The Doubly Green Revolution: Food for All in the Twenty-First Century (Comstock Book)

Rating:
Summary: Incomplete analysis of an important problem
Review: Gordon Conway presents to us a problem: an unacceptably large number in absolute terms suffers from staggering levels of poverty, malnutrition, and hunger. He acknowledges that there is enough food in the world to meet aggregate demand, and he indicates that he is not Malthusian or even Neo-Malthusian. The main problem, and theme of his book, is that certain high-population, low-income areas lack the purchasing power and access to technology and capital necessary to support a "doubly green revolution" to bring the successes of agricultural technology to all peoples. His normative analysis is that the costs of this are acceptable given humanitarian concerns and practicality for industrialized countries that would benefit from trade liberalization and some level or agricultural/economic convergence. He also believes that market forces alone are insufficient to fixing the problems he has outlined, and encourages nation-states and inter-government organizations to pursue policies that include stabilization of legal rights, subsidies for research in technologies to provide food and capital for the poor (especially women and ethnic minorities), and even redistribution of property.

I consider it a possibility that not enough time has gone by since the Green Revolution started showing diminishing returns to make judgments on the immense inequality of distribution. I would like to point out that most of the world lived in poverty for thousands of years, and only within the past century have we been able to make any significant progress at this level and perhaps the inequalities may smooth out over time if trade is liberalized.

Ultimately, Conway presents a well-researched book and some interesting ideas and alternatives to reach these ideas. I think that he could have explored market solutions more deeply and that this significantly weakens his book. His devotion to the poor and willingness to use governments to interefere significantly with trade and agriculture is disheartening. However, the topic is very interesting and the ultimate goal of increasing food production to meet aggregate demand and basic human needs is noble and important to all of us and generations to come.

Rating:
Summary: Shows what can be done, how to do it, and why.
Review: Participation in agricultural production, it has been repeatedly demonstrated, is the only clear guarantee of participation in food consumption.

The author's central theme is that it is possible to raise yields three-fold on most smallholder farms worldwide by practicing sustainable agriculture. As an architect of the original Green Revolution he can acknowledge its failings (and its successes) better than most. The book's title refers to a need to move beyond the original Green Revolution to a new and more environmentally friendly agenda.

The basic goals outlined in the book are:

-Increase crop yields of small-scale farmers threefold per farm.

-Do so at very low cost by making maximum use of indigenous resources: physical, biological, and human -thereby allowing even the very poor to benefit from improved methods.

-Improve the health of families living on small farms by raising nutrition levels.

-Expand access to food, energy, and water.

-Expand access to economic resources.

Disregard the neo-communist rhetoric of the first reviewer and buy this book - easily earns 8 stars on a scale of 1 to 5.

Rating:
Summary: Now it includes the ecology, but where is the justice?
Review: The original "Green Revolution" was presented by the Ford and Rockefeller foundations as a way to put off imminent starvation worldwide, buying time while humanity tackled the problem of population increase. While crop yields surely increased in the 1960s-1980s (though much less since then), efforts to limit population growth (outside China) mostly faltered. Worse, many of the chemical-intensive practices of the GR proved to be ecologically unsound. Worse still, the focus on yields and population effectively erased the question of food ACCESS from mainstream debates. While we have had food stocks adequate to feed every human on the planet for many decades, we have lacked the will and mechanisms to insure the poor access to that food. Indeed, millions of formerly self-sufficient smallholder farmers have "become" poor in the GR era because they no longer have access to land, nor access to sufficient cash.

This book rightfully states that future green-revolutionaries will need to pay far more attention to the environment, to ensure ecologically sustainable production in the future; and that agricultural scientists will need to work in genuine partnership with farmers (though previous efforts at so-called "partnerships" by such organizations as the World Bank or International Rice Research Institute have been laughably one-sided and dominated by elites). This is (nowadays, at least) relatively uncontroversial. But until and unless we make large political changes regarding food distribution -- food justice, if you will -- we're just rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic, as far as the poor are concerned.

More production, more ecologically done -- you bet. Population control -- crucial. Greater participation of farmers in agricultural decision-making -- essential. Food justice -- politically difficult, but indispensible. This book tackles elements of the food problem, but leaves a few things out as well.