[...]... over the world made the decision to use them Most of the crucial events of the story took place within a quarter century, between 1945 and 1970 Nevertheless, the roots of the change stretch easily to the late nineteenth century More subtle traces lead back to the Neolithic period and the origins of agriculture Thus the inquiry is a historical reconstruction of past events in science, technology, and the. .. position and strength in the world depended in part on the plenty of its harvests A farmer's position and strength in society depended in part 14 Geopolitics and the Green Revolution on the magnitude of yields Plant breeding played an important role in shaping the external and internal destinies of nations It thereby also affected the details of human ecology: where people lived, what they did for work, and. .. Science and the Green Revolution, 1945-1975 Epilogue 256 Notes 269 Index 325 210 140 This page intentionally left blank GEOPOLITICS and the GREEN REVOLUTION This page intentionally left blank 1 Political Ecology and the Yield Transformation The Central Issues Something quite remarkable happened during the past century, and especially since 1950 Yields rose dramatically in the basic cereal crops such as wheat, ... transformation, the United Kingdom was one of the later arrivals to the countries that decided to adopt the high-yielding varieties An understanding of why Britain finally embraced the science it helped create is crucial to understanding the overall reasons for the yield transformation One other important point linked these four countries and wheat: wheat is a major cereal crop in each of the countries... addition to these changes in the growing tip of the main stem, the young wheat plant also begins to form tillers, or secondary stems, that emerge from the axils of the first several leaves (Axils are the plant tissues between the main stem and its leaves.) Each tiller also develops a growing tip that produces first leaves and then ears and Wheat, People, and Plant Breeding 21 Figure 2.1 Life cycle of wheat. .. problem to solve, therefore, was how to increase yields from the biosphere People who till the soil have known for millennia of two fundamentally different ways to increase the yield of the harvest The first method is to increase the amount of land under cultivation, and the second is to increase the yield per area of land Either way, the total yield goes up Expansion of cultivated area was the most important... devoted to the production of other goods An increase in cereal yields, if it is beyond the needs of the producers for their own subsistence, can be accumulated and used to support human labor to make something besides more cereal grain Therefore, the owner of surplus cereal grain can turn the surplus into capital and thus promote the production of many other types of goods and services Another way to... photosynthesis and how a particular species is involved with photosynthetic organisms Ecologists seek to understand the significance of relationships among different species that live together in the same place The term ecosystem designates the collection of species in an area and their associated physical surroundings Central to the study of ecosystems are the mutual interactions and linkages among species and. .. required the adoption of technologies created by the plant breeders and other agricultural scientists At a very fundamental level, therefore, use of plant-breeding science became synonymous with the property of being developed 16 Geopolitics and the Green Revolution Nevertheless, considerable controversy about the use of high-yielding varieties reverberated among policy analysts of both the industrialized... agriculture is the way people generate a food web and thus tap the primary production from solar energy fixed by green plants The food web supporting people is the key objective of agricultural ecosystems In physical terms, ecologists seek to understand food webs through the flow of solar energy into the earth, its fixation in photosynthesis and subsequent flow into animals and decomposers, and its ultimate . class="bi x0 y0 w0 h1" alt="" GEOPOLITICS and the GREEN REVOLUTION This page intentionally left blank GEOPOLITICS and the GREEN REVOLUTION Wheat, Genes, and the Cold War JOHN H. PERKINS New . and the green revolution : wheat, genes, and the cold war /John H. Perkins. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-19-511013-7 1. Wheat Breeding. 2. Wheat Breeding—Government. about why and how the science underlying the green revolution came to be. This book is an inquiry into the origins and unfolding of the scientific work upon which the green revolution