NOTE: This article is based on the author’s research on agricultural development.

Developing world agriculture is trapped in a period of distress as food prices have spiraled out of the reach of the world’s poor and the burgeoning global middle class demands more nutritious, varied diets. The last time the world’s food production was caught in such a tumultuous era was in the 1960s, when Asian and Latin American population growth outpaced food supply, raising a daunting prospect of widespread hunger.

But in what is known as the Green Revolution, the Ford and Rockefeller Foundations stepped forward to spearhead an unprecedented effort that resulted in the expansion of fertilizers and irrigation throughout Asia and Latin America, ultimately bringing food security to nations once on the brink of starvation.

Four decades later, however, the unintended environmental consequences are glaring. Farmers in India are extracting water from the ground at a faster rate than it can be replenished by the water cycle, marginalizing the amount of water available for human consumption.  Agriculture runoff in China is a contributing factor to the unacceptably high levels of contamination in fish from Chinese waters.

To combat the exacerbation of those environmentally-degrading practices, wealthy nations must take the lead in launching a second, more environmentally suitable Green Revolution. As farmers face enormous pressure to satisfy growing worldwide nutritional demands, they will most certainly increase their chances of hurting the environment. Thus today’s transformational period of developing world agriculture demands that farmers maximize yields while integrating sustainable management practices into their food production. While that may seem like a tall order, there are indeed several factors that buttress the argument for launching a Second Green Revolution.

First, sky-high fertilizer prices—propelled by the unyielding demand for meat in China and India—are leaving some farmers with insufficient fertilizer to grow crops to maximum potential. What is more, the commercial nature of the fertilizer industry suggests that prices will remain high for awhile. Fertilizer distribution is concentrated into the hands of export cartels, which suppresses competition and therefore leaves fertilizer companies very little pressure to lower prices. This price spike presents a particular problem to governments that subsidize fertilizer. India’s government, for example, has been forced to spend more and more on fertilizer as prices jumped. 

More broadly, the inexorability of fertilizer prices builds the case for incorporating alternative sources of nitrogen into developing nations’ agriculture. One solution is to expand the use of legumes—crops that cannot be grown for profit but whose ability to produce their own nitrogen enriches the soil and effectively lowers nitrogen fertilizer requirements for subsequent crops in the rotation. The Indian government could, perhaps, reduce its spending on fertilizer subsidies and provide financial incentives farmers who use legumes.

Furthermore, the Green Revolution that was a boon to Latin America and Asia never quite reached the African continent. As a result, Africa is dependent upon food aid and imports. Yet a Second Green Revolution would bring nutritional self-sufficiency to a region where over a dozen countries suffer from malnourishment. And in the process of bringing food security to Africa, advocates could encourage environmental stewardship. They could, for instance, spread knowledge about the merits of legumes.

For such an ambitious environmental effort to be put into practice, there needs to be local research centers that can assist farmers in understanding environmentally friendly farm management. The Green Revolution established an international network of agriculture research centers, but today’s transformation would require more localized research institutions to intimately aid poor rural communities across the developing world.

And the execution of this prospective Second Green Revolution, of course, would be impossible without substantial funding.  A formidable obstacle to launching a Second Green Revolution is the fading of the collaboration that hallmarked the Green Revolution four decades ago. The international research centers erected by the Green Revolution have faced severe budget cuts, partly because support for such vast agricultural development declined as big donors criticized the environmental harm caused by robust fertilizer and irrigation use.

All the buzz nowadays seems to be about carbon emissions and climate change. But the promotion of more sustainable agriculture in Asia, Latin America and Africa warrants just as much international attention. But development advocates must convince those donors that today their contributions would bolster the pursuit of greater environmental awareness in developing nations. It will be for the benefit of us all in this precarious time.

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