Second Green Revolution

The Second Green Revolution is an effort to invest in increasing food production in poor countries via crop breeding (using genetic engineering), irrigation, fertilizers and pesticides. Calls for a second Green Revolution began only a decade after the original Green Revolution ended, and emphasized that a second Green Revolution would include genetic engineering almost from the start. However, calls for a second Green Revolution did not truly begin picking up steam until the early 2000s.

As early as 2005, Africa was identified as the focus of the second Green Revolution. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation formed the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) in 2006, and Kofi Annan became its leader in 2007. The second Green Revolution is the same as the original, in that it began as with efforts by the Rockefeller Foundation and the U.S. government soon followed suit, and that it involves the transfer of unsustainable U.S. industrial agriculture techniques and inputs to poor countries. However, it is different in that it focuses on increasing the productivity of smallholder farmers and on women farmers. (The original Green Revolution mostly benefited large, wealthy farmers.)

1980s
1980: The U.S. Supreme Court issued its Chakrabarty Decision, making it legal to patent a genetically modified organism.

1981:
 * First call for a Second Green Revolution by Peter Steinhart in the New York Times. He says, "genetic engineering in plants might eventually live up to the hopes of molecular biologists, corporate conglomerates and world-hunger specialists - and dispel the doubts of traditionalists and skeptics." Steinhart continues, promising: "Researchers at the nation's dozen university and private laboratories working in plant genetics talk excitedly of new plants that will be resistant to disease, plants that will be able to survive drought, plants capable of growing without fertilizers or pesticides and even plants that can substitute for oil. It would be the second agricultural revolution of our time."


 * The World Bank publishes the Berg Report, "Accelerated development in Sub-Saharan Africa : an agenda for action."

1983: First genetic engineering patent applications are submitted.

1985: Japanese "octogenarian racing-boat magnate and philanthropist" Ryoicho Sasakawa and Norman Borlaug hold a conference in Geneva to discuss a Green Revolution in Sub-Saharan Africa. They receipve the support of former U.S. President Jimmy Carter.

1986:
 * The Sasakawa Africa Association is established. "Sasakawa provided the money. Borlaug brought the expertise. Carter contributed the diplomatic connections and power of political persuasion." With $3 million a year from Sasakawa, Borlaug worked with the Carter Center to plant several million demonstration plots in fifteen African countries. In Ghana, Borlaug distributed new corn seeds, fertilizer, and herbicide to farmers.


 * The U.S. government first publishes the Coordinated Framework for the Regulation of Biotechnology in the federal register, laying the groundwork for minimal regulation of GMOs in the U.S.

1989: Ghanaian farmers "harvested a miracle" using Borlaug's seeds and agrochemicals. Their yields had tripled since they began working with Borlaug. Borlaug left Ghana in 1989 and, in the following years, farmers could not afford credit and thus could not afford to buy seeds, fertilizers, and other agrochemicals. Farmers also suffer from lack of markets and poor storage facilities.

1990s
1990:
 * Edwin Wellhausen calls for a Second Green Revolution.


 * Clive James met with Gary H. Toenniessen of the Rockefeller Foundation and pitched a humanitarian biotechnology project. Toenniessen promised to fund such a project and suggested James reach out to Luis Herrera-Estrella. Herrera-Estrella proposed a project for a virus-resistant potato to James, pointing out that it would be easy to ensure that Monsanto does not lose any sales by donating their technology to a potato for poor farmers because peasant farmers and commercial farmers grow different varieties of potatoes and potatoes are not reproduced via sexual reproduction.


 * James and Herrera-Estrella approached Earnest Jaworski at Monsanto about their idea. Jaworski liked the idea:


 * ""Having talked to Luis, I just felt that we've got a lot of technology here, and it would be nice to share that with people and places that don't have a lot of wealth and technology," says Jaworski. There was another "subliminal" consideration, he says. As part of the project, the Rockefeller Foundation would fund efforts to set up regulatory institutions in Mexico to handle genetically engineered crops. The potato might thus smooth a path for other, more commercially valuable products emerging from Monsanto's laboratories."


 * "Two Monsanto executives [Robert B. Horsch and Earnest Jaworski] got in touch with Joel Cohen, the Senior Biotechnology Specialist for USAID (the US Agency for International Development). Monsanto wanted USAID to help develop a GM crop for Africa that would give GMOs a good name."


 * Clive James founds the International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-biotech Applications (ISAAA) to promote biotechnology in the Global South.

Early 1990s: Borlaug and his team set out to recreate in Ethiopia what they did in Ghana.

1991:


 * USAID launches Agricultural Biotechnology Support Project (ABSP) I, an effort to create genetically engineered crops for humanitarian purposes and to encourage nations in the Global South to allow farmers to plant genetically engineered crops.


 * Monsanto brings Florence Wambugu, a sweet potato tissue culture expert from the Kenya Agricultural Research Institute (KARI) to St. Louis to work on a genetically engineered virus-resistant sweet potato. She stays at Monsanto until 1994. The sweet potato project is ultimately a failure.

1992: The U.S. government finalizes the Coordinated Framework for the Regulation of Biotechnology.

1993:
 * The first product of genetic engineering is approved for commercial sales in the United States. It is Monsanto's recombinant bovine growth hormone, or rbGH.


 * Association for Strengthening Agricultural Research in East and Central Africa (ASARECA) forms to promote market-oriented agriculture and biotechnology, including genetically modified organisms (GMOs), in ten African nations.

1994:


 * The first genetically engineered crop, Calgene's Flavr Savr tomato, is approved in the U.S. but ultimately fails and is withdrawn from the market.


 * Florence Wambugu left Monsanto for her native Kenya, where she heads the International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-biotech Applications (ISAAA) African Region Office (AfriCenter) in Nairobi. She is there until December 2001.


 * At the launching of the FAO Special Programme for Food Security in Low Income Food Deficit Countries Jacques Diouf says:
 * "We have tried the low input approach for several decades and it has brought us only a 2 percent decline in food output per person. That approach must be reversed. In the immediate-term we must focus on the areas of high production potential for which we have proven technologies. We must assure the farmers of these areas the full array of inputs and policies that will support their adoption of a modern, science-based system of intensive crop and livestock production. And, for the longer-term, we must develop the technologies that will bring a true transformation of agriculture to the whole of the African continent and to the other world nations that are food deficit because of lagging or backward agricultural and rural economies."

1995: Borlaug's seeds and chemicals reach 5000 farms. The Ethiopian government launches the National Extension Intensification Program to distribute seeds, fertilizer, and credit to 32,000 farms.

1996:
 * Ismail Serageldin, CGIAR Chairman, calls for "a thrice green revolution: green for productivity; green for environmental sustainability; and green for increased income as the entry point to improved living conditions, dealing with the access side of food security." At the same time, M.S. Swaminathan wrote about an "ever-green revolution," saying: "The steps taken during the last three years to “re-engineer” the CGIAR, both to maximize its impact and effectively address the concerns I have listed, indicate that the CGIAR will continue to be the flagship of the “Science for Sustainable Food Security Movement.” The major aim of the re-engineered CGIAR should be to promote an “ever-green revolution” based on a pro-nature, pro-poor, pro-woman, and pro-employment orientation to technology development and dissemination."


 * After President Jimmy Carter and Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi see lush Ethiopian cornfields grown with hybrid seeds and agrochemicals, Zenawi works to expand the National Extension Intensification Program to 320,000 farms. He announced he wanted to get the number up to 2 million by 1998. Pioneer Hi-Bred introduces its hybrid seeds to Ethiopia. Fertilizer use in Ethiopia doubles and grain production in the second half of the 1990s reaches 11 million tons per year, an increase of 4 million tons per year over the harvests of the 1980s.


 * Bt Cotton and Roundup Ready soybeans are first sold commercially in the United States.

1997:
 * Both Bono and Bill Gates become concerned about debt, disease, and hunger in Africa.


 * Rockefeller Foundation president Gordon Conway publishes The Doubly Green Revolution: Food for All in the 21st Century, calling for a second green revolution that is more environmentally friendly than the first. He recommends using GMOs and Integrated Pest Management. Later, Bill Gates says that this book "first got [him] enthused about agricultural work."


 * South Africa allowed farmers to grow GMOs commercially in South Africa. It was the first African nation to do so.


 * Forum for Agricultural Research in Africa (FARA) created during the Seventeenth Plenary Session of the Special Program for African Agricultural Research (SPAAR) by ASARECA, CORAF, The Sahel Institute (INSAH), Southern African Center for Cooperation in Agricultrural and Natural Resources Research and Training (SACCAR), and SPAAR. "FARA was envisioned as a facilitating and information exchange forum among the SROs and as an apex body to represent Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA)."

1998: Gates Foundation first funds "Global Health" with a program for children's vaccines.

1999:
 * Four million Ethiopian farms have already adopted hybrid seeds and agrochemicals.


 * "Between 1990-92 and 1997-99 daily per capita dietary energy supply in Sub-Saharan Africa rose slightly from 2120 to 2190 kcal. The number of chronically under-nourished people, however, increased from 168 to 194 million during the same period."

2000s
2000:
 * The Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety is adopted.


 * Robert Paarlberg publishes the article "The Global Food Fight" in Foreign Affairs magazine.
 * Senator John Ashcroft sponsors the "Advancing the Global Opportunities for Biotechnology in Agriculture Act of 2000," which would allocate $6 million to USAID "to educate government officials in developing countries regarding the use of biotechnology in the agricultural sector." The bill never becomes law.


 * The Special Program for African Agricultural Research (SPAAR) is transformed into the Forum for Agricultural Research in Africa (FARA), "an entity serving the interests of the SROs and their NARS stakeholders, with a permanent secretariat located in Africa."

2001:
 * Rep. Nick Smith (R-MI) introduces H.R. 2051, a bill "To authorize the National Science Foundation to establish regional centers for the purpose of plant genome and gene expression research and development and international research partnerships for the advancement of plant biotechnology in the developing world." It passes the House but does not become law.


 * Robert Paarlberg publishes the book The Politics of Precaution: Genetically Modified Crops in Developing Countries.


 * Rajiv Shah joins the Gates Foundation. During his time there, he works as Director of Agricultural Development in the Global Development Program.


 * The New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD) is established.

2002:
 * After harvesting bumper crops in the 2000-2001 season and the 2001-2002 season. However, the country lacked a transportation system to move the record harvests to areas in need of food. Ethiopia also lacked storage facilities. With all of the crops on the market at the same time, corn and wheat prices collapsed. Farmers who had spent money on inputs like seeds, fertilizer, pesticides, and fuel lost a lot of money. In the 2002-2003 crop year, farmers were unable to afford purchased inputs.


 * "In the 2002-2003 planting season, fertilizer use in Ethiopia plummeted 27 percent. Hybrid-seed sales tumbled 70 percent. To further cut down on expenses, the larger commercial farmers... took land out of production and turned off irrigation systems... Corn plantings for 2002-2003 were expected to fall by at least a quarter. And then drought hit. - Enough, p. 73."


 * USAID launches Agricultural Biotechnology Support Project (ABSP) II and the Program for Biosafety Systems (PBS) and, in 2003, phases out ABSP I. The two successor programs have the same general purpose as the program they replaced.


 * Gates Foundation "commits $50 million to support the launch of The Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN), an innovative partnership between the private and public sectors focused on supporting local food-fortification efforts in developing countries."


 * Africa Harvest Biotech Foundation International founded by Florence Wambugu.


 * African Agricultural Technology Foundation set up following two years of planning.

2003:
 * Ethiopia experienced a famine.


 * Gates Foundation launches Grand Challenges in Global Health initiative "to accelerate the discovery of new technologies to improve global health." One of the "Grand Challenges" is to "Create a Full Range of Optimal, Bioavailable Nutrients in a Single Staple Plant Species."


 * The U.S. House of Representatives holds a Hearing on Plant Biotechnology Research in Africa.


 * The U.S. government begins providing Biotech Outreach Funds to U.S. embassies around the world in order to promote genetic engineering to other countries.


 * The Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP) was established as part of NEPAD. CAADP has four pillars: Land and water management, Market access, Food supply and hunger, and Agricultural Research. Pillar 4 is led by Monty P. Jones at Forum for Agricultural Research in Africa (FARA).

2004:
 * Kofi Annan calls for a "new uniquely African Green Revolution—a revolution that is long overdue, a revolution that will help the continent in its quest for dignity and peace."


 * The Prime Minister of India called for a Second Green Revolution.


 * African Agricultural Technology Foundation launched in Kenya


 * Gates Foundation selects and funds the BioCassava Plus program to make genetically engineered cassava. The project is led by the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center

2005:
 * Prime Minister Singh of India enlists the help of President George W. Bush to create the U.S.-India Agricultural Knowledge Initiative.


 * Africa Biofortified Sorghum (ABS) project to make genetically engineered sorghum begins, funded by the Gates Foundation and run primarily by Africa Harvest and Pioneer Hi-Bred along with a consortium of other organizations.


 * The one hour documentary film "SILENT KILLER: The Unfinished Campaign Against Hunger" is released, funded by the Rockefeller Foundation. It features biotech advocate Florence Wambugu.

2006:
 * The Africa Fertilizer Summit takes place June 9-13, 2006, in Abuja, Nigeria. At the end of the summit, they announced the Abuja Declaration on Fertilizers for an African Green Revolution, a resolution to increase fertilizer use from 8.0 kilograms to 50.0 kilograms of nutrients per hectare by 2015.


 * The theme of the 2006 Borlaug Dialogue is "The Green Revolution Redux: Can We Replicate the Single Greatest Period of Food Production in All Human History?"


 * The Rockefeller Foundation and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation launch Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA). The interim founding president was Gary H. Toenniessen of the Rockefeller Foundation. "The foundations commit an initial investment of $150 million to develop and distribute improved seeds for farmers in Africa." Also, the Gates Foundation is restructured into four areas. The one that encompasses agriculture is Global Development, led by Sylvia Mathews Burwell


 * Robert Horsch leaves Monsanto for the Gates Foundation. In his new role, he is to work on "improving crop yields in sub-Saharan Africa."


 * The African Agricultural Technology Foundation and ISAAA join forces to open the Kenyan chapter of the Open Forum for Agricultural Biotechnology in Africa (OFAB).

2007:
 * Kofi Annan becomes the chairman of the board for AGRA in June.


 * Howard G. Buffett becomes a World Food Programme Hunger Ambassador. Buffett is a large-scale farmer in the American midwest, a former Vice President of agribusiness giant Archer Daniels Midland, and sits on the board of Coca-Cola.


 * The African Agricultural Technology Foundation, Uganda National Council of Science and Technology (UNCST) and the Programme for Biosafety Systems (PBS) come together to open a chapter of Open Forum for Agricultural Biotechnology in Africa (OFAB) in Uganda.


 * NEPAD's High-Level African Panel on Modern Biotechnology publishes the report "Freedom to Innovate: Biotechnology in Africa’s Development," written by Calestous Juma and Ismail Serageldin.

2008:
 * Ethiopia Commodity Exchange opens. The goal is "to tame that volatility by offering a place for fair price discovery, a place where production gluts could be absorbed and distributed, a place where farmers could finally share some of the risk, a place where they could obtain a futures contract that locked in price before even planting, a place where they could be directly connected to the consumers of their produce rather than through a series of middlemen who would pocket two-thirds of the final price."


 * Water Efficient Maize for Africa (WEMA) is formed. It is funded by the Gates Foundation and the Howard G. Buffett Foundation and coordinated by the African Agricultural Technology Foundation (AATF). The International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT), Monsanto, and the national agricultural research systems in Kenya, Mozambique, South Africa, Tanzania and Uganda all work together on the project.


 * Nations agree to the International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science, and Technology for Development, which recommends agroecology as the path to ending hunger and discourages biotechnology (including genetic engineering) and free trade agreements. Three nations vote against agreement with the report: the United States, Canada, and Australia.


 * Robert Paarlberg publishes the book Starved for Science: How Biotechnology Is Being Kept Out of Africa, which advocates for the use of GMOs in Africa.


 * Egypt and Burkina Faso become the second and third African nations to allow GMOs.


 * The Gates Foundation gives IRRI $11 million for the C4 Rice Project, a project to create genetically engineered rice.

2009:
 * "The global food price crisis of 2007-2008 and the global economic crisis resulted in an increase in the proportion and absolute number of hungry people worldwide to historic levels, over 1 billion in 2009."


 * In February, the Chicago Council on Global Affairs publishes a report called "Renewing American Leadership in the Fight Against Hunger and Poverty: The Chicago Initiative on Global Agricultural Development."


 * Senator Richard Lugar introduced the "Global Food Security Act," which would have changed the law on foreign aid to require that agricultural research aid "include research on biotechnological advances appropriate to local ecological conditions, including genetically modified technology." The co-chairs of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs report both testify, along with Robert Paarlberg, the report's lead author. The bill was passed by the Senate Foreign Relations committee but it never became law.


 * Norman Borlaug and Richard Lugar co-author an op-ed titled A new green revolution


 * In April, the South Africa-based African Centre for Biosafety publishes "Africa's Green Revolution Rolls Out the Gene Revolution." It starts:
 * "The drive by corporate players and certain philanthropic foundations for a ‘Green Revolution in Africa’ is an attempt to entrench an agricultural model based on chemical-intensive, large-scale monocultures designed for export under so-called free trade principles. The participation of biotechnology companies in this drive gives added cause for concern."


 * At the G8 Summit in L’Aquila, Italy, President Obama pledged $3.5 billion over three years (FY2010 to FY2012) to a global hunger and food security initiative to address hunger and poverty worldwide.


 * Rajiv Shah is appointed as an Undersecretary in the USDA in April but is later appointed administrator of USAID in December.


 * Roger Thurow and Scott Kilman publish Enough: Why the World's Poorest Starve in an Age of Plenty, calling for a second Green Revolution. Thurow is a fellow at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs.


 * The National Biotechnology Development Agency of Nigeria (NABDA) and the Agricultural Research Council of Nigeria (ARCN) open a chapter of Open Forum for Agricultural Biotechnology in Africa (OFAB) in Nigeria.


 * The Forum for Agricultural Research in Africa (FARA) launches a three-year Project on Strengthening Capacity for Safe Biotechnology Management in Sub-Saharan Africa, funded by the Syngenta Foundation for Sustainable Agriculture (SFSA). It is led by Walter Alhassan and is the first in a "series of projects to be launched by FARA under its African Biotechnology Biosafety Policy Platform (ABBPP) designed for capacity strengthening in biotechnology and biosafety in Africa."


 * Global Harvest Initiative founded.


 * Gates Foundation gives $1,474,392 to Harvard University "to promote the benefits of science and technology for African agriculture by promoting discussion and dissemination in Africa of an African Union commissioned and endorsed independent, expert report issued by the High-level African Panel on Biotechnology." The money goes to found Agricultural Innovation in Africa, headed by Calestous Juma.


 * Gates Foundation gives $11,929,537 to Michigan State University "to create a center in Africa that provides training, education, and technical support for African regulators to make informed decisions on how to use biotechnology while protecting farmers, consumers, and the environment." The grant created the African Biosafety Network of Expertise.

2010s
2010:
 * In March, African Agribusiness and Agro-industries Development Initiative (3ADI) is launched by New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD).


 * In May, the Obama administration announces the Feed the Future initiative.


 * Robert Paarlberg publishes the article "Attention Whole Foods Shoppers," admonishing Americans that eating local and organic food is no way to feed the world, because the world's hungry need "access to improved roads, modern seeds, less expensive fertilizer, electrical power, and better schools and clinics."

2011:
 * The Gates Foundation gives a grant of $8.3 million to the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center to support the BioCassava Plus (BC Plus) project


 * The Howard G. Buffett Foundation provides $4 million to Pioneer Hi-Bred and the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center for the Africa Biofortified Sorghum (ABS) project. The project was initially due to be completed by 2010.


 * Kenya becomes the fourth African nation to allow importation and planting of GMOs. The other three are South Africa, Egypt, and Burkina Faso.


 * Grow Africa founded as a partnership of private corporations, the African Union, and development agencies.

2012
 * According to Kenyan newspapers, Kenya will have GE maize seeds sold in shops in 2014. The maize is from Water Efficient Maize for Africa


 * In May 2012, the Chicago Council on Global Affairs holds its 3rd Annual Symposium on Global Agriculture and Food Security. Speakers include Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Bono, several African presidents, and CEOs of major agribusiness corporations (Monsanto, Syngenta, DuPont, Yara International, Elanco, etc.)


 * Barack Obama announces the New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition, a group of 45 private corporations he's enlisted to help in the Second Green Revolution.

Related Sourcewatch articles

 * Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
 * Gates Foundation Global Agriculture Grants
 * Rockefeller Foundation
 * Ford Foundation
 * U.S. Agency for International Development
 * Norman Borlaug
 * World Bank
 * Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa
 * Chicago Council on Global Affairs
 * Robert Paarlberg
 * Using Hunger to Promote Genetic Engineering
 * Monsanto's Use of Humanitarian Projects to Open Global Markets to GMOs

External Resources

 * "Countering Corporate Propaganda About GMOs," AGRA Watch.

External Articles

 * Donna Gordon Blankinship, "Gates Foundation spends $1.7B on farming in Africa," San Diego Union Tribune, June 1, 2011.
 * Faizan Ahmad, "Bihar will spawn 2nd Green Revolution, hopes Kalam," The Times of India, May 3, 2011.
 * Gregory M. Lamb, "How science could spark a second Green Revolution," Christian Science Monitor, April 6, 2010.
 * "Roots Key to Second Green Revolution," ScienceDaily, February 23, 2010.
 * Thomas L. Dobbs, "Challenges facing a second Green Revolution: Expanding the reach of organic agriculture," Crop Management, 2006.
 * Peter Steinhart, "The Second Green Revolution," New York Times, October 25, 1981.