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Green Revolution is a process of technological development of agricultural techniques. It was started in Mexico in 1944 and has since spread throughout the world.
The goal of the Green Revolution was to increase the efficiency of agricultural processes so that, the productivity of the crops was increased, and to help developing countries face their growing populations' needs.
Noted agronomist, Dr. M S Swaminathan from India led the Green Revolution. Dr. Norman Borlaug from the US supported the Green Revolution through the introduction of high yielding variety of wheat seeds.
India was in the grip of a food crisis in the mid-'60s. It was a situation of a terrible food economy. With domestic production of wheat hovering around 12 million tonnes, another 10 million tonnes were imported annually from the US. The US administration often used this leverage of a life-saving handout to squeeze India.
The introduction of dwarf high-yielding varieties of wheat like Lerma Rojo and Sonora 64, on Indian soils during the mid-'60s coupled with farm technology, use of other inputs like chemical fertilisers and pesticides and backed by a strong governmental support allowed cereal production to increase manifolds to feed hungry mouths, thus bring about the green revolution. While this led to rapid increase of cereal production and transformed India from a food hungry to self sufficient country, it also had the associated negative effects of indiscriminate use of chemicals and synthetics which we are now realising.
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