Timeline of the Green Revolution
The spread of high-yielding grain varieties, from the 1943 Mexican Agricultural Program and Norman Borlaug's wheat through IR8 rice, Asian adoption and CGIAR to later criticism and African successor efforts up to 2022.
- Category
- Agriculture & Food
- Events
- 25 events 1943 – 2022
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- by claude-opus-5-5
1943: Mexico and the Rockefeller Foundation launch crop research
Prompted by US Vice President-elect Henry A. Wallace's visit in 1940 and a 1941 survey by Elvin Stakman, Richard Bradfield and Paul Mangelsdorf, Mexico's agriculture ministry and the Rockefeller Foundation created the Office of Special Studies under J. George Harrar to improve maize, wheat and beans. Mexico then imported more than half its wheat. The program, known in English as the Mexican Agricultural Program, ran until 1965.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Maize_and_Wheat_Improvement_Center#Origins1945: Borlaug begins shuttle breeding wheat in Mexico
Norman Borlaug, a plant pathologist who joined the program in 1944, began growing two generations of wheat a year: one near sea level in Sonora as autumn days shortened, the next in the central highlands as summer days lengthened. The method produced disease-resistant varieties insensitive to day length, and by Borlaug's account Mexico became self-sufficient in wheat in 1956.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Borlaug#Double_harvest_season1953: Vogel shares Norin 10 dwarf wheat with Borlaug
Norin 10, a short-strawed wheat bred by Gonjiro Inazuka in Iwate Prefecture, Japan, and registered in 1935, was collected in 1946 by US agronomist S. Cecil Salmon. Orville Vogel, a US Department of Agriculture breeder at Washington State, crossed it with the American variety Brevor and shared seed with Borlaug, who began crossing its dwarfing genes into Mexican wheats in 1954 so that heavily fertilized plants would not fall over, or lodge.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orville_Vogel1960: International Rice Research Institute founded in the Philippines
The Ford and Rockefeller foundations, with the Philippine government, established the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) at Los Baños, beside the University of the Philippines College of Agriculture, with Robert F. Chandler Jr. as its first director. Its first decade concentrated on raising the yield potential of irrigated rice by breeding shorter, sturdier, fertilizer-responsive plants.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Rice_Research_Institute1962: Mexico releases semi-dwarf wheats Pitic 62 and Penjamo 62
Pitic 62 and Penjamo 62 combined Norin 10 dwarfing genes with the disease resistance and day-length insensitivity of Norman Borlaug's Mexican wheat lines. Their short, stiff stems supported heavier grain heads without collapsing under high fertilizer applications. These varieties and their successors supplied breeding material for the expansion of high-yielding wheat in Asia.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norin_10_wheat1963: Dwarf Mexican wheats go on trial in South Asia
After M. S. Swaminathan, a wheat breeder at the Indian Agricultural Research Institute, sought Borlaug's help in 1962, the Rockefeller Foundation sent Borlaug and Robert Glenn Anderson to tour India in March, and field trials of dwarf Mexican wheats began in India and Pakistan that year. In 1964 Swaminathan planted 150 demonstration plots to win over hesitant farmers.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M._S._Swaminathan1965 – 1967: India and Pakistan import Mexican wheat seed
Small shipments of Lerma Rojo 64 and Sonora 64 seed, delayed on the way and at sea when the India–Pakistan war broke out, still gave promising results on farms. India then bought 18,000 metric tons in 1966, amid severe droughts, and Pakistan 42,000 metric tons in 1967. Borlaug called it the first time such huge quantities of seed had been imported from distant lands and grown successfully.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Borlaug#Expansion_to_South_Asia:_the_Green_Revolution1966: CIMMYT is established as an international research center
The International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT, from its Spanish name), which grew out of the Office of Special Studies and had used the name inside Mexico's agriculture ministry since 1963, was reorganized as an autonomous nonprofit institute funded by the Ford and Rockefeller foundations and the Mexican government. Borlaug led its wheat research.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Maize_and_Wheat_Improvement_Center1966: IRRI releases IR8, its first rice variety
On November 28 the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) released IR8, selected by Henry Beachell from a 1962 cross made by Peter Jennings's team between Peta, a tall Indonesian rice, and Dee-geo-woo-gen, a Taiwanese dwarf whose short-stature gene Taiwan had used in Taichung Native 1 in 1956. The press called IR8 "miracle rice"; varieties with better grain quality and pest resistance followed in 1969.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IR81968: Gaud coins the term "Green Revolution"
In a March 8 speech to the Society for International Development in Washington, William S. Gaud, administrator of the US Agency for International Development (USAID), described the spread of new wheat and rice technology across Asia as a "Green Revolution", contrasting it with the Soviets' violent "Red Revolution" and the "White Revolution" of the Shah of Iran.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Revolution#Use_of_the_term1968: India and Pakistan harvest record wheat crops
By Borlaug's figures, Pakistan's wheat output rose from 4.6 million metric tons in 1965 to 6.7 million, making West Pakistan self-sufficient in wheat for the first time, and India's from a record 12.3 million metric tons in 1964 – 1965 to 16.5 million, reaching 20 million by 1970. Gains concentrated in irrigated areas such as Punjab, Haryana and western Uttar Pradesh, and grain storage ran short.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Revolution_in_India1970: Borlaug wins the Nobel Peace Prize
The Norwegian Nobel Committee honored Norman Borlaug "for having given a well-founded hope – the green revolution". In his Nobel lecture on December 11 he said the green revolution had won "a temporary success" and given humanity "a breathing space", but warned that unless population growth was curbed its success would be "ephemeral".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1970_Nobel_Peace_Prize1970s: Critics question who gains from the new seeds
Studies such as Francine Frankel's "India's Green Revolution: Economic Gains and Political Costs" (1971) and Keith Griffin's "The Political Economy of Agrarian Change" (1974) argued that larger farmers with irrigation, credit and secure land captured most early gains, widening rural inequality. Later reviews found that rain-fed regions benefited slowest, while cheaper food and higher rural wages spread some gains to the poor.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Revolution1971: CGIAR founded to fund international farm research
Set up in May at the World Bank, with the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the UN Development Programme as co-sponsors, the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) initially supported four centers: the maize-and-wheat and rice institutes in Mexico and the Philippines and tropical-agriculture institutes in Colombia and Nigeria. In the 1970s it added centers for crops such as sorghum, millets, chickpeas and potatoes.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CGIAR1973: Philippines launches the Masagana 99 rice program
After natural disasters and pest outbreaks cut the rice supply in 1972, Ferdinand Marcos's government launched Masagana 99, aiming to raise yields from about 40 to 99 sacks (cavans) of unmilled rice per hectare with high-yielding varieties, fertilizer, pesticides and subsidized credit without collateral. The country was reported self-sufficient in rice in 1975 – 1976, but loan repayment collapsed, many rural banks were left with bad debts, and the program was discontinued in 1984.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masagana_991974: CGIAR creates a board to conserve crop diversity
As high-yielding varieties replaced farmers' traditional landraces, concern grew over the loss of crop genetic diversity. The Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) set up the International Board for Plant Genetic Resources (IBPGR), with its secretariat at the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), to organize emergency collecting missions and gene banks; it later became Bioversity International.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bioversity_International1976: China begins commercial planting of hybrid rice
Chinese teams led by Yuan Longping developed a practical hybrid-rice breeding system using a male-sterile wild plant found on Hainan Island in 1970. Hybrid rice entered wide commercial production and raised yields above comparable inbred varieties. Maintaining the hybrid advantage generally required fresh seed each season; China's program developed independently of the foundation-backed research centers.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hybrid_rice1976: IRRI releases the pest-resistant rice IR36
Bred by Gurdev Khush's team from crosses drawing on 13 parent varieties from six countries, IR36 matured in about 105 days, against 130 for IR8, and resisted nine pests. It became one of the world's most widely grown crop varieties, on more than 10 million hectares in 1982, when the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) reported new brown planthopper biotypes damaging it in the Philippines and Indonesia.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semi-dwarf_IR361986: Sasakawa Africa Association founded with Borlaug and Carter
After the Ethiopian famine of the mid-1980s, Ryōichi Sasakawa, chairman of the Japan Shipbuilding Industry Foundation (now the Nippon Foundation), founded the Sasakawa Africa Association with Norman Borlaug and former US President Jimmy Carter. By 2004 its Sasakawa-Global 2000 program had worked with agriculture ministries in 14 countries on demonstrations of improved seed and fertilizer, but that year Borlaug and Christopher Dowswell wrote that widespread productivity gains had not yet followed.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Borlaug#Production_in_Africa1986: Indonesia bans 57 insecticides from rice fields
After brown planthopper outbreaks, driven by broad-spectrum spraying that killed the pest's natural enemies, damaged much of Java's rice in late 1985, President Suharto's Presidential Decree 3/86 banned 57 insecticide brands on rice, and pesticide subsidies were phased out. A national integrated pest management program, training farmers in field schools backed by the Food and Agriculture Organization, followed from 1989.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrated_pest_management#Southeast_Asia2000: First New Rice for Africa varieties released
From 1992 a team led by Sierra Leonean breeder Monty Jones at the West Africa Rice Development Association, now AfricaRice, crossed Asian rice with African rice, Oryza glaberrima, using embryo rescue and anther culture. The first NERICA (New Rice for Africa) varieties were released in Côte d'Ivoire, and Jones shared the 2004 World Food Prize with Yuan Longping. AfricaRice put the NERICA area at about 1.4 million hectares in 2013, though a study in Uganda found that half the farmers who took it up in 2004 had stopped within two years.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Rice_for_Africa2005: Malawi subsidizes fertilizer and seed for smallholders
After a failed maize harvest left almost five million Malawians needing food aid, President Bingu wa Mutharika's government, despite donor skepticism, issued coupons for subsidized fertilizer and maize seed. Aided by better rains, maize output doubled in 2006 and almost tripled in 2007, according to a 2009 analysis, and Malawi exported maize; later studies questioned the program's cost and sustainability.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_security_in_Malawi#Response_and_relief_efforts2006: Gates and Rockefeller foundations found AGRA
On September 12 the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation announced the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), starting with $150 million for African seed systems: crop breeding, training scientists, and networks of seed companies and agro-dealers. Kofi Annan, who as UN Secretary-General had called in 2004 for "a uniquely African green revolution", became its first chairman.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alliance_for_a_Green_Revolution_in_Africa2009: Satellites reveal groundwater loss in northwest India
Using the US–German Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) satellites, Matthew Rodell, Isabella Velicogna and James Famiglietti estimated that Rajasthan, Punjab and Haryana, including Delhi, lost about 109 cubic kilometers of groundwater from 2002 to 2008, which they attributed mainly to pumping for irrigation. Punjab, where India's Green Revolution began, also passed a law that year barring rice transplanting before June 10 to save water.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_scarcity_in_India#Groundwater_extraction_and_irrigation2022: AGRA launches a revised agricultural strategy
The Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa announced a five-year strategy and new branding as AGRA. An independent evaluation by Mathematica had found mixed results and limited evidence of improved incomes and food security for the farmers targeted by its previous strategy. The new strategy expanded work on climate adaptation, markets and nutrition.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alliance_for_a_Green_Revolution_in_Africa#Critiques