Stories tagged with "green revolution"

Norman Borlaug: Saint Or Sinner ?

The father of the "green revolution" in agriculture, Norman Borlaug, recently passed away due to cancer, at the age of 95.

Borlaug didn't approve of the "green revolution" moniker, dubbing it "a miserable term" (what he would have made of "The Agrichemical Revolutionary" isn't clear) but his work has had a far-reaching impact on the course of human development.

Borlaug received both praise ("More than any other single person of this age, he has helped provide bread for a hungry world. We have made this choice in the hope that providing bread will also give the world peace", said the Nobel peace prize committee, while the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization declared him “A towering scientist” and a “great benefactor of humankind”) from those impressed by the rise in agricultural productivity he engineered, and condemnation ("Aside from Kissinger, probably the biggest killer of all to have got the peace prize was Norman Borlaug, whose "green revolution" wheat strains led to the death of peasants by the million" is a typical example from Alexander Cockburn at Counterpunch) from those concerned by the impact of the introduction of industrial agriculture around the globe.

The Round-Up: November 6th 2006

Oil patch remake looms

Talk of sweeping consolidation, foreign takeovers and the loss of small exploration and production companies is rampant after the change trusts had feared most took place with a bombshell from the Canadian government.

Conservation in the food chain

Many of you may have read the article called "The Oil We Eat" from the February 2004 issues of Harper's Magazine. In that piece, Richard Manning examined the evolution of the human food chain, ending with the Green Revolution which ultimately freed vast amounts of the population (especially in first world countries) from having to grow their own food. The upshot of the Green Revolution, along with advances in storing and transporting food, is that we now expend approximately 7-10 calories of fossil fuels for each food calories that is generated.

Today, the San Francisco Chronicle has a human interest piece called "The oil in your oatmeal: A lot of fossil fuel goes into producing, packaging and shipping our breakfast" that essentially distills the end of the Harper's article into a concise recounting of the amount of fossil fuel energy that goes into making "a bowl of imported McCann's Irish oatmeal topped with Cascadian Farms organic frozen raspberries, and a cup of Peet's Fair Trade Blend coffee."