The Green Revolution took place between the 1930’s and the 1960’s. It was the research and development of plants and how they grow. The productivity of global agriculture increased greatly with the use of chemical fertilizers and synthetic herbicides and pesticides. There are many opinions on if the Green Revolution posed a positive or negative impact on the world. I believe that the Green Revolution had a more positive than negative impact.
From the food supply point of view, The Green Revolution definitely had a positive impact. According to Document 1, the wheat yields greatly increased in both Mexico and India. This shows that the Green Revolution was not harming crop yields, but greatly making them much better. Document 2 also supports this reasoning because for a while the food supply was about equal to the population until about 1950, when the Green Revolution was occurring. After 1950, the graph shows food supplies drastically increasing and being much higher than the population. An increase in wheat and overall food supply cannot possibly be a bad thing. The Green Revolution increases crop yields and therefore the world food supply will increase.
The Green Revolution also had a positive impact on agriculture. As stated by Norman Borlaug in Document 4, “In the developing countries… the land is tired, worn out, depleted of plant nutrients, and often eroded.” In these developing countries, people are going hungry but can’t do anything about it because the conditions of the land is not suitable for farming. With the Green Revolution, this problem is fixed, more food can be produced in this land and less people will go hungry. “The Green Revolution has won a temporary success in man’s war against hunger and deprivation”, as stated by Borlaug.
As for helping society in general, the Green Revolution has done that too. In Document 9, it states that the Green Revolution helped with the disappearance of the caste system (a social class system in India). It also increased aspirations in people so they wanted to do more with their lives. There was a demand for better education, housing and better goods. With the better income the Green Revolution brought, people can see more of a future for themselves, therefore making the education system better and just general living conditions better.
Overall, the Green Revolution had it’s pros and cons, but the good definitely outweighed the bad. With increasing the food supply, lowering hunger and increasing aspirations and living conditions, it puts up a good argument. There’s the view that it puts away with some cultural diversity, but that is just a small price to pay for all of the good that has come from it. I believe the Green Revolution had more of a positive impact than negative.