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The Passing of the Father of India’s Green Revolution

But What Did the GR Really Do for India?

Colin Todhunter

MS Swaminathan, widely regarded as the father of the Green Revolution in India, recently passed away (28 September) at the age of 98.

An agronomist, agricultural scientist and plant geneticist, Swaminathan played a key role in introducing hybrid high yielding varieties of wheat and rice to India and in encouraging many farmers to adopt high-input, chemical-dependent practices.

The mainstream narrative is that Swaminathan’s collaborative scientific efforts with Norman Borlaug helped save India from famine in the 1960s. Following his death, tributes from high-ranking officials, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and commentators have poured in praising his part in (supposedly) saving India from Malthusian catastrophe.

However, there is another side to the story of the Green Revolution, which seldom emerges in the mainstream.

For example, farmer Bhaskar Save wrote an open letter to M S Swaminathan in 2006. He was scathing about the impact of the Green Revolution and Swaminathan’s role in it:

You, M S Swaminathan, are considered the ‘father’ of India’s so-called ‘Green Revolution’ that flung open the floodgates of toxic ‘agro’ chemicals – ravaging the lands and lives of many millions of Indian farmers over the past 50 years. More than any other individual in our long history, it is you I hold responsible for the tragic condition of our soils and our debt-burdened farmers, driven to suicide in increasing numbers every year.”

We will return to this letter later.

To his credit, though, Swaminathan came out against genetically modified organisms in Indian agriculture. In a 2018 paper in the journal Current Science, along with his colleague P C Kesavan, he provided a wide-ranging critique of genetically modified crops to date, questioning their efficacy and need.

Perhaps he had become aware that the introduction of technology without proper economic, social, health and environmental impact assessments would produce a domino effect, like the Green Revolution. Of course, he came under attack from industry mouthpieces and industry-backed scientists in the media for his stance.

In the paper New Histories of the Green Revolution (2019), Professor Glenn Stone debunks the claim that the Green Revolution boosted productivity and saved India from famine.

Indeed, although the media in the mid-1960s carried stories about a famine in India, Stone sees no evidence of famine or an impending famine. Stone argues that all the Green Revolution actually ‘succeeded’ in doing was put more wheat in the Indian diet (displacing other foodstuffs). He argues that food productivity per capita showed no increase or even actually decreased.

Renowned campaigner and environmentalist Vandana Shiva says that the Green Revolution saw 768,576 accessions of indigenous seeds taken from farmers in Mexico alone. She regards the Green Revolution as a form of colonisation:

The ‘civilising mission’ of Seed Colonisation is the declaration that farmers are ‘primitive’ and the varieties they have bred are ‘primitive’, ‘inferior’, ‘low yielding’ and have to be ‘substituted’ and ‘replaced’ with superior seeds from a superior race of breeders, so called ‘modern varieties’ and ‘improved varieties’ bred for chemicals.”

This is one aspect of the Green Revolution that is too often overlooked: capitalist penetration of (intact, self-sufficient) peasant economies.

Stone says:

The legend of the Green Revolution in India has always been about more than wheat imports and short‐stalked grains. It is about Malthusianism, with post‐war India supposedly proving the dangers of population growth outpacing food production. It is also about the Neo-Malthusian conviction that technological innovation is our only hope, capable of saving a billion lives when conditions are right.”

He says that beneficiaries of the legend have bolstered it and kept it alive and well in our historical imagination. According to recent studies and literature, however, a coherent reinterpretation is emerging that, Stone says, knocks out virtually all of the pillars of this narrative.

We must also consider counterfactual scenarios. What would have happened if India had taken a different route? Stone notes that the influential Planning Commission (PC) was trying simultaneously to create a functional state (after centuries of colonial rule), to avoid becoming a prized Cold War client, and to shape the country’s agricultural destiny. India had plenty of rural labour and organic manures and the PC wanted to capitalise on these resources.

The PC was not opposed to chemical fertilisers but regarded them as highly expensive both to the state and to the farmer. It also believed that concentrated fertiliser use had ecological problems too: chemicals should only be used in combination with bulky organic manures to preserve tilth. What if organic ways of farming had received the funding and research and had been prioritised to the extent the Green Revolution had been?

For instance, in the paper Lessons From the Aftermaths of Green Revolution on Food System and Health (in Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems, 2021) agriculture techniques, such as intercropping, Zero Budget Natural Farming (ZBNF) – with essential principles involving the enhancement of nature’s processes – and the elimination of external inputs, can be practised with excellent results.

The state government of Andhra Pradesh plans to convert six million farmers and eight million hectares of land under the initiative of Climate Resilient Zero Budget Natural Farming (ZBNF) because of the impressive outputs obtained in the ZBNF impact assessments in the states of Karnataka and AP.

Moreover, the Green Revolution deliberately sidelined traditional seeds kept by farmers that were actually higher yielding and climate appropriate. Also, in a 2019 paper in the Journal of Experimental Biology and Agricultural Sciences, the authors note that native wheat varieties in India have higher nutrition content than the Green Revolution varieties.

Instead, we are left with a certain model of agriculture that was pushed for geopolitical and commercial reasons and are trying to deal with various deleterious aftermaths.

For example, according to Stone, post-war hand-to-mouth shipments of wheat from the US to India resulted not from Malthusian imbalance but from policy decisions. The ‘triumphs’ of the Green Revolution came from financial incentives, irrigation and the return of the rains after periods of drought, and they came at the expense of more important food crops. Long‐term growth trends in food production and food production per capita did not change in India. Stone concludes that the Green Revolution years, when separated out, actually marked a slowdown.

Much more can be said and has been written about the wider politics of the Green Revolution and how it became and remains enmeshed in modern geopolitics: the Rockefeller Chase Manhattan bank, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the World Trade Organization have facilitated the structural adjustment of national economies and agrarian systems, intentionally creating food insecure areas and dependency for the benefit of Western financial, agricultural trade, seed, fertiliser and agrochemical interests.

For instance, many countries have been placed on commodity crop export-oriented production treadmills to earn foreign currency (US dollars – boosting the strength of and demand for the dollar and US hegemony) to buy oil and food on the global market (benefitting global commodity traders like Cargill, which helped write the WTO trade regime – the Agreement on Agriculture), entrenching the need to increase cash crop cultivation for exports.

In effect, what we have seen emerge is a model of agriculture that requires hundreds of billions of taxpayer subsidies annually to sustain the bottom line of big agribusiness. One of the not-so-hidden costs of the Green Revolution, of which there are many: degraded soils, polluted water, rising rates of illness, micro-nutrient deficiencies, less nutrient-dense food crops, unnecessary food insecurity, the sidelining of more appropriate indigenous seeds, the narrower range of crops that humanity now depends on due to changed cropping systems, the corporate commodification and pirating of seeds and knowledge, the erosion of farmers’ environmental learning, the devastation of rural communities, farmers’ debt, corporate-market dependency, etc.

So, with the passing of M S Swaminathan, let us return to Bhaskar Save (1922-2015) and his open letter, which touches on many of these issues. Save was not a scholar or an academic. He was a farmer, and his letter was a heartfelt call to action.

M S Swaminathan was at the time the chair of the National Commission on Farmers at the Ministry of Agriculture. Save wanted to bring attention to the devastating impacts of the Green Revolution and to encourage policy makers to abandon their policies of importing and promoting the use of toxic chemicals that the Green Revolution had encouraged.

Below is an abridged version of Bhaskar Save’s open letter.

To: Shri M.S. Swaminathan,
The Chairperson, National Commission on Farmers,
Ministry of Agriculture, Govt. of India

I am an 84-year-old natural/organic farmer with more than six decades of personal experience in growing a wide range of food crops. I have, over the years, practised several systems of farming, including the chemical method in the fifties – until I soon saw its pitfalls. I say with conviction that it is only by organic farming in harmony with Nature, that India can sustainably provide her people abundant, wholesome food.

You, M.S. Swaminathan, are considered the ‘father’ of India’s so-called ‘Green Revolution’ that flung open the floodgates of toxic ‘agro’ chemicals – ravaging the lands and lives of many millions of Indian farmers over the past 50 years. More than any other individual in our long history, it is you I hold responsible for the tragic condition of our soils and our debt-burdened farmers, driven to suicide in increasing numbers every year.

I am sad that our (now greyed) generation of Indian farmers, allowed itself to be duped into adopting the short-sighted and ecologically devastating way of farming, imported into this country. By those like you, with virtually zero farming experience!

For generations beyond count, this land sustained one of the highest densities of population on earth. Without any chemical ‘fertilizers’, pesticides, exotic dwarf strains of grain, or the new, fancy ‘biotech’ inputs that you now seem to champion. The fertility of our land remained unaffected.

In our forests, the trees like ber (jujube), jambul (jambolan), mango, umbar (wild fig), mahua (Madhuca indica), imli (tamarind) yield so abundantly in their season that the branches sag under the weight of the fruit. The annual yield per tree is commonly over a tonne – year after year. But the earth around remains whole and undiminished. There is no gaping hole in the ground!

From where do the trees – including those on rocky mountains – get their water, their NPK, etc? Though stationary, Nature provides their needs right where they stand. But ‘scientists’ and technocrats like you – with a blinkered, meddling itch – seem blind to this. On what basis do you prescribe what a tree or plant requires, and how much, and when.?

It is said: where there is lack of knowledge, ignorance masquerades as ‘science’! Such is the ‘science’ you have espoused, leading our farmers astray – down the pits of misery.

This country has more than 150 agricultural universities. But every year, each churns out several hundred ‘educated’ unemployables, trained only in misguiding farmers and spreading ecological degradation.

Trying to increase Nature’s ‘productivity,’ is the fundamental blunder that highlights the ignorance of ‘agricultural scientists’ like you. When a grain of rice can reproduce a thousand-fold within months, where arises the need to increase its productivity?

The mindset of servitude to ‘commerce and industry,’ ignoring all else, is the root of the problem.

Modern technology, wedded to commerce… has proved disastrous at all levels… We have despoiled and polluted the soil, water and air. We have wiped out most of our forests and killed its creatures. And relentlessly, modern farmers spray deadly poisons on their fields. These massacre Nature’s jeev srushti – the unpretentious but tireless little workers that maintain the ventilated quality of the soil and recycle all life-ebbed biomass into nourishment for plants. The noxious chemicals also inevitably poison the water, and Nature’s prani srushti, which includes humans.

Is it not a stark fact that the chemical-intensive and irrigation-intensive way of growing monoculture cash-crops has been primarily responsible for spreading ecological devastation far and wide in this country? Within the lifetime of a single generation!

This country boasted an immense diversity of crops, adapted over millennia to local conditions and needs. Our numerous tall, indigenous varieties of grain provided more biomass, shaded the soil from the sun and protected against its erosion under heavy monsoon rains. But in the guise of increasing crop production, exotic dwarf varieties were introduced and promoted through your efforts. This led to more vigorous growth of weeds, which were now able to compete successfully with the new stunted crops for sunlight. The farmer had to spend more labour and money in weeding, or spraying herbicides.

The straw growth with the dwarf grain crops fell drastically to one-third of that with most native species! In Punjab and Haryana, even this was burned, as it was said to harbour ‘pathogens’. (It was too toxic to feed farm cattle that were progressively displaced by tractors.) Consequently, much less organic matter was locally available to recycle the fertility of the soil, leading to an artificial need for externally procured inputs. Inevitably, the farmers resorted to use more chemicals, and relentlessly, soil degradation and erosion set in.

The exotic varieties, grown with chemical ‘fertiliser’, were more susceptible to ‘pests and diseases’, leading to yet more poison (insecticides, etc.) being poured. But the attacked insect species developed resistance and reproduced prolifically. Their predators – spiders, frogs, etc. – that fed on these insects and ‘biologically controlled’ their population, were exterminated. So were many beneficial species like the earthworms and bees.

Agribusiness and technocrats recommended stronger doses, and newer, more toxic (and more expensive) chemicals. But the problems of ‘pests’ and ‘diseases’ only worsened. The spiral of ecological, financial and human costs mounted!

With the use of synthetic fertilizer and increased cash-cropping, irrigation needs rose enormously. In 1952, the Bhakra dam was built in Punjab, a water-rich state fed by 5 Himalayan rivers. Several thousand more big and medium dams followed all over the country, culminating in the massive Sardar Sarovar.

India, next to South America, receives the highest rainfall in the world. The annual average is almost 4 feet. Where thick vegetation covers the ground, and the soil is alive and porous, at least half of this rain is soaked and stored in the soil and sub-soil strata. A good amount then percolates deeper to recharge aquifers, or ‘groundwater tables’.

The living soil and its underlying aquifers thus serve as gigantic, ready-made reservoirs gifted free by Nature. Particularly efficient in soaking rain are the lands under forests and trees. And so, half a century ago, most parts of India had enough fresh water all-round the year, long after the rains had stopped and gone. But clear the forests, and the capacity of the earth to soak the rain, drops drastically. Streams and wells run dry. It has happened in too many places already.

While the recharge of groundwater has greatly reduced, its extraction has been mounting. India is presently mining over 20 times more groundwater each day than it did in 1950. Much of this is mindless wastage by a minority. But most of India’s people – living on hand-drawn or hand-pumped water in villages and practising only rain-fed farming – continue to use the same amount of ground water per person, as they did generations ago.

More than 80% of India’s water consumption is for irrigation, with the largest share hogged by chemically cultivated cash crops. Maharashtra, for example, has the maximum number of big and medium dams in this country. But sugarcane alone, grown on barely 3-4% of its cultivable land, guzzles about 70% of its irrigation waters!

One acre of chemically grown sugarcane requires as much water as would suffice 25 acres of jowar, bajra or maize. The sugar factories too consume huge quantities. From cultivation to processing, each kilo of refined sugar needs 2 to 3 tonnes of water. This could be used to grow, by the traditional, organic way, about 150 to 200 kg of nutritious jowar or bajra (native millets).

While rice is suitable for rain-fed farming, its extensive multiple cropping with irrigation in winter and summer as well, is similarly hogging our water resources, and depleting aquifers. As with sugarcane, it is also irreversibly ruining the land through salinisation.

Soil salinisation is the greatest scourge of irrigation-intensive agriculture, as a progressively thicker crust of salts is formed on the land. Many million hectares of cropland have been ruined by it. The most serious problems are caused where water-guzzling crops like sugarcane or basmati rice are grown round the year, abandoning the traditional mixed-cropping and rotation systems of the past, which required minimal or no watering.

Efficient organic farming requires very little irrigation – much less than what is commonly used in modern agriculture. The yields of the crops are best when the soil is just damp. Rice is the only exception that grows even where water accumulates and is thus preferred as a monsoon crop in low-lying areas naturally prone to inundation. Excess irrigation in the case of all other crops expels the air contained in the soil’s inter-particulate spaces – vitally needed for root respiration – and prolonged flooding causes root rot.

The irrigation on my farm is a small fraction of that provided in most modern farms today. Moreover, the porous soil under the thick vegetation of the orchard is like a sponge that soaks and percolates to the aquifer, or ground-water table, an enormous quantity of rain each monsoon. The amount of water thus stored in the ground at Kalpavruksha, is far more than the total amount withdrawn from the well for irrigation in the months when there is no rain.

Clearly, the way to ensure the water security and food security of this nation, is by organically growing mixed, locally suitable crops, plants and trees, following the laws of Nature.

We should restore at least 30% ground cover of mixed, indigenous trees and forests within the next decade or two. This is the core task of ecological water harvesting – the key to restoring the natural abundance of groundwater. Outstanding benefits can be achieved within a decade at comparatively little cost. We sadly fail to realise that the potential for natural water storage in the ground is many times greater than the combined capacity of all the major and medium irrigation projects in India – complete, incomplete, or still on paper! Such decentralized underground storage is more efficient, as it is protected from the high evaporation of surface storage. The planting of trees will also make available a variety of useful produce to enhance the well-being of a larger number of people.

Even barren wastelands can be restored to health in less than a decade. By inter-planting short lifespan, medium life-span, and long life-span crops and trees, it is possible to have planned continuity of food yield to sustain a farmer through the transition period till the long-life fruit trees mature and yield. The higher availability of biomass and complete ground cover round the year will also hasten the regeneration of soil fertility.

The actual reason for pushing the ‘Green Revolution’ was the much narrower goal of increasing marketable surplus of a few relatively fewer perishable cereals to fuel the urban-industrial expansion favoured by the government.

The new, parasitical way of farming you vigorously promoted, benefited only the industrialists, traders and the powers-that-be. The farmers’ costs rose massively and margins dipped. Combined with the eroding natural fertility of their land, they were left with little in their hands, if not mounting debts and dead soils. Many gave up farming. Many more want to do so, squeezed by the ever-rising costs. Nature has generously gifted us with all that is needed for organic farming – which also produces wholesome, rather than poisoned food!

The maximum number of people can become self-reliant through farming only if the necessary inputs are a bare minimum. Thus, farming should require a minimum of financial capital and purchased inputs, minimum farming equipment (plough, tools, etc.), minimum necessary labour, and minimum external technology. Then, agricultural production will increase, without costs increasing. Poverty will decline, and the rise in population will be spontaneously checked.

Self-reliant farming – with minimal or zero external inputs – was the way we actually farmed, very successfully, in the past. Our farmers were largely self-sufficient, and even produced surpluses, though generally smaller quantities of many more items. These, particularly perishables, were tougher to supply urban markets. And so, the nation’s farmers were steered to grow chemically cultivated monocultures of a few cash-crops like wheat, rice, or sugar, rather than their traditional polycultures that needed no purchased inputs.

Colin Todhunter specialises in development, food and agriculture and is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization in Montreal. You can read his “mini e-book”, Food, Dependency and Dispossession: Cultivating Resistance, here.

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Anarchos
Anarchos
Oct 8, 2023 6:55 PM

May dogs shit on his grave and the graves of all those like him.

Red Pill Reader
Red Pill Reader
Oct 8, 2023 5:13 AM

thank you

NickM
NickM
Oct 7, 2023 8:58 AM

An important statement by Colin Todhunter. The Green Revolution was not limited to India. In the 1970s I visited a professor in Illinois who had just returned from advising the Philippines govt on Green rice. (His children played with the Marcos children).

But all is not bad that’s taught in universities. The prof told me that President Kruschev of Russia had visited Illinois, and Khruschev’s eyes nearly popped out of his head when he was shown a cob of HighBred maize. Kruschev returned to reinstate a generation of Russian professors who had been “cancelled” for teaching Hybrid Vigour. So, one up for modern seeds and one up for Khruschev. Russia became the world’s biggest supplier of wheat, all of it non-GMO.

It would be interesting if Colin Todhunter could report whether modern methods have caused as much devastation in the grain-growing areas of Russia and North America as they have in India.
Certainly in Illinois I also visited a former cotton farm that had been exhausted in the manner described in this article, then partly regenerated into a model Butterfly Farm by a friend of President FD Roosevelt .

“To be redeemed from error by error” — TS Eliot.

mgeo
mgeo
Oct 6, 2023 10:08 AM

The culpability of the Indian officials has been far worse that this article suggests. Almost every village except the those in the most hostile climates was quite self-sufficient in its essential foods – even in the inputs for agriculture. The common key necessity was a few cattle. Even poor soil could be rejuvenated.

No different from neo-colonialism elsewhere.

Placental_Mammal
Placental_Mammal
Oct 6, 2023 9:39 AM

Slide

As we slide at an ever increasing speed towards the cliff of extinction we should ponder the nature of life and the irresistible forces that have got us to where we are today. There is no reason to believe that the 3.5 billion year old phenomenon of life can last forever. Evolution drives life and it would eventually create a super species that can overcome any predator and alter it’s environment in a very significant way. Milestones on the steeply sloping path to mass extinction are the arrival of modern man, the start of the agricultural revolution, the ascent of the central bankers , their colonialism , the resulting industrial revolution and the concomitant explosion of populations and consumption. The use of genetic trickery, fertilisers and pesticides are desperate measures to postpone extinction.
The fellow in an earlier comment who gloated about the seemingly boundless fertlity of Ontario hasn’t understood the not so long term implications of the unrestricted use of glyphosate and other measures of boosting crop yield.He is obviously unaware of the increasing fragility of the infrastructure. It was in the adjoining state/province of Quebec that a solar flare brought the grid down for several hours in 1989. The whole North American grid in fact teetered and came close to going down. A widespread grid collapse has horrifying implications. The destruction of large transformers means that it may not be possible to get it going again. And yet the lunatics in charge make us more dependant on computer and mobile phone networks which dependant on the grids. As are the 500 nuclear power plants which will end life when mankind becomes extinct.

NickM
NickM
Oct 7, 2023 9:12 AM

“we should ponder the nature of life and the irresistible forces that have got us to where we are today.”

Life on Earth is made of stardust; and so is the Earth itself according to modern science. It has taken a surprisingly long time to get us where we are today. And it might take an inconceivable longer time to get us where we are heading. But, as you say, the driving forces are irresistible.

In my Father’s house are many mansions: I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also.” — John 14:2-6 KJV

Howard
Howard
Oct 7, 2023 10:21 PM

A great comment. Thank you.

Sunface Jack
Sunface Jack
Oct 6, 2023 7:23 AM

Like everything corporatization has led to disasters everywhere because of the lure of filthy lucre in the brown paper bags that entice the economic (bureaucrats) parasites, the regulators and the private PPP’s.

The war is between organic and agrichemical industry. We the consumer can put an end to this by not buying for convenience and supporting the small farmers and their outlets.

Johnny
Johnny
Oct 6, 2023 12:38 AM

Monocultures are the problem.
Permaculture/Agroforestry is the answer.
It’s how Mother Nature works.

Rita
Rita
Oct 5, 2023 9:39 PM

Oh come on. The Green Revolution was about more than seends. It was part of the Five Year Plans for self sufficiency from 1951. There were huge investments in agricultural and industrial infrastructure. Punjab was chosen to be a major bread basket and became very wealthy too as a result.
It’s not a coincidence that the Khalistan independence movement funded by NATO targets this exact state,

The investments made through these Plans resulted in huge dividends that lifted hundreds of millions out of absolute poverty. Where it all went downhill was with the liberalization of the 1990s.
That’s when NATO corporations started targeting the Indian seed market in earnest.

A lot of journalists write about what is happening right now but they do not know the history.

People love sticking labels nowadays and Swaminathan may be lauded as the father of whatever right NOW but it was not that way from the 1950s to the 1970s when large scale irrigation and other agricultural infrastructure and agricultural equipment manufacturing projects were undertaken.

turesankara
turesankara
Oct 5, 2023 8:58 PM

It’s already too late for any foolish Green Revolution. Because the fools have already reaped what they sowed a long time ago.

“I pity the fools.” — Mr T

How the West Has Won — Derrick Jensen Interview
https://youtu.be/6wcRKZyB76g

What Do You Think Is Worth Fighting For? — Derrick Jensen Interview
https://youtu.be/2yBgCfkb8Aw

END CIV Resist Or Die — Starring Derrick Jensen
https://youtu.be/3hx-G1uhRqA

turesankara
turesankara
Oct 5, 2023 8:57 PM

It’s already too late for any foolish Green Revolution. Because the fools have already reaped what they sowed a long time ago.

“I pity the fools.” — Mr T

How the West Has Won — Derrick Jensen Interview
https://youtu.be/6wcRKZyB76g

What Do You Think Is Worth Fighting For? — Derrick Jensen Interview
https://youtu.be/2yBgCfkb8Aw

END CIV Resist Or Die — Starring Derrick Jensen
https://youtu.be/3hx-G1uhRqA

moneycircus
moneycircus
Oct 5, 2023 7:08 PM

Watching Top Boy, written by Ronan Bennett, who was my contemporary at King’s College, and was married to… ….

… … Georgina Henry, creator of Comment Is Free at The Guardian.

Despite claiming to have been an IRA prisoner in Long Kesh, his career has never faltered from its upward trajectory.

I will never utter the words, deep state. Yet, IRA deep state, as paradoxical as it may seem. And I always thought so. Never trusted the guy. Gut feeling. Georgina, to whom I was close, later died of “cancer of the eye”.

My son randomly discovered Top Boy on Netflix… a series that seems, at first viewing, to glamourise black-on-black violence. And life once again turned full circle.

Make of it what you will. It’s a bit infra dig for most but what it means is all these outlets are controlled by the same people. Wouldn’t you know it.

The denizens of the borough of Pending are small time players, but have a walk-on part in a disparate scene.

Colin T
Colin T
Oct 5, 2023 4:33 PM

And also consider this. It is not included in the article above or in the embedded links

“According to data from Indian economic and agricultural organizations, on the eve of the Green Revolution in 1965, Indian farmers needed 17 pounds (8 kilograms) of fertilizer to grow an average ton of food. By 1980, it took 96 pounds (44 kilograms). So, India replaced imports of wheat, which were virtually free food aid, with imports of fossil fuel-based fertilizer, paid for with precious international currency.” – Prof. Glenn Stone

NickM
NickM
Oct 7, 2023 9:27 AM
Reply to  Colin T

Russia is not only the top supplier of grain but the top supplier of chemical fertilizer. Is Russia caught in the same trap as India? Of course Russia is better off than India because Russia has oil but you know what I mean.

Food First.

Rhys Jaggar
Rhys Jaggar
Oct 5, 2023 4:24 PM

The latest ‘create a problem then provide the solution’ iteration where soils are concerned is attempts to create new ‘sticky polymers’ that will in effect ‘bind soil together’ to prevent erosion. It’s being touted in effect as ‘better than no-till due to its scalability’. I can only assume that the assumption is that you will apply this form of ‘soil glue’ in the same way as chemicals were previously applied and somehow, miraculously, this will solve all soil problems associated with ‘intensive agriculture’.

One thing that can be said is that this will undoubtedly require factory-scale manufacturing and thus global distribution networks and hubs. I’ve seen no evidence either way yet as to whether patent dominance has yet been established, but clearly this is being touted as the way to overcome the bottom up no-dig revolution.

Quite how ‘green’ this technology will be is anyone’s guess. I’m guessing that it won’t be very green at all, but I’m always open to genuine innovative genius proving me wrong.

underground poet
underground poet
Oct 5, 2023 9:23 PM
Reply to  Rhys Jaggar

Time proves most things wrong, and I believe this is no exception.

Organic is the way to go as (if done properly) after just a few short years the soil is able to absorb more water and as such has less run off to erode. It doesn’t leave undisolveable salts behind each year so the life span of the workable soil is much longer.

I don’t think we need much more time to test this or that, but simply use what actually worked in the past and recreate that.

mgeo
mgeo
Oct 6, 2023 10:13 AM
Reply to  Rhys Jaggar

Surely, mixing plastic into soil everywhere can only be “green”.

NickM
NickM
Oct 7, 2023 9:34 AM
Reply to  Rhys Jaggar

“Scaleability” is one of those perverted words, like the word Green itself. Those polymers will be made from oil, in big factories owned by global conglomerates.

Natural polymers are composted (Latin, put together) by tiny microbes in the soil. Nature’s output of biological polymers dwarfs the total output of all the plastics factories on earth.

There is nothing more scaleable than microbial ecology.

Howard
Howard
Oct 5, 2023 4:05 PM

India is the poster child for what happens when Economics becomes the driving force of social policy.

Economics is like the proverbial “cold dead hand” reaching out to strangle everything living.

moneycircus
moneycircus
Oct 5, 2023 3:59 PM

Kicking the TDS up a notch
Biden administration is for real calling for building a wall to control the not-migrant non-invasion.

I used to live in San Antonio, Texas, which is under severe pressure. Happily now in the former Soviet Unon. But as I smoke a batch of jalapenos (Georgian-grown) I am working on an article about the liberal mindset, of which I know best the London variant (from the suburb of Pending).

How does anyone do this kind of back flip into the sea on a topic as blatant as “undocumented migrants” ie a mass flow of illegal entrants? You love them or you don’t? Isn’t the UN, WEF, EU, Red Cross or some of those institutions supplying phones, credit cards and rape kits. So… who is driving decisions?

These “cascading crises” are of course not solely the product of Nature or Humans. They are in large part orchestrated. Thus the response to every one of these crises – climate, migration, wildfires, food and energy shortages – is phoney.

If writers don’t acknowledge this, they are part of the problem.

October
October
Oct 5, 2023 3:17 PM

He is also the father of a certain Soumya, who displayed her talents in the scamdemic.

Apples, trees and all that.

Sorry for the redundant comment, the original one is pending.

Matt
Matt
Oct 5, 2023 2:50 PM

What I cannot understand, based on my own observations, is, why it is that in India, industrial agricultural practices resulted in such widespread destruction of the soil, whereas in the province of Ontario, in the S/W agricultural region of Grey Bruce/Huron [and other] counties, a massive arc sweeping from roughly Kincardine, then N/E, around and back down outside of Kitchen and Stratford, then down to London, and back S/W, to the Lake, Ontario’s “breadbasket,” cultivating everything imaginable, from cattle to soybeans, to peaches, and everything in between, ever since I was a child, a generation ago now, at least 60-years, and it is still lush and productive to this day?
I’ve been told how damaging and unsustainable these practices are, yet the land I have described remains rich, one of literal milk and honey.
My opinion is that the world will starve without sustained industrial agricultural practices, and that 9 out of 10 of us would not exist without it.
The natural farming movement is excellent, and how I practice cultivation, but I wouldn’t eliminate industrial agricultural practices any more than internal combustion engines or nuclear power plants in favour of towering, unsightly wind turbines (not to mention solar panel arrays] which, by the way, now, unfortunately, dominate the landscape in daylight and destroy the starfilled, nightime sky, hills, fields and shoreline, with flashing red lights, all the way down to Port Huron.
I do not understand.

Howard
Howard
Oct 5, 2023 4:02 PM
Reply to  Matt

Another thing you seem not to understand very well is geography. Canada is not India.

Yes, Canada and the US both have hot and cold weather. But except for places like Phoenix, Arizona, North America simply does not (or did not historically) see an entire season of 100+ F days. Nor do we rely on the Monsoon/Hirricane season for abundant rainfall.

Whereas India, as the letter Mr. Todhunter references makes clear, is almost 100% dependent on seasonal changes in the weather pattern. This, as the referenced letter also makes clear, has encouraged Indian farmers for ages to work with – not against – Nature.

Canada and the US have been blessed by Nature like no other nations on Earth. These nations simply cannot be the standard for every nation’s farming practices.

Matt
Matt
Oct 5, 2023 4:59 PM
Reply to  Howard

You seem to me to be a bit of a regular jerk, I must say, Howard.
A substantial part of my family happens to be from India.
I think I know a little bit more about it than you.
I was asking for an intelligent explanation to a legitimate question.
What is with you that you seem always to have the need to insult others in your comments, or correct grammar and punctuation, like a dull pedant, rather than offering constructive advice or criticism?

Howard
Howard
Oct 5, 2023 10:34 PM
Reply to  Matt

The question is: do you know more about farming practices in India than Colin Toddhunter? All I’m doing is pointing out what was in the article.

fame
fame
Oct 5, 2023 6:21 PM
Reply to  Matt

In a reply to your question, heavy rainfall leaches nutrients and creates runoff in the soil. A soil farmed by industrial ag is very prone to degradation from heavy rains which come only during one season. That is probably the main difference.

Also you might want to think why there are so many people in India. It has to do with them being the runoff of the Himalayan range and the rich farm land that is created. Yes, Canada has the ice age soils to benefit it, this is what keeps the soil good as the rock continually breaks down, but I doubt the Canadian soil, at least agriculturally would be on par with many of India’s farmlands. Certainly it hasn’t produced that many people. Also the soil of India is biologically active year round where as Canada, the soil biology has a rest period in the winter months.

I could go on and on but I hope at least you begin to understand the bigger picture.

fame
fame
Oct 5, 2023 6:23 PM
Reply to  fame

Another interesting and Excellent article Colin, Thanks.

Matt
Matt
Oct 6, 2023 1:20 AM
Reply to  fame

I am questioning the climate change and alternative dogma that industrial agriculture is unsustainable, bad for the earth and people.
Deserts can be made to bloom.
So, I think the problem as described in India may have quite different origins than those offered above, including reader remarks.

Matt
Matt
Oct 6, 2023 2:51 AM
Reply to  Matt

Desert Soilization: The Concept and Practice of Making Deserts Bloom
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=yITyMLVUmSQ

Erik Nielsen
Erik Nielsen
Oct 6, 2023 7:52 PM
Reply to  Matt

Why do we need to make everything contrary to what it is?

Take the rain cycle. Our fresh water comes from the Seas via evaporation blowing in over land, cool off and rain.
Birds, plants, trees, dogs, deer, natives drink of it, as this is what rain is for.
Every organic living get it! Except the f…… industrialists.

Surplus arrives in lakes and rivers for use in dry times. Perfect designed.

Here comes Matt and his industrialists and drill 25m deep holes to the ground water which are always polluted with pesticides, micro plastic, plastic lighters, and plastic bags.
The industrialist pollute the lakes and rivers with sewage and quicksilver.
They take out legal ownership of areas with primary water under the groundwater.
They research the primary water reservoirs under our Seas.
They fly up to the moon searching for water to bring down to the earth.

You and they are looking everywhere else than to our Great Creator’s design.

After being clumsy in the water, the industrialist get clumsy in the Deserts to “change dry sand to bloom”.

You know that Satan interfered with the Creation because he claimed he could do it better than God yes? You know that??

fame
fame
Oct 6, 2023 7:58 PM
Reply to  Matt

Deserts bloom all the time. Why don’t you go visit one and investigate the flowers.

Industrial ag is bad for the farmer and bad for the ecosystem. Mono-cropping is horrible and creates a biological vacuum. .literally you have miles and miles with nothing in bloom, except when the crop may briefly bloom.

I have farmed most on extremely poor soil. Things have always grown well. I keep the biology flourishing, I don’t worrying about the soil stuff that I can’t really see. Great forests grow in poor soil. Yes things can be made to grow.

Do you want to live on a farm where there are few insects, birds, flowers, only one type of plant. Chemicals sprayed everywhere and in the water. I certainly don’t.

The farmers of India have very little resources for industrial ag. The average farmer in Canada’s resources and equipment dwarfs that of the average Indian farmer

fame
fame
Oct 6, 2023 8:03 PM
Reply to  fame

One major point in Colin’s article is industrial ag is bad for the farmer. Small scale ecological farms create more farmers and healthy environments.

NickM
NickM
Oct 7, 2023 10:27 AM
Reply to  Matt

I asked Colin a similar question: How does the application of modern agriculture in hot, hilly India compare with modern practices in the wide steppes of Russia and North America?

There are good and bad ways of doing most things. An Australian farmer on Youtube explains how he learnt from the Red Indians to preserve his grassland by not cropping everything every year (crop 40% max per annum); and by treasuring natural fertilizer. The Red Indian population of North America has been estimated as 100 Million which, if true, is a tribute to Colin’s data on the productivity and sustainability of primitive farming methods, as is the large population of India and China.

moneycircus
moneycircus
Oct 5, 2023 2:23 PM
moneycircus
moneycircus
Oct 5, 2023 3:00 PM
Reply to  moneycircus

“He may have a game plan. He just hasn’t shared it with me… … But I tell you what, I don’t know about you, but I’m going to go to bed.”

C T
C T
Oct 5, 2023 1:43 PM

One thing the article does not mention and is not referred to in any of the embedded links

“According to data from Indian economic and agricultural organizations, on the eve of the Green Revolution in 1965, Indian farmers needed 17 pounds (8 kilograms) of fertilizer to grow an average ton of food. By 1980, it took 96 pounds (44 kilograms). So, India replaced imports of wheat, which were virtually free food aid, with imports of fossil fuel-based fertilizer, paid for with precious international currency.” – Prof. Glenn Stone