The green revolution is the most important revolution you’ve never heard about.

Question

The green revolution is the most important revolution you’ve never heard about. Norman Borlaug is one of the greatest heroes you've never heard of. Borlaug bred wheat cultivars that were resilient, disease resistant, and had high yields. His techniques increased world grain production 250 fold, and he is credited with saving 200+ million people, mostly in India and Mexico. Better food crops brings greater yields and thus, greater population growth and greater environmental impacts. Discuss the pros and cons of the results of Borlaug's work and the green revolution.

Explanation / Answer

Pros and cons of green Borlaug's work and green revolution were

Pros:

The consequence of green revolution was that crops were now grown on a massive scale. This increased production was necessary since 1950's the population was rapidly increasing and also due to civil war in various developed countries during that time lead to conditions of hunger and famine.

Now most of the farming process becomes automated and now there is availablity of better equipments and tool which considerably reduces the manual labour.

Now the crops were more resistant to pesticides and herbicides thus making them healthier.

With increased production of crops there will be more job opportunities available in agricultural and industrial sectors.

With the green revolution the farmers can replant the same crop without requirement of fallowing of their land.

The farmers can grow any crop anywhere. Also they can grow multiple crops on same piece of land. Therfore, now the farming is becoming a profitable industry.

Cons:

The new tools and equipments are costly and are not affordable to the poor farmers

the modified plants have a tendency to produce sterile seeds every year thus farmers need to purchase the seed everywhere which increases the cost of farming

The green revolution has also developed the poisonous weeds and pests which are difficult to control. There is also concern about the GMO plants to cross polliante the other plants in the environment which can result in invasive species

Since green revolution is a costly initiative than the traditional farming so to increase the profit the farmers are growing more cash crops and thus leads to reduction is growth of staple crops

Since with green revolution the crops are replanted again and again which reduces the fertility of soil.

Monoculturing practice is the main problem in green revolution. This practice requires a large tract of land which also requires large amount of water and fertilizers and the farmers around the world are facing this problem.

Most of the equipment used in green revolution need burning of fossil fuels which eventually causing the global warming and increased pollution in the environment. Also use of petrochemical fertilizers require burning of fossil fuels and are unsustainable.

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