence on rain-fed farming systems, whose production may adversely affected
by droughts. As a result, income disparities between irrigated and rain-fed
villages and regions have worsened and many rain-fed regions have barely
benefited. The prospects for significant technological advances in rain-fed
areas are hampered by limited and uncertain rains that often make water a
critical constraint in plant growth, and by the diversity of local growing
conditions that limits the geographic applicability of improved technologies.
For
Indonesian rice farmers, the high costs of high-yielding rice varieties and the
chemical nutrients and fertilizers are driving a return to organic farming
using organic seeds, minimal fertilizer, and no pesticides. Across Indonesia,
about a dozen nongovernmental organizations are seeking to popularize organic
farming methods as a sustainable, profitable, and environmentally safe
alternative to fertilizers and pesticides.
The Future
In the
twenty-first century, the world faces the prospect of a new and complex food
crisis that will require better ways of ensuring that the hungry and the malnourished
will be able to meet their food needs. To tackle this enormous challenge, a new
Green Revolution must be launched that will protect the environment and boost
agricultural output. Future agricultural growth will continue to be driven by
improvements in crop productivity based on genetic manipulation of plants, and
biotechnology will eventually accelerate this process, though genetically
modified crop strains have foes in Asia, just as they do in Europe. The need
for continuing and aggressive research in all related areas and disciplines is
self-evident. Today’s farmer requires far more knowledge in order to make
environmentally appropriate decisions and to cut production costs. Information
resources will need to substitute, in the future, for the currently
all-too-frequent excessive use of physical resources.
Kog Yue Choong
See also Agriculture<M>Southeast
Asia; Green Revolution<M>South Asia; Rice and Rice Agriculture; Terrace
Irrigation
Further Reading
Blackman, A. (2000). Obstacles
to a doubly green revolution. Washington, DC: Resources for the Future.
Djalal, D. (2000). Old ways
return to favor. Far Eastern Economic Review 163, 21 (25 May).
Food and Agriculture
Organization (FAO).(n.d.). Lessons from the Green Revolution: Towards a new
Green Revolution. Retrieved April 23, 2001, from: http://www.fao.org/wfs/final/e/volume2/t06-e.htm
Rosegrant, M. W., & Hazell, B. R. (2000). Transforming the rural Asian economy: The unfinished revolution<M>Summary. In Rural Asia: Beyond the Green Revolution. Manila, Philippines: Oxford University Press, 97<N>115.