快猫短视频

THE Green Revolution, almost everyone agrees, averted mass starvation in the
1970s or 1980s. The annoying absence of a parallel Earth as control subject
makes it impossible to be precise鈥攂ut who among us would volunteer to be
an inhabitant of control-Bangladesh?

In this first Green Revolution, researchers concentrated鈥攚ith
considerable success鈥攐n developing new strains of grain. The aim was to
increase yields, under a wide variety of conditions, from all the
good-to-middling land in the world.

Much of the scheme鈥檚 success depended on a few 鈥渄warfing genes鈥�. Introduced
into rice and wheat by conventional plant breeding, these concentrate the
plants鈥� productive capacity into the grain rather than the stem, allowing them
to take up large amounts of fertiliser without keeling over.

Now a second revolution is needed, as Gordon Conway argues in The Doubly
Green Revolution (Penguin, 拢9.99, ISBN 014026616X). It will need to
tweak the best yields from all the world鈥檚 farms, adapting crops to conditions
district by district, if not field by field. This can be achieved only by making
use of farmers鈥� knowledge of what works in their own conditions. That means all
the farmers, not just the high-ranking ones.

We cannot, of course, be sure that the First Green Revolution is running out
of steam. The early signs of a tailing-off, S-shaped yield curve might be an
example of what plant physiologist L.T. Evans calls 鈥渟igmoid fraud鈥� (after the
S-shape). But Conway鈥檚 advice has common-sense appeal and promises a more robust
agriculture through diversity. More detail would be useful, especially about the
instances Conway mentions when farmers managed to solve their pest problems
after giving up pesticides altogether. No amount of collaborative research with
farmers will solve the problem of water supply or extortionate credit. But
Conway provides a clear and concise guide to a key part of what is possibly the
most critical question facing humanity.