Green Revolution

Gosh the internet is fun.

In case anyone missed it in the news or the blogs, Barack Obama gave a commencement address at Wellsley recently, and called for a green revolution.

Thinks I to myself, "Haven't we already had one?"

A moment at the keyboard reveals this thing that started in 1943, called, yes, the Green Revolution. (The phrase is apparently attributed to former USAID director William Gaud in that most bizarre of years, 1968.)

I knew the general outline--hybridized crops created for greater drought resistance and higher yields, and the substitution of scientific farming for subsistence farming. The short answer, I think, is "more pesticides, more monocultural planting, and more food."

Reading the post at Wikipedia (yeah, I know, it's Wikipedia---so?), however, I got the absolute running giggles over something, and it was something that proves to my satisfaction at least that I have not slipped into liberality. At least in the political sense. (I still pour a liberal dollop of Scotch!) Funny, sometimes, how "absolute running giggles" and "liberality" (at least in the political sense) just seem to go hand in hand.

I quote, from the then-current relevant entry at Wikipedia:

A major critic of the Green Revolution, the US investigative journalist Mark Dowie, writes that the primary objective of the program was a Cold War geopolitical one: providing food for the populace in underdeveloped countries which thus brought social stability and weakened the fomenting of communist insurgency. Citing internal Foundation documents, he states that the Ford Foundation had a greater concern than Rockefeller in this area.[27]

Those . . . BASTARDS! Providing food for the populace of underdeveloped countries was meant to ENHANCE social stability!

I can imagine the thinking now: "Hmm, maybe the appeal of those godless commies won't be so strong if people have food to eat---say, would that be good for us?