302 Agricultural Revolutions and Change
white grains rather than the reddish grains of the new varieties, but this problem
was soon solved by breeding for white grain colour.^28 The grain of the first IRRI
rices, such as IR8, was also rejected because it tended to harden excessively after
cooking and farmers received a lower price than for the traditional grains. Quality
improved with later varieties, but many farmers continued to prefer the traditional
taste. In Indonesia the growing of traditional rice varieties was prohibited, a ban
sometimes enforced by the destruction of crops in the fields. Farmers responded by
cultivating the traditional rices in their home gardens or on the margins of fields
growing the new varieties.
Other problems were more persistent and less amenable to simple solutions.
They often required changes in government policies and the creation of new agen-
cies. Inevitably the solutions created yet further problems. An example was the
credit needs of the new technology. Adoption of the high-yielding packages was
expensive: in Bangladesh the cost of the necessary inputs was 60 per cent more
than for the traditional varieties. Small, subsistence farmers, often tenants or share-
croppers, could only afford the new packages if they borrowed from local money-
lenders, invariably at high rates of interest. In the Philippines, where the majority
of farmers are tenants, cash was borrowed from the landlords at rates of 60–90 per
cent per annum, often producing a permanent state of indebtedness. The govern-
ment response was to set up an Agricultural Guarantee Loan Fund, established at
the Central Bank. This, in turn, supported numerous private rural banks which
loaned without collateral and at reasonable interest rates. It was an important fac-
tor in determining the very rapid uptake of the new varieties in the Philippines.
However, there were drawbacks. Under the traditional feudal system, the ten-
ants provided personal services for the landlord, gathering fuel or lending a hand
Source: M. Lipton and R. Longhurst, 1989, New Seeds and Poor People, London, Unwin
Hyman
Figure 13.8 Proportion of cereal lands under new Green Revolution or Chinese
varieties in the early 1980s