Years of plenty: maize production in India, which is self-sufficient in food grain

High-yield agriculture

In 1798 Thomas Malthus, the British theorist, postulated that the world’s population would eventually outstrip the planet’s ability to produce sufficient food for all, leading to widespread famine and death.

Nowhere did this dismal prediction seem likelier than India in the 1950s and early 1960s, when increases in grain production failed to keep pace with population growth, forcing New Delhi to depend on imported food aid. Fears of imminent famine intensified after two droughts in the mid-1960s.

Today, however, India is self-sufficient in food grain. The turnaround is the fruit of the Green Revolution, which brought high-yielding hybrid seeds and other high-tech, intensive farming techniques to millions of small farmers across Asia.

The Green Revolution was driven by philanthropic organisations (the Rockefeller and Ford foundations), international agricultural research institutes that developed the new high-yielding seed varieties, and governments that ploughed money into fertilisers, irrigation networks and pesticides.

The transformation of many Asian countries from subsistence to surplus food producers has created business opportunities. Commodity traders such as Glencore, Cargill, Archer Daniels Midland, Noble Group and Louis Dreyfus have made billions of dollars from the processing, storage, transportation and distribution of wheat, oilseeds, sugar and agricultural goods.

Production of high-yielding seeds – dominated by Monsanto, DuPont and Syngenta – fertiliser and modern irrigation systems is also big business.

The Green Revolution has its critics. In India, many believe intensive cultivation has damaged land fertility and strained north India’s water table, while many small farmers have been ruined by investing in expensive seeds that fail if there is not enough rain. But the avoidance of Malthus’s dire prophesy is certainly reason to cheer.

Amy Kazmin