Green Revolution Pros and Cons

The Green-Revolution and its Pros and Cons Green revolution emerged in the 1960s era and it impacted the developing countries positively. 1960 was the era in which the green revolution played a vital role in the development of the agriculture sector of the underdeveloped economies. This was considered as optimism era but is started to give the result of optimist in 1970s. The new Technology was implemented on agriculture i.e., HYV seeds, fertilizers, tractors and improved system for water. HYVs are not sensitive to differences in days that’s why they are adopted by many parts of the world. Impacts of Green Revolution: There are many impacts of Green Revolution on the developing economies but in this paper the following impacts are discussed: 1. Impact on Agricultural Production 2. Impact of Employment 3. Green Revolution and the Agrarian Transformation. 1. Impact on Agricultural Production: The empirical evidence showed that the countries who adopted Green Revolution were the importers of agricultural products. HYV seeds enabled them to be benefited from their own Agricultural production. In 1960s new varieties of wheat were cultivated on the 90% of the Mexican land which enabled the farmers for multiple cropping and now they can grow two or more crops in 12 months period and HYVs grows faster. The early mature breed of rice enabled the Taiwanese producers to quadruple the cropping with the addition of summer and winter catch crops. The Mexican wheat varieties were introduced in 1965 which impacted the agricultural production positively. By 1971 3037000 hectares which is 50% of the land area were planted under the new HYV seeds. The production is increased to 43.9 million tons in 1965-66. This was slowed down in 1973-75 due to shortage of fertilizers. With HYVs Pakistan also increased its total output from 4.6 to 8.4 million tons which is 84% increase and India increased from 12 to 20 million, a 64% increase. An evidence depicted that HYVs were water efficient as it uses four times less water as compared to traditional seeds. Philippine attained a self-sufficiency in rice in 5 years because of the IRS variety. The spread of maize was less due to the reason of the problems associated with the product of seeds. Thailand cultivated 52000 hectares which yielded 100000 tons, Pakistan reported 30% increase in its maize production and India also experienced 40-50% increase in yield of maize. 2. Impact on Employment: The impact on employment is not clear as there are many factors involved some of the factors are considered. i.e., family and non-family labor, temporary and permanent labor, peak and offpeak labor requirements-, short- and long-term impacts are considered. The 32 villages study showed that there is increase in the labor employment in the rice farm. The increase in pre harvest employment is due to the use to fertilizers. Insecticides and straight-row planting. Green Revolution have no impact on certain land on land preparation and seed transplanting. The use of fertilizers required weeding which requires labor resulted in increased demand for labor. The long-term effects of Green revolution on employment are temporary because in the long run the dynamics in real wages and labor problems leads to mechanization. Furthermore, the increased profitability of machinery also effected the demand for labor.in Mexico the Green revolution enabled the large farmers to invest in labor-saving machinery which resulted in decreased employment. Large number of tractors were used for ploughing the land in 1968 about 20k-25k tractors were used for ploughing the land instead of buffaloes. the empirical evidence showed that in Pakistan 56% of reduction in work animals is reported due to green revolution. The meccanization reduced the labor force by 50%. Green Revolution and the Agrarian Transformation: The above discussion is all based on the agricultural Economists perspective but there are other economists who have different views regarding the Green revolution, they analyze the impacts of Green revolution with respect to technical constrained of agrarian society and conditions of production. In the system of share cropping by semi proletarian class the tenant doesn’t have the right to decide whether adopt the new technology or not. He further added that the land lords didn’t want to adopt the new technology because it will weaken their suppression and exploitation system. In the current economic system new technology is adopted by rich farmers and the poor farmers adopted lately because of the credit risks associated with it. The rural inequality has increased due to GR stated Khan. Conclusion: based of the article reading it is clear that the impact of green revolution varies with respect of different literature and different factors are considered by different writers but the effects of GR in Pakistan was dramatic because the country can’t even think of surplus amount of wheat because they have to import for their sufficiency. There is no doubt that Green revolution resulted in a massive shift in agricultural production but it given rise to many social and political issues as only the elite class is benefitted from this revolution which resulted in the income and regional inequality in overall developing countries.