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Reply to ‘The Green Revolution did not increase poverty and hunger for millions’

Nature Plants volume 4, page 737 (2018)Cite this article

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Nature Plants reply — We thank Mehta1 for his correspondence, and acknowledge his citations regarding global poverty and per capita calorie supplies during the time of the Green Revolution. In A History of the World in Seven Cheap Things2, Patel & Moore themselves state that global crop yields increased during the Green Revolution and that real food prices fell worldwide during that time.

However, we feel that Mehta’s arguments do not disprove Patel & Moore’s arguments or the statement in the review. Just as countries can see rising gross domestic product (GDP) and a rise in poverty rates at the same time, increased crop yields and ‘availability’ of calories does not prove false the contention that, in developing countries, many people did not actually benefit from Green Revolution policies and may even have suffered from export-oriented agribusiness.

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References

  1. Mehta, D. Nat. Plants https://doi.org/10.1038/s41477-018-0240-8 (2018)

  2. Patel, R. & Moore, J. W. History of the World in Seven Cheap Things. (Verso, London, 2018).

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  3. Rosset, P. Lessons from the Green Revolution (Food First, Institute for Food and Development Policy, 2000); http://bit.ly/2Md1R1r

  4. Miller, V. et al. Lancet Global Health 4, 695–703 (2016).

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    Nature Plants Editorial Team. Reply to ‘The Green Revolution did not increase poverty and hunger for millions’. Nature Plants 4, 737 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41477-018-0241-7

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