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The "Green Revolution" and Scientific Farming

Pictures/100.jpg Scientific farming methods try to improve on nature by boosting the short-term abilities of plants to fight disease, absorb nutrients from soil and fertilizers, and provide better yields. Scientific farming has became widespread in the latter half of the 20th century and has been instrumental in the change from family farms to larger, "corporate" farms.
With great increases in population in this century, especially in the Third World, there has been growing concern that traditional agricultural methods would be unable to keep up with increased demand for food.
In the 1940's, a handful of scientists, sponsored by the Rockefeller Foundation, were invited to Mexico to look into ways to modernize and improve the efficiency of Mexican farmers. The group, led by agronomist Norman Borlaug, investigated a combination of factors:
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  • Hybrid seeds: a hybrid seed is developed by mating, or cross-breeding, 2 or more species of plants. The hope is that the resulting hybrid will have the most positive characteristics of all the crossed varieties. Hybrids are sterile, and must continually be reproduced by cross-breeding methods
  • intensive irrigation
  • intensive use of fertilizers
This research found rapid success. In many cases, farmers using Green Revolution hybrids were able to double their output in less than a decade.
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