The Green Revolution

1961 CE — Global, Global

Today: Mexico, India, and the developing world

In the 1960s, respected voices predicted mass famine — that India in particular could not possibly feed itself and hundreds of millions would starve. Instead an American agronomist, Norman Borlaug, working in Mexico, bred dwarf wheat varieties that put their energy into grain rather than stalk and responded well to fertilizer and irrigation. Paired with new rice strains, the seeds spread across Asia and Latin America and roughly doubled or tripled yields within a decade. India went from importing grain to exporting it. The costs were real — heavy fertilizer and water use, and advantages that flowed to larger farmers — but the predicted famines did not arrive.

Worth knowing: Borlaug won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970, and the citation credited his wheat with saving hundreds of millions from starvation. Outside agriculture, almost no one knows his name.

Pattern: Labor displacement — A new technology destroys and creates work faster than institutions and people can adapt, producing dislocation and backlash.

Entry 223 of 240 in Precedent, a walk through the whole human story in order.