(2 of 3)
Taste Test. Many of the countries, however, are incapable of handling the huge crops that they have begun harvesting. In West Pakistan, there is not a single elevator for storing the mountainous grain crop. As much as 20% of that crop is being lost to rodents, bugs, at-home pilferers and foreign smugglers. For two months in 1968, scores of village schools in northern India were closed because the buildings had been commandeered to store surplus wheat. Even so, untold numbers of Indians starved because the country—like most that are harvesting huge crops for the first time—lacked adequate distribution and marketing networks.
Another serious problem is consumer resistance. Many of the peasants of South and Southeast Asia, who eat rice with their fingers, find that the miracle rice is too gluey and sticks to their fingers. In Turkey, imported Mexican wheat sells for 10% less than local wheats; it fails the taste test. The new rice sells for 30% less in the Philippines and is often sold at a discount for use as cattle fodder. Moreover, production spurted so quickly that in many cases prices have tumbled.
In many areas, one effect of the Green Revolution has been to widen the gap between the rich and the poor. Explains Barbara Ward: "Large holdings can be mechanized and smaller farms consolidated, thus increasing the gains of the fortunate and ruining the little man." Without government credits, agrees FAO Director Boerma, "it is indeed only the richer farmer who can afford the investment to develop the Green Revolution." In one clash in Tanjore, one of India's model agricultural development districts, between two groups of landless laborers, 42 people were burned to death.
Displaced Peasants. Despite—and to some extent because of—the bright and glittering promises of greater production, agriculture cannot possibly provide employment for those additional millions who will be populating the earth by 1985 (another one billion in the underdeveloped countries alone). Says a recent FAO report: "Nearly 70% of the people living in the Third World depend upon agriculture for their livelihood." By 1985, their number is expected to increase nearly 50%—even though, the report adds, "there are far more people on farms now than are needed."
As British officials see it, the displaced peasant will be the Third World's biggest problem for the next 20 years. Says Lester Brown, senior fellow of Washington's Overseas Development Corporation: "The food problems of the '60s could well become the employment problems of the '70s. Large numbers of people neither culturally nor vocationally ready for urban life are being driven into the cities."