by Tom Standage
In the three decades after 1970, the new high-yield dwarf varieties of wheat and rice swiftly displaced traditional varieties across the developing world. By 2000, the new seed varieties accounted for 86 percent of the cultivated area of wheat in Asia, 90 percent in Latin America, and 66 percent in the Middle East and Africa. Similarly, the new varieties of rice accounted for 74 percent of the rice-producing area across Asia in 2000, and 100 percent in China, the world’s largest rice producer. As well as offering increased yields—provided appropriate fertilizers and irrigation were available—they also increased cereal production in other, indirect ways. Farmers switched to wheat and rice from other crops, and farmers who were already growing wheat and rice could, in some cases, grow more than one crop a year by switching to new varieties. All this increased cereal production and meant that the food supply grew faster than the population.
Asia’s population increased by 60 percent between 1970 and 1995, but cereal production in the region over the same period more than doubled. Overall, nitrogen fertilizer has supported around four billion people born in the century since Haber’s demonstration in 1909. By 2008, nitrogen fertilizer was responsible for feeding 48 percent of the world’s population. Haber-Bosch nitrogen sustains more than three billion people, nearly half of humanity. They are the offspring of the green revolution.
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PARADOXES OF PLENTY
Accelerated agricultural progress is the best safety net against hunger and poverty, because in most developing countries over 70 percent of the population depend on agriculture for their livelihood.
—M. S. SWAMINATHAN, 2004
THE RESURGENCE OF ASIA
To appreciate the impact of the green revolution, it helps to take a long-term view of world economic activity. The big picture is that for most of human history, most people were poor. Before 1700, average per-capita income was low, roughly constant over time, and varied very little between countries. Of course, some people in each country were fabulously rich. But the average income was remarkably consistent: One calculation puts it at the equivalent of five hundred dollars per annum (measured in 1990 dollars) for most of the world for the past two millennia. Today, however, there are wide variations between countries. Britain was the first to experience a “growth takeoff” when it began the process of industrialization in the eighteenth century. It was soon followed by other western European nations and Europe’s offshoots (the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand). By 1900, their average per-capita income was ten times higher than that in Asia or Africa. Some countries are now rich, and others poor, because industrialization took place in the rich countries first; the poor countries are those in which it took place much later, or has not happened at all. So why does industrialization start at different times and proceed at different rates? It is one of the most fundamental questions in developmental economics.
The answer has a lot to do with agricultural productivity. Poor countries cannot embark on economic development until they can meet their subsistence needs. They find themselves trapped in what economists have called a state of “high food drain” in which most of the population is tied down in inefficient agricultural production. Normally, when a particular activity is inefficient, people switch to other things. But agriculture is a special case: Food is vital, so people have no choice but to stick with farming, even when productivity is low. Indeed, low productivity means that more resources must be devoted to agriculture in order to maintain production. This is sometimes called the “food problem.” To escape from this trap, a country must experience an improvement in agricultural productivity, so that the food supply expands more quickly than the population. This then allows some of the population to switch to higher-value industrial activities without worrying about where their food is going to come from. The proportion of the population engaged in agriculture shrinks as agricultural productivity improves, and industrialization is under way. This is what happened in Britain in the eighteenth century, as a series of improvements in agriculture liberated workers from the land and allowed industry to take root. Industrial goods could then be traded for food imports, further accelerating the switch from agriculture to industry. For all this to happen, the right infrastructure and market conditions must be in place. But a surge in agricultural productivity is essential to kick-start the process; no country has been able to industrialize without one. (The two exceptions are Singapore and Hong Kong, city-states that did not have significant agricultural sectors in the first place.)
Another notable feature of world economic history is that for most of human history, Asia was the wealthiest region on earth. In 1 A.D. it is estimated that Asia accounted for 75 percent of world economic output. This is not because people in Asia were individually richer; average per-capita income was, after all, remarkably consistent from one part of the world to another. It is because there were more people in Asia than in other regions, in large part because rice agriculture supports higher population densities. But Asia’s share of world economic output began to decline with the rise of the western European economies in the second millennium A.D. By 1700, western Europe accounted for more than 20 percent of world output, and Asia’s share had fallen below 60 percent. The crossover came in the late nineteenth century, as European nations industrialized and grew wealthier, and kept much of Asia under their colonial thumbs. By around 1870, Europe’s share of world output had risen to 35 percent, and Asia’s share had declined to approximately the same level, despite its much larger population. The rapid industrialization of the United States meant that by 1950, the United States and western Europe each accounted for around 25 percent of world output, and Asia’s share (excluding Japan) had fallen to 15 percent.
But in the final quarter of the twentieth century something remarkable happened, and the tables were turned. Rapid growth in several Asian countries pushed the region’s share of world output back up to 30 percent, ahead of western Europe or the United States. Economic output per capita more than doubled between 1978 and 2000 in India, and it increased nearly fivefold in China. Asia is now home to the world’s fastest-growing economies and has reclaimed its historical position as the wealthiest region, measured by share of world output. Its rapid growth in the past few years—sometimes referred to as Asia’s economic miracle—has created wealth more rapidly than at any time in history, and has lifted hundreds of millions of people out of poverty. Many observers now expect China’s economy to surpass that of the United States in size by 2035, making China the world’s leading economic power. Just as the twentieth century was dominated by the rise of the United States, the twenty-first looks set to be the Asian century, dominated by the rise of China. But this is arguably just a return to the ancient status quo, after a brief interlude in which European powers and their colonial offshoots briefly stole the limelight.
The resurgence of Asia has many causes, but it would not have been possible without the dramatic increase in agricultural productivity triggered by the green revolution. Between 1970 and 1995, cereal production in Asia doubled, the number of available calories per person increased by 30 percent, and the prices of wheat and rice fell. The immediate impact of agricultural progress is to reduce poverty, for the simple reason that the poor are most likely to work in agriculture, and food accounts for the majority of their household spending. Sure enough, the proportion of Asia’s population living in poverty fell from around 50 percent in 1975 to 25 percent in 1995. The absolute number of Asians in poverty also declined, from 1.15 billion in 1975 to 825 million in 1995, even though the population increased by 60 percent. Agricultural progress also put Asia on the path toward economic development and industrialization.
For growth in agricultural productivity to translate into broader economic growth and industrialization, however, several other things need to happen. Farmers must have incentives to increase production; there must be infrastructure in place to transport seeds and chemicals onto farms, and food off them; and there must be adequate acces
s to credit to enable farmers to purchase seeds, fertilizer, tractors, and so forth. Agricultural progress can trigger sudden economic growth, but how quickly it happens depends crucially on nonagricultural reforms being introduced at the same time. Consider the examples of China and India.
After the failure of the Great Leap Forward, reformers within the Chinese government took a more conventional approach to increasing agricultural output, and arranged to buy five medium-size ammonia plants from Britain and the Netherlands between 1963 and 1965. Once they were up and running, these plants supplied 25 percent of the nitrogen applied to China’s fields. But the upheaval of the Cultural Revolution in the mid-1960s meant that by 1972, per-capita food output was still lower than it had been in the 1950s, and rapid population growth meant the amount of agricultural land available per person was shrinking fast. The only option was to increase yields. U.S. president Richard Nixon visited China in 1972, opening up trade between the two countries, and the first deal signed was an order for thirteen of America’s largest and most modern fertilizer plants—the biggest purchase of its kind in history. Within a few years China had overtaken the United States to become the world’s leading consumer of fertilizer, and then became the biggest producer. China also quickly adopted the new high-yield dwarf varieties of wheat and rice.
But policy reforms were needed, too. After Mao’s death in 1976, reformers led by Deng Xiaoping concluded that agriculture was the bottleneck preventing further economic progress. They introduced a “two-tier” system in which households were allocated land and could decide what to cultivate on it. Provided they met a state quota of around 15 to 20 percent of their output, they could sell the rest and keep the proceeds. This provided farmers with incentives to increase production, and it proved very successful in the areas where it was first tested, so that it was introduced throughout China between 1979 and 1984. The targets and quotas were gradually removed, and this approach was then adopted as a model for the rest of the Chinese economy, in which free enterprise was allowed alongside the state sector, and quickly outgrew it. As agriculture became more productive, rural workers were able to move into other areas, starting with food processing and distribution, and gradually expanding into other industries and services. By the mid-1990s, rural “town and village enterprises,” almost none of which existed in 1978, accounted for 25 percent of the Chinese economy. These firms began to put pressure on state-run companies in the cities, which were less competitive. This in turn prompted broader economic reforms, the establishment of special economic zones for industrial activity, efforts to attract foreign investment, and so on—all of which fueled further economic growth. The result was an astonishing reduction in poverty, from 33 percent of the population in 1978 to 3 percent in 2001.
India was slower to introduce the policy reforms needed to allow improvements in agricultural productivity to translate into broader economic growth. Instead, India’s main concern was agricultural self-sufficiency, and to this end the agricultural sector was tightly regulated and controlled by the government, with price controls, restrictions on the movement of agricultural goods within the country, and barriers that served to discourage foreign trade. With the adoption of green-revolution technology and investment in infrastructure for irrigation, agricultural output expanded, farmers’ incomes rose, and nonagricultural employment increased. Falling food prices benefited the poor more broadly, so that the percentage of the rural population in poverty fell from 64 percent in 1967 to 34 percent by 1986. In 1986 the wheat harvest was forty-seven million tons, half of which was set aside as a reserve. The following year, when the monsoon failed, leading to the worst drought of the century, India was able to feed itself without loss of life, and without relying on outside aid.
This was a clear demonstration that India had achieved its goal of self-sufficiency in food. Liberalization of the manufacturing sector began in 1991, and India entered a period of rapid growth. The proportion of the population in poverty declined from 55 percent in 1973 to 26 percent in 2000. Some forecasters expect India to become the world’s third-largest economy, after China and the United States, by 2035. But India has been less successful than China in promoting the creation of rural jobs outside agriculture, the crucial step that enables the poor to participate in wider economic growth. Food production, distribution, and retailing are still highly regulated. The proportion of the population involved in agriculture remains high, and there is widespread concern about inequality. The green revolution set the stage for India’s rapid development, but further reforms are needed if the benefits are to be more widely distributed.
THE GHOST OF MALTHUS
A second long-term consequence of the green revolution has been its impact on global demographics—the size and structure of the population. Once again, it makes sense to take a historical step back. In 3000 B.C., as the first civilizations were emerging, the world population was a mere ten million or so, or roughly the population of London today. By 500 B.C., as Greece entered its Golden Age, the world population had increased to one hundred million. It was not until 1825, some ten thousand years after the dawn of agriculture, that the human population first reached one billion. It took another century to reach two billion, in 1925; and a mere thirty-five years to reach three billion, in 1960. The rapid growth of the world population was likened at the time to an explosion, and led to dire predictions of imminent famine. But the expansion in the food supply made possible by the green revolution meant that the population continued to climb, reaching four billion in 1975, five billion in 1986, and six billion in 1999. The fifth billion was added in a mere eleven years; the sixth billion in a further thirteen. The population is expected to reach seven billion in 2012, after a further thirteen years, according to the United States Census Bureau. In retrospect, then, it is clear that the population-growth rate has now started to slow.
Does population growth drive food production, or vice versa? Demographers have argued it both ways. A burgeoning population creates incentives to find new ways to increase the food supply; but greater availability of food also means that women are more fertile, and children are healthier and more likely to survive. So there is no simple answer. But history clearly shows that in cases where the greater availability of food enables a country to industrialize, there is a population boom, followed by a fall in the population-growth rate as people become wealthier—a phenomenon called “demographic transition.”
In a preindustrial society, it makes sense to have as many children as possible. Many of them will not survive, due to disease or malnutrition. But once those that do survive are old enough to work in the fields, they can produce more food than they consume, so the household will benefit overall (provided that availability of labor is the main constraint on agricultural production). Having lots of children also provides security in old age, when parents expect to be looked after by their offspring. In such preindustrial societies, both birth rates and death rates are very high, and the population grows slowly. This was the situation for most of human history.
The advent of new farming techniques, crops, and tools that boost food output then move the society into a second phase in which the population grows quickly. This is what happened in western Europe starting in the eighteenth century, following the introduction of maize and potatoes from the New World and the spread of new farming practices. In this phase, the birth rate remains high but the death rate falls, resulting in a population boom. At the same time, greater agricultural productivity means that a smaller proportion of the population is needed in farming, opening the way to urbanization and industrialization.
This in turn seems to cause people to reassess their attitude to having children: Wealth, it seems, is a powerful contraceptive. The decline in infant mortality means parents in rural areas do not need to have so many children in order to be sure of having enough people to work in the fields, or to look after them in old age. In urban areas, meanwhile, parents may take the view that it makes sense to have a smaller num
ber of children, given the cost of housing, clothing, and educating them. This is sometimes characterized as a switch from emphasizing child “quantity” to child “quality.” In addition, as female literacy improves and women enter the workforce, they may delay marriage and change their attitude toward childbearing. And governments in industrializing countries generally introduce reforms banning child labor and making education compulsory, which means that children are a drain on household resources until they reach working age. The result is that the birth rate falls, and the population stabilizes. This pattern can be clearly seen in Western nations, which were the first to industrialize. In some European countries the fertility rate (the average number of births per woman) has now fallen below the replacement rate. Most developing countries, meanwhile, are now in the midst of their demographic transition.
Of course, the reality is more complicated than this simple model suggests, due to other factors such as the effects of migration, the impact of HIV/AIDS in Africa, and China’s one-child policy, introduced in 1980. But having initially sustained a population boom, the green revolution is now tipping many countries, and consequently the world as a whole, into demographic transition. According to forecasts published by the United Nations in 2007, the world population is expected to reach eight billion around 2025, and to peak at 9.2 billion in 2075, after which it will decline.