per unit area. As a consequence, there is a
narrow and broad interpretation of the tech-
nologies themselves. In the narrow sense, it
consists primarily of the adoption of the new
high-yielding varieties of wheat and rice and
associated technologies. In the broad sense it
includes not only this, but all other economic
changes, as well as the social and cultural
changes that either contributed to the techno-
logical and ecological changes or were derived
from them (Leaf, 1984, p. 23).
The Green Revolution as a set of new pro-
duction practices for the tropical or subtrop-
ical peasant or smallholder rested on the
development of Mendellian genetics, applied
plant breeding (led by the UK and the USA),
fertilizer (the petrochemical industry) and the
water development/irrigation technologies.
The coordination between the biochemical,
technological and social components em-
braced US philanthropic organizations, the
US State Department and Third World
governments. What began in the 1940s in
Mexico under the auspices of the US govern-
ment and the Rockefeller Foundation, focused
on improving wheat, has grown in half a cen-
tury to a massive multi-billion dollarnetwork
of international agricultural research centres
(the Consultative Group of International Agri-
cultural Research, CGIAR), administered by
the World Bank and dealing with virtually all
the majorfoodcomplexes. HYVs are now
grown worldwide – for example, 100 per cent
of rice in China and Korea, and 70 per cent in
India and the Philippines is miracle rice – and
there is no question that the ability of food
output to exceed population growth in the
Third World since 1950 has been a function
of theproductivitygains of the Green Revo-
lution (Lipton, 1989). But the Green Revolu-
tion, insofar as it is an example of applied
plant breeding, has of course a long history –
human history is synonymous with successive
Green Revolutions, associated with the
domesticationof plants, with the European
agricultural revolutionsin the eighteenth
century, the Chinese improved rice varieties of
ad1000 and so on – and is a process (still
ongoing) rather than an event (Rigg, 1989).
If the Green Revolution was facilitated by
new practices associated with plant breeding,
soil fertility science and hydrological dev-
elopment, the genesis was stimulated by the
activities of the Rockefeller Foundation in
conjunction with the Office of Special Oper-
ations of the US Government in Mexico dur-
ing the Second World War (Perkins, 1997).
Whatever the intentions of the early plant
breeders in Mexico, the combination of Mal-
thusians thinking about foodcrisesand the
Cold War atmosphere favouring nationalse-
curityand the threat of peasant insurgency
contributed mightily to the Green Revolution
project, and to its subsequent backing and
support by the Ford Foundation, USAID
and the major Western donors. In the first
phase of the Green Revolution, rice and
wheat were the primary crops and Mexico
and India its crucibles. The International
Rice Research Institute (IRRI) was founded
near Manila in 1960 and the Center for
Maize and Wheat Improvement (CIMMYT)
in Mexico in 1963. Today, there are 16 inter-
national agriculture research centres, focusing
on potatoes, germ plasm collection, agro-
forestry and tropical agriculture.
The research programme for HYVs brought
together in university-type settings trans-
national congeries of scientists, which consti-
tuted sophisticated breeding programs. The
IRRI, for example, built upon rice-breeding
expertise and dwarf varieties from Taiwan
and Japan to produce, through hybridization,
new dwarf HYVs that were resistant to lodg-
ing, were sensitive to nitrogen fertilizers and
that could be double or triple cropped through
a reduction in the growing period. Its first
success – IR-8 – was released in 1966 and
spread rapidly through South and South East
Asia. Thediffusionof the seeds and mechan-
ical packages (pump sets, small tractors)
involved strongstateintervention, typically
involving new subsidies, credit, extension
services, irrigation development and national
breeding programmes. By the mid-1980s,
more than half of the total rice in the area
of the Third World was planted in HYVs
(Lipton, 1989).
There has been considerable disagreement
over the productivity increases attributable to
HYVs. In one of the best-known and earliest
reviews by UNRISD/UNDP, Griffin (1974)
painted a bleak picture of the effects of HYVs
between 1970 and 1974, arguing that there
had been no Green Revolution in rice. A sub-
sequent assessment by Michael Lipton (1989)
in the mid-1980s showed that the output
increases in wheat and maize were indeed
dramatic (at least 4 per cent per year) and
that those in rice were slower but no less sub-
stantial overall. Lipton pointed, however,
to regional dilemmas –africawas neglected
on balance – and to the problems of equity
within countries, which reflected disparities
in irrigation development and water control
investment. In the first phase of the GreenGregory / The Dictionary of Human Geography 9781405132879_4_G Final Proof page 318 2.4.2009 6:30pmGREEN REVOLUTION