Revisiting the Green Revolution: “Progressive” Farmers, Green Fields, and “Scientific” Agriculture

Notwithstanding the amount of work written on the Green Revolution, the impact of the new technology on agricultural scientists in receiving countries and the work these scientists did to make the technology acceptable to farmers is yet to be studied. Developing the new technology and contributing to its successful dissemination became the mark of a good scientist, in the same way that cultivating the new varieties became the sign of being a “progressive” farmer.  For India, placing the new technological package at the heart of food crop research and cultivation would carry serious issues of marginalization.

This paper argues that the emphasis on use of chemical fertilizers in India decentered earlier efforts to evolve cheaper options of manuring that were more suitable to the agronomic and economic condition of farmers. Keen on promoting the use of chemical fertilizers and dwarf varieties, agricultural scientists conducted numerous experiments to statistically prove the correlation between recommended doses of fertilizers and its profitability.  However, in an agricultural sector very marginally penetrated by capital and without insurance against crop failure, many farmers were reluctant to invest in new inputs in place of manures.  

To accurately assess who would be willing to invest in the new inputs, surveys were undertaken to develop a social, economic and psychological profile of “progressive” farmers vs. “risk-averse” ones.  Although studies indicated that it was mostly farmers with limited means or from regions without adequate facilities for irrigation who were averse to investing in the capital-intensive inputs, research conducted on manuring and new varieties after the introduction of Green Revolution technology considered the fertilizer and irrigation needs of “progressive” farmers above those of more resource-challenged “risk-averse” farmers.  Thus, seeds were bred and agronomic experiments were done primarily to serve an agroecosystem comprising fertile and irrigated land tilled by “progressive” farmers.