correspondence The Green Revolution did not increase poverty and hunger for millions

To the editor — In the June 2018 issue China that embraced Green Revolution dismiss the important contributions made of Nature Plants, Associate Editor Ryan advances in farm mechanization and made by agricultural scientists and researchers Scarrow, in a book review entitled ‘Botanical significant public-sector investments in in the past. A more progressive view is to Imperialism’ erroneously regurgitates the irrigation and crop improvement. For champion the adoption of Green Revolution myth that the Green Revolution “increased instance, in developing countries, yields measures, such as renewed public-sector hunger and poverty for millions while of staples as diverse as wheat, rice, potato support for crop improvement, while protecting and increasing crop exports for and cassava increased by 36–208% (ref. 2). also addressing the equally important, global markets”1. These increases are also associated with the and now better-studied, environmental There are several sources of data adoption of Green-Revolution-improved impacts of agricultural intensification. We (the World Bank and the UN Food and crop varieties, beginning in Asia (82% must not forget that, but for the Green Agriculture Organisation, among others) adoption in 1998) and then later in sub- Revolution, millions of our fellow humans that give lie to this claim, most prominently Saharan Africa (70% adoption by 2005)2. In from the Global South would simply not compiled into visual representations by terms of environmental benefits, it has also be alive today. More fundamentally, while the online publication, Our World in Data been shown that the Green Revolution saved we navigate the challenges of ensuring (www.ourworldindata.org) by researchers 18–27 million hectares of forested land and sustainable food security over the next at the University of Oxford. The data clearly pasture from being converted to farmland, fifty years, it is important to be guided by show that the share of world population much of it in the developing world3. an honest evaluation of the facts, and the living in extreme poverty fell sharply Clearly, the Green Revolution played successes and failures of the past. ❐ during the years of the Green Revolution, an enormous role in raising livelihoods previously defined as 1966–1985 (ref. 2). and providing greater food security in Devang Mehta Data from the Food and Agriculture the developing world. It vividly exploded Laboratory of Plant Genomics, Department of Organisation (FAO) also shows that the the Malthusian fears promulgated by Biological Sciences, University of Alberta, Edmonton, same period saw an almost identical increase Paul Ehrlich’s, The Population Bomb and Alberta, Canada. in per person calorie supply in poor and the Paddock brothers’ Famine-1975! It e-mail: [email protected] wealthy countries. Thus, it is hard to accept is true that the advances of the Green the argument that the Green Revolution Revolution failed to manifest in parts Published online: 4 October 2018 caused an increase in poverty and hunger of the globe, particularly on the African https://doi.org/10.1038/s41477-018-0240-8 when the aggregate data clearly shows that continent; this does not mean however there was no such increase in poverty and that it was the cause of poverty and hunger References hunger in the countries that adopted Green in these areas. Furthermore, while the 1. Scarrow, R. Nat. Plants 4, 316 (2018). 2. Pingali, P. L. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 109, 12302–12308 (2012). Revolution advances. evidence also suggests that gains due 3. Stevenson, J. R., Villoria, N., Byerlee, D., Kelley, T. & Maredia, M. The Green Revolution also saw to the Green Revolution were limited Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 110, 8363–8368 (2013). impressive gains in yields of staple food in marginal agricultural environments, crops like wheat and rice, even in large and that the reductions in poverty were Competing interests developing countries like India and unequally distributed, it is wrong to The author declares no competing interests.

736 Nature Plants | VOL 4 | OCTOBER 2018 | 736 | www.nature.com/natureplants