The mid-twentieth-century transformation of farming, from roughly the 1940s to the 1970s, that spread high-yield varieties of wheat and rice, synthetic fertilizer, and intensive irrigation across the developing world. Where it took hold, harvests doubled or tripled, and the new methods are widely credited with averting predicted famines and saving hundreds of millions, perhaps a billion, from starvation. The same methods also drained groundwater, degraded soil, narrowed crop diversity, and favored the larger farmers who could afford the inputs, leaving a dual legacy still debated today.
In the 1960s, many experts were certain that mass famine was coming. The population of the poor world was rising faster than its farms could feed it, and respected voices predicted that hundreds of millions would starve in the decades ahead. It did not happen. Instead, new seeds bred to drink in fertilizer and water, planted across India, Pakistan, the Philippines, and Mexico, sent harvests doubling and tripling. India went from the edge of famine to growing its own grain. The agronomist Norman Borlaug, the man most associated with the new wheat, won the 1970 Nobel Peace Prize and was called the man who fed the world. By many estimates the new farming saved hundreds of millions of lives, perhaps as many as a billion, though such figures are estimates, not counts. This was the Green Revolution, and it was a genuine triumph. It was also costly. The same seeds demanded constant chemical fertilizer and pesticide, soaked up irrigation water that drained aquifers and salted the land, pushed older crop varieties aside, and rewarded the farmers rich enough to buy in while pushing poorer ones into debt. The harvest that fed billions came with a bill the land is still paying.