Controversy About Agricultural Technology: Lessons From The Green Revolution

The development and introduction of transgenically modified organisms to enhance crop and animal production has generated considerable controversy about potential food safety and environmental impacts. The introduction in tropical Latin America and Asia of high yielding varieties of wheat, maize and rice beginning in the late 1960s was also controversial. Critics argued that the new technology was biased against the poor-would make the rich richer and the poor poorer. In this paper I review the equity and productivity impacts of the "green revolution" technology and draw several inferences about evaluation the effects of the new biotechnologies in agricultural production.

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