Transcript THE GREEN REVOLUTION Defining the Green Revolution Walt Parks UGA Crop & Soil Science http://wparks.myweb.uga.edu/ppt/green/index. htm.

THE GREEN REVOLUTION
Defining the Green Revolution
Walt Parks
UGA Crop & Soil Science
http://wparks.myweb.uga.edu/ppt/green/index.
htm
The Green Revolution:
Criticisms
Sources:
http://www.lastfirst.net/images/product/R004548.jpg
Criticisms of the Green Revolution
• Food Insecurity of poor not
addressed
• Cash Crops: food flows from
the poor and hungry nations
to the rich and well-fed
nations
• Green Revolution not
sustainable
– destroys resource base on
which agriculture depends
Example: India
• Self-sufficient in grain
India
due to Green Revolution
• But 1/3 of people poor
• 5,000 children die each
day
• Poor cannot afford to
BUY the food
Criticisms of the Green Revolution
• Early, poor had little access
to credit
• Could not buy seeds,
fertilizer, irrigation to make
Green Revolution work
• Wealthy invested, got
richer, drove out poor
• Now, more emphasis on
loans for poor
There are still problems
• Need good land (wealthy own)
• Agrochemicals bad for health,
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environment
Expensive inputs: profits to
global chemical companies
Rural people displaced from land
Mechanization reduces
agricultural jobs
Not ecologically sustainable:
depletes soil, pesticide race
Farm Squeeze
• Fertilizer use increases by huge
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amount
Yields do not increase
proportionally
India: 6x rise in fertilizer use
but 2/3 less production/ton
fertilizer
Need more fertilizer, pesticide
each year for same result
Thus cost go up faster than
yields: cost-price squeeze
Farm Squeeze
• U.S. true home of Green Revolution
• Yields up 3x
– but prices down
• To survive, must expand acreage
– to make up for lower per acre profit.
U.S. Farm Squeeze
• Since WWII
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number of farms decreased 2/3
average farm size up ½
rural communities gutted
production costs up from 50%
of gross to 80%
Soil Depletion Worldwide
• Dramatic increases in
yields during 1970s,
1980s
• Soil now depleted,
resulting in leveling
off or dropping yields
• 6% of Ag land in India
now useless
Profits
• Profits from Green
Revolution go to
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Middlemen
Banks
Chemical companies
Biggest growers
• Grain prices fall
• Farms get bigger
Brazil
Increased Dependency
• Poor countries must
import:
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Seeds
Fertilizer
Pesticides
Herbicides
• Cost to India increased
600% 1960-1980
• Biotechnology leads to
more dependency
Unsustainable Agriculture
• Industrial agriculture =
– mining land to extract
maximum output
• “War” between humans and
weeds, insects and disease
• Market dictates weapons:
– pesticides and chemical
fertilizers
• We are destroying our foodproducing resources
Destruction of Ag Resources
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Desertification
Soil erosion
Pesticide contamination
Groundwater depletion
Salinization
Urban sprawl
Genetic resources
shrinking
• Fossil fuels depleting
Genetic Engineering:
The Next Green Revolution ?
http://www.businessweek.com/1999/99_15/b3624011.htm
Next Green Revolution?
• Biotechnology will help
developing countries
accomplish things that they
could never do with
conventional plant breeding”
• “I believe genetically
modified food crops will
stop world hunger.”
Norman Borlaug
Nobel Peace Prize
The Next Green Revolution?
• Biotechnology helps farmers
produce higher yields on less land.
• Technology allows us to have less
impact on soil erosion, biodiversity,
wildlife, forests, and grasslands
• To achieve comparable yields
(1950-1999) with old farming
methods, would have needed an
additional 1.8 Billion hectares of
land
Norman Borlaug
Nobel Peace Prize
Biotechnology Critic
• Biotechnology development
– Same vision as chemical industry:
• Short term goals
– Enhanced yields, profit margins
• Nature should be dominated and
exploited
– forced to yield more
• Prefer quick solutions
– to complex ecological problems
• Reductionist thinking about farming
– Instead of integrated systems
• Agricultural success means
– Short term profits
– Not long term sustainability
-- Jane Rissler, Union of Concerned Scientists
Review
• History of theory in
anthropology
• Unilinear, relativism,
symbolism, materialism,
humanism
• Flat Earth
– Positive aspects of
globalization?
• Falling Flat
– Negative aspects of
globalization?
Systems Theory
• Originated in the 1940's
– Positivistic period in
sciences. What does
positivism mean?
• Biologist Ludwig von
Bertalanffy (General
Systems Theory, 1968)
• Ross Ashby
(Introduction to
Cybernetics, 1956).
Systems Theory
• Reaction to
reductionism in science
• Attempted to revive a
unified theory in
science
• What does this mean?
– General Theory
– Holism
– Positivism
Systems Theory, What is it?
• Systems are sets of
covariant entities no
subset of which is
unrelated to any other
subset
• Systems Theory is the
trans-disciplinary study of
the abstract organization
of phenomena,
independent of their
substance, type, or spatial
or temporal scale of
existence
Systems Theory, What is it?
• To be a system requires
organization and
interdependence
• An grouping of
functioning parts that
are not interdependent
is described as a Heap
Systems theory, what is it?
• Systems theory looks
beyond functional cause
and effect models
• It portrays human
adaptation in terms of wellspecified webs of mutual
causality.
• Is a way of looking at the
relationships among
variables
Systems Analysis
•
Systems analysis focuses on the
meaningful interactions of the parts
with one another and with the whole
as they influence some process or
outcome
•
No elemental part of the system can
be understood only in terms of itself
•
Systems can be understood by
studying the interactions of a
functioning part with the entire
system
•
Systems are shaped by both internal
and environmental processes and
conditions over time
Systems Analysis in Anthropology
• Excellent theory for
describing flows
• Excellent for describing
closed systems
• Problems?
• No closed cultural system
• What does this mean?
• Systems thinking tends to
be processual (time and
space), conditional, and
probabilistic
The Idea of a System
• System in its everyday
sense
• Nervous system
• Legal system
• Cooling/Heating system
– Automobile cooling system
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Radiator
Fan
Water pump
Thermostat
Cooling jacket around the
cylinder head
• Hoses/clamps
The Cow
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Cow, like all organisms, is a very complex
system
– Circulatory system
– Nervous systems
– Digestive system
– Study digestive system to understand
how cow lives on grass (total system)
One we use to turn grass into milk
– Also part of a number of larger
systems
– If kept with other cows, part of Herd
= social organization of cows
– Study cow as part of herd to
understand herd
OTHER EXAMPLES OF SYSTEMS COWS
ARE PART OF?
Stable Systems?
• Collection of smaller
parts more stable over
time than one large
operational part
– Scientists made atoms of
bigger and bigger size,
and they became more
unstable the larger they
were
What systems need
• Energy and information
is needed to fuel
systems
• The more complex the
system, the more
energy and information
is needed
• Inputs and Outputs
Feedback
• Systems can transform things
• Input / Output
• Information about the result
of a transformation is
recorded
• If this information affects the
transformation in a positive
way – positive feedback =
leads to accelerate the
transformation
• If this information affects the
transformation in a negative
way – negative feedback =
leads to system stabilization
Wallerstein and the Global Economic
System
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Emmanuel Wallerstein
U.S. sociologist
Historical social scientist
World-systems analyst
The Modern WorldSystem, 1974, 1980,
and 1989
• Marx, history of
exchange networks,
Dependency Theory
Dependency Theory
• Before World Systems
Theory, there was…
• Dependency Theory
• Social science theories
predicated on the notion
that resources flow from
a "periphery" of poor and
underdeveloped states to
a "core" of wealthy states,
enriching the latter at the
expense of the former.
World Systems History
• The late 18th and early
19th centuries marked a
great turning point in the
development of
capitalism
• Capitalists achieved statesocietal power in the key
states which furthered the
industrial revolution
marking the rise of
capitalism
• UK and USA
World Economy
• “World Economy” integrated
through the market rather than a
political center
• Two or more regions
interdependent and two or more
polities completing for
dominance
• Division of labor
“Core“ of "free countries“
dominating others without being
Dominated
“Semi-periphery“ the countries
which are dominated while at
the same time they dominate
Others
“Periphery" as the countries
which are dominated
World System
• Multicultural territorial
division of labor in which
the production and
exchange of basic goods
and raw materials is
necessary for the everyday
life of its inhabitants
• Division of labor: the forces
and relations of production
of the world economy as a
whole
• Leads to the existence of
two interdependent
regions: core and periphery.
World System Theory
• World-system theory is a
macrosociological
perspective that seeks to
explain the dynamics of the
“capitalist world economy”
as a “total social system”
• “Man’s ability to participate
intelligently in the evolution
of his own system is
dependent on his ability to
perceive the whole”
(Wallerstein 1974:10)
Core and Periphery
• Powerful and wealthy
"core" societies
dominate and exploit
weak and poor
peripheral societies.
• Technology (both
military and civilian) is a
central factor in the
positioning of a region
in the core or the
periphery
World-systems analysis
• Capitalism, as a
historical social system,
has always integrated a
variety of labor forms
within a functioning
division of labor
• Countries do not have
economies, but are part
of the world-economy.
Modern Capitalist World Economy
• Unequal exchange: the
systematic transfer of
surplus from semiproletarian sectors in the
periphery to the hightechnology, industrialized
core
• Capital accumulation at a
global scale: necessarily
involves the
appropriation and
transformation of
peripheral surplus
Modern Capitalist World Economy
• Imperialism: The
domination of weak
peripheral regions by strong
core states.
• Hegemony : The existence
of one core state
temporarily outstripping the
rest.
• Global Class Struggle: The
inherent conflict between
the owners of the means of
production and labor.
• What is the inherent
conflict?
World Systems Theory as a Criticism
• Criticisms to modernization
• (1) the reification of the nationstate as the sole unit of analysis,
• (2) assumption that all countries
can follow only a single path of
evolutionary development,
• (3) disregard of the worldhistorical development of
transnational structures that
constrain local and national
development,
• (4) explaining in terms of
ahistorical ideal types of
“tradition” versus “modernity”,
Present State of the Theory
• SUNY Binghamton, at the
Fernand Braudel Center for
the Study of Economies,
Historical Systems and
Civilizations
• Journal of World Systems
Research
• Greatest impact among
intellectuals in the periphery
countries
• Used to analyze development
dynamics and to understand
the relationship between
developed and developing
regions