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14 BIO LIFE January – March 2005
‘Doubly green
revolution’
now in Asia
TRADITIONAL corn farming in Mindanao.
A
“BETTER” kind of Green Revolution, release at IRRI’s website www.irri.org said.
this time called “doubly green revolution,”
The “doubly green revolution” was
is now invading the rice fields of first conceptualized by Gordon Conway,
Asia, including the Philippines, as farmers former head of the Rockefeller Foundation
adopt new technologies that reduce their
in a 1997 book of the same title.
inappropriate use of pesticides and boost Conway argued that the world needed a
their incomes, a rice expert said.
doubly-green revolution that would be
Ronald Cantrell, director general of the even more productive than the first
Philippines-based International Rice
Green Revolution, and “doubly green” by
Research Institute (IRRI), told the annual conserving natural resources and
general meeting of the Consultative Group protecting the environment.
on International Agricultural Research
“Today, we would like to suggest that,
(CGIAR) held in Mexico in October, that certainly in rice, the doubly green revolution
the days of unsustainable, high-input rice
has commenced,” Cantrell said. “IRRI
farming will soon be a thing of the past. and its partners in Asia have already
He described IRRI’s research strategy enjoyed noteworthy success with environment-friendly
for the 21st century as breeding improved
technologies for improving
rice varieties with durable diseaseresistance,
rice productivity and poor farmers’ lives.”
while developing innovative,
In Asia, the Green Revolution in rice
sustainable cropping systems, a news began with IRRI’s release in 1966 of IR8,
the first modern, high-yielding semi-dwarf
rice variety, IRRI said.
Half of the modern rice varieties released
in South and Southeast Asia over 38 years
derive at least partly from work by IRRI and
its partners. The global rice harvest has
more than doubled in that period, racing
slightly ahead of population growth.
Larger per capita harvests have helped
to reduce world rice prices by 80 percent
over the past 20 years. At the same time,
poor consumers have benefited through
lower prices for their staple food and their
single largest expense, and farmers have
enjoyed lower unit costs and higher profits.
At the national level, Asians have achieved
food security.
“However, as we all know, the job
started in the first Green Revolution is not
finished,” Cantrell said.
“Although it did stave off hunger to a
significant extent on two continents, an
estimated 800 million still do not have
access to sufficient food to meet their
needs, and millions of farmers remain
trapped in poverty.
“We have learned some important
lessons over the last 40 years,” Cantrell
added. “Modern technologies can be
environmentally sensitive if they are
designed and used with the benefit of
modern ecological knowledge. And IRRI is
committed to ensuring a cleaner, greener
environment.”
Cantrell cited four environmentally
focused research achievements. First,
work in China has confirmed that crop
biodiversity can play a key role in helping
farmers improve their livelihoods while
protecting the environment and their
families’ health. In 1997, IRRI scientists
and collaborators in Yunnan started
experiments with interplanting to control
the devastating rice blast fungus, while
reducing fungicide use. The technology
spread from a mere 12 hectares in an
initial experiment in 1997 to 812 hectares
in 1998, 3,000 hectares in 1999 and
43,000 hectares in 2000.
In 2000, The New York Times described
this project as one of the largest
agricultural experiments ever.
Today, farmers across 10 Chinese
provinces interplant nearly 1 million
hectares, achieving better plant protection
with minimal fungicide use and preserving
popular traditional varieties, IRRI said.
In Vietnam, IRRI and its government
partners have succeeded in implementing
integrated pest management and breaking
the farmers’ dependence on insecticides.
Research there has shown that