Timeline of the Green Revolution

This timeline of the Green Revolution provides the dates of the major milestones of the Green Revolution.

General
1940's:
 * 1943: The Rockefeller Foundation begins its Mexican Agricultural Program (MAP), marking the start of what will later be called the Green Revolution.
 * 1947: The Rockefeller Foundation, gave formal approval to begin projects based on their Mexican Agricultural Program in other nations.
 * January 20, 1949: Truman gives his inaugural address, outlining his Four Points, which paved the way for U.S. involvement in the Green Revolution.

1950's:
 * 1950: The Rockefeller Foundation realized that the Green Revolution "was a valuable weapon in the struggle to contain Communist expansion."
 * 1953: Norman Borlaug receives semi-dwarf wheat seeds that were the key to his breakthrough in breeding high-yielding wheat. He begins using these seeds in 1954.
 * 1956: Ford Foundation begins funding the Green Revolution.
 * 1959: Wilbur Hugh "Ping" Ferry coins the term "Green Revolution."

1960's:
 * February 1962: The International Rice Research Institute is founded.
 * 1962: Norman Borlaug released the first two high-yielding semidwarf wheat varieties to Mexican farmers. These varieties are able to produce exceptional yields if grown with large amounts of commercial nitrogen fertilizer.
 * 1966: The Office of Special Studies becomes the International Center for Maize and Wheat Improvement (CIMMYT)

1970's:
 * 1971: Norman Borlaug wins the Nobel Peace Prize. Some declare the Green Revolution "over."
 * 1971: The Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) is formed.

Mexico
The Green Revolution began as the Mexican Agricultural Program before it was extended worldwide and the name 'Green Revolution' was coined.

1930's

 * 1933: John A. Ferrell of the Rockefeller Foundation proposed what later became the Green Revolution to U.S. Ambassador to Mexico Josephus Daniels
 * 1936: Ferrell speaks to a former minister of agriculture about the possibility of a cooperative venture in agriculture between the Rockefeller Foundation and the Mexican government. With the encouragement of the former minister, he writes to Rockefeller Foundation president Raymond B. Fosdick.

1940's

 * Late 1940: U.S. Vice President-Elect Henry A. Wallace goes to Mexico for the inauguration of Mexican President Manuel Avila Camacho. He spends a month in Mexico, traveling the country and often talking to farmers about their crops.

1941:
 * February 3: Henry A. Wallace meets with Ferrell, Fosdick, Daniels, and Nelson Rockefeller, proposing that the Rockefeller Foundation undertake a project to increase agricultural productivity in Mexico.
 * Fosdick meets with Warren Weaver, who then meets with Albert R. Mann. They propose sending three experts to Mexico: Paul C. Mangelsdorf, Richard Bradfield, and Elvin C. Stakman.
 * July-December: Mangelsdorf, Stakman, and Bradfield travel and research in Mexico. Upon their return, they propose a four man team located in or near Mexico city that includes: an agronomist/soil scientist, a plant breeder, a plant pathologist/entomologist, and an animal husbandman.

1943:
 * February: With an invitation from the Mexican government, the Rockefeller Foundation selects J. George Harrar as the director of the Mexican Agricultural Program.
 * February 10: The Rockefeller Foundation signs a Memorandum of Understanding with the Mexican Government, citing the top two priorities as wheat rust and creating improved maize varieties.
 * Edwin J. Wellhausen, a maize geneticist, joins the program.
 * The Office of Special Studies is established within Mexico's Ministry of Agriculture.

1944:
 * October: Norman E. Borlaug, a plant pathologist and plant breeder, joins the program.
 * MAP briefly attempts to improve the nutritional quality of the corn in the seed varieties it created, but soon gave up. Joseph Cotter says, "Fighting malnutrition quickly became a secondary objective of the MAP."

1946:
 * By this point, 44 Mexicans had completed advanced agricultural studies in the U.S. and 10 others were enrolled. MAP scientists helped plan curriculum for many courses at Mexico's National School of Agriculture, and J. George Harrar taught field plot technique courses there.
 * To improve the diet of Mexican peasants, Harrar "added vegetable cultivation and breeding to the MAP's project list."
 * The US government sends food aid to Mexico but decides not to do so in the future.
 * Between 1946 and 1949, the USDA gave fellowships to 13 Mexican agricultural students. Harrar evaluated their applications.

1947:
 * MAP begins distributing corn seeds to farmers.
 * MAP uses DDT and Benzine-hexachloride to control corn pests but "admitted that 'these insecticides are too expensive for most Mexican farmers.'"
 * "George C. Marshall declared that the United States would devote most foreign aid to 'countries where conditions are so unstable that proper safeguards against ideological coercion have weakened.'" The U.S. felt that Latin America was a safe region and focused worries about Communism on Europe and then Asia. "The USDA did not withdraw completely from Mexico but focused on prewar agendas like protecting U.S. farmers and promoting complementary crops."

1948:
 * "Wellhausen reported that farmers' demands for his new open-pollinated and hybrid corns surpassed supply"
 * MAP distributes wheat seeds resistant to stem rust to farmers.
 * MAP publishes a pamphlet on DDT and shows Mexican farmers how to use the herbicide 2,4-D.
 * The U.S. passes Public Law 402 authorizing use of govt funds for "a world-wide program of scientific and technical exchange."
 * Rockefeller Foundation exchanges information with the Office of Foreign Agricultural Relations (OFAR) about their MAP program.
 * Nelson Rockefeller visited Mexico to study MAP.

1949:
 * By this time, "MAP conducted corn research at Chapingo, Celaya, Guadalajara, and Morelos; worked on hybrids for the tropics; and tested wheat in Chapingo, Sonora, and La Laguna. Responding to commercial farmers and other interests, the MAP studied seed potatoes, safflower, an African oilseed, insect pests of tomatoes, potato diseases, soybeans, and sorghum."
 * In an effort to promote aquaculture to increase protein in Mexicans' diets, MAP had Herbert S. Jackson build several demonstration ponds.
 * MAP uses Parathion, Chlordane, and other pesticides on corn, beans, and wheat.

1950's
1950:
 * By this time, Mexico's Corn Commission had promoted hybrid corn varieties in 9 Mexican states, MAP had conducted experiments in 19 states, had distributed new seed in 22 states, and had distributed over 100kg of new seed in 10 states.

1951:
 * Green Revolution wheat varieties covered 70% of all land planted in wheat.

1952:
 * Mexico imported significant quantities of wheat, corn, rice, and even garbanzos

1953:
 * Norman Borlaug receives semi-dwarf wheat seeds that were the key to his breakthrough in breeding high-yielding wheat. He begins using these seeds in 1954.

1955:
 * Insecticide imports reach 30,526 metric tons (compared to only 432 in 1940).

1956:
 * Mexico achieves wheat self-sufficiency.


 * Late 1950s: From this point on, with the exception of 1963, Mexico is "virtually self-sufficient in corn and wheat."

1960's

 * 1962: Norman Borlaug released the first two semidwarf varieties to Mexican farmers.


 * 1965: Green Revolution wheat varieties covered 80% of all land planted in wheat.
 * 1966: The Office of Special Studies becomes the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT)

1967:
 * Chemical fertilizer use reaches 379,000 tons (up from 12,000 tons in 1950).

1968:
 * Green Revolution wheat varieties covered 90% of all land planted in wheat.
 * Green Revolution varieties are grown in 20% of Mexico's cornfields.

India
Before 1940:
 * 1919: India becomes a net food importer instead of a net food exporter.

1940s

 * Summer 1942: The government of India began a formal Grow More Food campaign.
 * 1943: The Great Bengal Famine occurs. Between 1.5 and 3 million Indians die.
 * February-July 1944: The Advisory Board for the Imperial Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) plans India's participation in the UN FAO.
 * 1946: Rockefeller Foundation president Raymond Fosdick finds the foundation under criticism for their work on public health. With improved public health, would people in poor countries be kept alive only to find themselves without food? Concern over overpopulation focuses almost immediately on India.
 * 1947: India gains its independence from Britain.
 * August 1948: The new Rockefeller Foundation president Chester I. Barnard raises the issue of overpopulation with Warren Weaver.
 * 1948: A pilot community development project begins in the Etawah District of Uttar Pradesh, India.
 * 1949: India's relationship with the U.S. fundamentally changes when China goes Communist and the Soviet Union gets the atomic bomb. The U.S. sees food aid as a way to keep India from going Communist; India requests and accepts U.S. food aid as a means of preventing hunger but also keeping food cheap to promote industrialization with low wages in its cities.

1950's

 * 1951-1956: First Five Year Plan
 * 1951: The Ford Foundation signs an agreement of $1.2 million with the Indian government to train personnel for the community development project. The project director was Douglas Ensminger.
 * October 1951: The Rockefeller Foundation increases its agricultural budget to $1.5 million per year and commits to funding agricultural work in India.
 * 1951: Rockefeller sends a study team composed of Warren Weaver, J. George Harrar, and Paul C. Mangelsdorf to India.
 * 1952: The U.S. Technical Cooperation Administration (the precursor of USAID) pledges $50 million (matched by about $86 million from the Indian government) to support the Community Development Project plus work to improve rural infrastructure.
 * April 1952: Harrar, Weaver, and Mangelsdorf write "Notes on Indian Agriculture." "This report led to several follow-up visits by [Rockefeller Foundation] representatives and ultimately to India's request for a collaborative agricultural program." With this, the Rockefeller Foundation launches its India Agricultural Program (IAP)
 * 1953: India forms its National Extension Service (NES).
 * 1955-56: At the encouragement of the U.S., India creates an Indo-American team to study Indian agricultural universities and make recommendations. The recommendations are for India to organize its universities like U.S. land grant universities.
 * 1956-1961: Second Five Year Plan. India decides to de-emphasize agriculture in its second Five Year plan.
 * 1956: After five trips to India, Rockefeller Foundation finally comes to an agreement with the Indian government.


 * "It's possible that the Rockefeller Foundation's insistence that the most important task at hand was basic research led to the four year delay in establishing an operational program in India. The Government of India, the U.S. Technical Cooperation Administration, and the Ford Foundation were more interested in using existing knowledge for Community Development... In some ways, George Harrar, Warren Weaver, and the other Foundation scientists... they did not believe that the appropriate knowledge existed, so a scientific agriculture for India had to be created almost from the beginning."


 * 1956: The Rockefeller Foundation grants $1.38 million to help India develop the Indian Agricultural Research Institute and to begin a "cereals" improvement program.
 * 1957: Douglas Ensminger of the Ford Foundation spends three months traveling the Indian countryside, writes a briefing paper for Nehru, and meets with him.
 * 1959: A team put together by Ensminger, led by Sherman Johnson of the USDA completes a report India's Food Crisis and Steps to Meet It. This shifts India from focusing on social reform to improve agriculture to focusing instead on adoption of new agricultural technologies.
 * 1959: M.S. Swaminathan, an assistant cytogeneticist at Indian Agricultural Research Institute in New Delhi, learns about the work of Orville Arthur Vogel with semidwarf varieties of wheat that were able to utilize large amounts of commercial fertilizer and produce high yields. Vogel puts him in touch with Norman Borlaug.

1960's
1963:
 * March: Norman Borlaug visits India, where he is hosted by M.S. Swaminathan, spending a month traveling to see Indian wheat varieties.
 * November: A shipment of Mexican wheat varieties from Norman Borlaug arrives in India.

1964:
 * January 8: Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru suffers a stroke.
 * March: Swaminathan asks Borlaug to send him 20 tons each of two Mexican varieties of wheat for planting at 1000 acres of demonstration plots at research stations.
 * May 27: Nehru dies.
 * Lal Bahadur Shastri became Prime Minister and appoints C. Subramaniam as Minister of Food and Agriculture.
 * June: Shastri's "prices committee" recommends policies of government "incentive prices" above market prices for grains and "larger investments in production inputs."
 * July: Subramaniam announces the Food Corporation of India, which will buy grains at "prices attractive to farmers.

1965:
 * January 1: Subramaniam gives a speech to the National Development Council, Committee on Agriculture and Irrigation in which he calls for "wider use of science in reforming Indian agriculture, including the use of better seeds, more and better use of fertilizer, and more efficient use of irrigation."
 * March and April: India decides to release two more varieties of hybrid wheat for commercial production on irrigated land.
 * June: B.P. Pal becomes director general of the Indian Council for Agricultural Research.
 * Early July: The Indian government orders 200 tons of seed for one variety (Sonora 64) from Borlaug.
 * Late July: The Indian government ordered another 50 tons of the second variety (Lerma Rojo 64A). Together, the 250 tons would be used for testing, demonstrations, and distribution to 5000 farmers.
 * Summer: U.S. State Department informs India that future food aid will be dependent on India's allocation of foreign exchange for fertilizer or on building fertilizer plants in India. "In addition, in August 1965, the Johnson administration put India on a virtually month-to-month arrangement for food aid. These explicit links between population, food aid, and agricultural policy were stimulated by a conference of demographers, policy makers, and others, which was held in July and organized by the Rockefeller Foundation."
 * August: Subramaniam issues the plan "Agricultural Production in the Fourth Five Year Plan: Strategy and Programme," bringing an official end to the government policy of community development and instead supporting "agricultural entrepreneurs." (Whereas the government made this shift five years earlier in theory, this plan marks a shift in practice.)
 * Late September: Following a war with Pakistan, India asks the Rockefeller Foundation for 5000 tons of Mexican wheat seed to be planted in fall 1966.
 * By November, the price of wheat has increased by 33 percent since 1964.

1966:
 * January 11: Prime Minister Shastri dies.
 * January 19: Nehru's daughter, Indira Gandhi, becomes Prime Minister.
 * March: Indira Gandhi visits the U.S. "as part of the new government's efforts to improve relations with the United States. Gandhi was obliged to meet the demands of the Johnson administration that India devalue the rupee, enhance its own ability to increase agricultural production, and in other ways show evidence of development that were consistent with what the world's largest capitalist country thought development should be."
 * February: India revises its request to the Rockefeller Foundation for Mexican wheat seeds from 5000 tons to 2000 tons.
 * April: India again revises its request for wheat seeds to 21,000 tons. J. George Harrar, now President of Rockefeller Foundation, not wanting responsibility for any potential failures of the wheat, offers India $100,000 to pay for wheat seed.
 * An Indian team led by S.P. Kohli of the Indian Agricultural Research Institute goes to Mexico to select and purchase wheat seeds for planting in 1966.
 * July 18: The Indian purchase of 18,000 tons of hybrid wheat seeds is shipped from Sonora, Mexico.
 * Mid-September: The wheat seeds arrive in Gujarat, India.
 * Green Revolution varieties of wheat covered 504,000 hectares in India in 1966-67.


 * 1967: After this point, Indian grain production increases steadily.

1970's

 * January 1972: B.P. Pal retires as director general of the Indian Council for Agricultural Research and M.S. Swaminathan replaces him in that position.
 * 1972-73: Green Revolution varieties of wheat covered 10 million hectares, a 20-fold increase over the 1966-67 crop year.

Latin America Outside Mexico
1940's:
 * 1942: The Inter-American Institute of Agricultural Sciences is founded, promoting "modernization" of agriculture.
 * 1948: Norman Borlaug and Ed J. Wellhausen visit Colombia, where the Rockefeller Foundation will establish an agricultural program a few years later.
 * 1948: The Organization of American States is founded and the Inter-American Institute of Agricultural Sciences becomes a part of it.
 * Rockefeller adviser Elvin C. Stakman visits 13 South and Central American nations, including Argentina, Chile, Ecuador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Uruguay, to investigate "the quality of education in the natural sciences as well as that of agricultural research in leading experiment stations."
 * 1949: Stakman evaluates projects of the Office of Foreign Agricultural Relations (OFAR) in Guatemala and Ecuador.

1950's:
 * 1950: The Rockefeller Foundation begins a "cooperative agricultural development program" similar to the Mexican Agricultural Program, in Colombia under Dr. Lewis M. Roberts.
 * August 1951: The Organization of American States founds Project 39, entitled "Technical Education for the Improvement of Agriculture and Rural Life." This program trained technicians, scientists, and agronomists from Central and South America and the Caribbean in agriculture and nutrition.
 * 1953: Rockefeller Foundation sends a team of experts, including Paul C. Mangelsdorf, to Peru.

The Philippines

 * 1959: The Ford Foundation gives a $7 million grant to the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI).

Related Sourcewatch articles

 * Rockefeller Foundation
 * Mexican Agricultural Program
 * Green Revolution