The Green Revolution in the Global South
280 pages, 6 x 9
18 B&W figures
Hardcover
Release Date:03 Mar 2020
ISBN:9780817320515
The Green Revolution in the Global South
Science, Politics, and Unintended Consequences
By R. Douglas Hurt; Foreword by Alan I Marcus
University of Alabama Press
A synthesis of the agricultural history of the Green Revolution
The Green Revolution was devised to increase agricultural production worldwide, particularly in the developing world. Agriculturalists employed anhydrous ammonia and other fertilizing agents, mechanical tilling, hybridized seeds, pesticides, herbicides, and a multitude of other techniques to increase yields and feed a mushrooming human population that would otherwise suffer starvation as the world’s food supply dwindled.
In The Green Revolution in the Global South: Science, Politics, and Unintended Consequences, R. Douglas Hurt demonstrates that the Green Revolution did not turn out as neatly as scientists predicted. When its methods and products were imported to places like Indonesia and Nigeria, or even replicated indigenously, the result was a tumultuous impact on a society’s functioning. A range of factors—including cultural practices, ethnic and religious barriers, cost and availability of new technologies, climate, rainfall and aridity, soil quality, the scale of landholdings, political policies and opportunism, the rise of industrial farms, civil unrest, indigenous diseases, and corruption—entered into the Green Revolution calculus, producing a series of unintended consequences that varied from place to place. As the Green Revolution played out over time, these consequences rippled throughout societies, affecting environments, economies, political structures, and countless human lives.
Analyzing change over time, almost decade by decade, Hurt shows that the Green Revolution was driven by the state as well as science. Rather than acknowledge the vast problems with the Green Revolution or explore other models, Hurt argues, scientists and political leaders doubled down and repeated the same missteps in the name of humanity and food security. In tracing the permutations of modern science’s impact on international agricultural systems, Hurt documents how, beyond increasing yields, the Green Revolution affected social orders, politics, and lifestyles in every place its methods were applied—usually far more than once.
The Green Revolution was devised to increase agricultural production worldwide, particularly in the developing world. Agriculturalists employed anhydrous ammonia and other fertilizing agents, mechanical tilling, hybridized seeds, pesticides, herbicides, and a multitude of other techniques to increase yields and feed a mushrooming human population that would otherwise suffer starvation as the world’s food supply dwindled.
In The Green Revolution in the Global South: Science, Politics, and Unintended Consequences, R. Douglas Hurt demonstrates that the Green Revolution did not turn out as neatly as scientists predicted. When its methods and products were imported to places like Indonesia and Nigeria, or even replicated indigenously, the result was a tumultuous impact on a society’s functioning. A range of factors—including cultural practices, ethnic and religious barriers, cost and availability of new technologies, climate, rainfall and aridity, soil quality, the scale of landholdings, political policies and opportunism, the rise of industrial farms, civil unrest, indigenous diseases, and corruption—entered into the Green Revolution calculus, producing a series of unintended consequences that varied from place to place. As the Green Revolution played out over time, these consequences rippled throughout societies, affecting environments, economies, political structures, and countless human lives.
Analyzing change over time, almost decade by decade, Hurt shows that the Green Revolution was driven by the state as well as science. Rather than acknowledge the vast problems with the Green Revolution or explore other models, Hurt argues, scientists and political leaders doubled down and repeated the same missteps in the name of humanity and food security. In tracing the permutations of modern science’s impact on international agricultural systems, Hurt documents how, beyond increasing yields, the Green Revolution affected social orders, politics, and lifestyles in every place its methods were applied—usually far more than once.
The book's insights have much to teach readers amidst ongoing efforts to enhance agricultural production through genetic modification. This volume will be of most interest to those focusing on environmental history and agriculture. Recommended.’
—CHOICE
‘This is an important book because it takes on a subject laden with emotion, ideology, myth, and distortion for more than half a century. It is crisply written, fast-paced and based upon thorough, carefully documented research and brings a fresh, balanced, much-needed, and much welcomed historical approach to the subject.’
—David Vaught, author of Cultivating California: Growers, Specialty Crops, and Labor, 1875–1920
The Green Revolution in the Global South is unusual is the author’s even-handed approach to the Green Revolution. He does not take sides but instead illuminates the respective positions of the Green Revolution’s advocates and critics. Hurt writes clearly and offers countless apt examples throughout.’
—Howard P. Segal, coauthor of Technology in America: A Brief History
R. Douglas Hurt is professor of history at Purdue University. He is author of Agriculture and the Confederacy: Policy, Productivity, and Power in the Civil War South; The Big Empty: The Great Plains in the Twentieth Century; and The Great Plains during World War II. He is former editor of Agricultural History, former president of the Agricultural History Society, Fellow of the Agricultural History Society, and Affiliate Fellow of the Center for Great Plains Studies at the University of Nebraska.
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