This included modern irrigation projects, as well as the use of chemical pesticides and synthetic fertiliser. Its primary aspect, however, was the adoption of vastly improved, and genetically modified, crop varieties. That is why wheat yields have tripled since the early 1970s among developing countries – possibly saving a billion lives in the process.
But what if that Green Revolution, which allowed us to feed more people than ever before, and using less labour to do so, was only the beginning? What if, rather than inhabiting an exhausted planet, we had only begun to understand how our mastery of nature could confer almost limitless abundance? If information wants to be free – and the bounty of nature is highly complex arrangements of information – then why should hunger exist at all?
The first Green Revolution seemingly confounded Malthus, Jevons and Ehrlich, confirming that our collective intelligence is suficient to satisfy our appetites. As with so much in the twentieth century, however, that isn’t to say it came without a cost. Fossil fuels were burned like never before, only accelerating climate change, while natural habitats were destroyed, rivers and lakes were poisoned and soil became ever less fertile. The last century may have proven the pessimists wrong, but it still appears we are living on borrowed time. The reprieve was temporary.
No less an issue is the treatment of animals within this ultraeficient paradigm of farming. The agricultural practices of the modern era may deliver higher amounts of protein, carbohydrate and fat, but in addition to exhausting our planet it also brings immense sufering to sentient life. Millions of male chicks, along with their shells, are macerated alive on conveyor belts because they can’t lay eggs, while chickens in battery farms spend their lives in a space the size of an A4 sheet of paper pumped with antibiotics to stop infection. Female cows must calve at least once a year to continually produce milk and are artificially inseminated to do so. A cow would naturally suckle her calf for nine months to a year, but calves born on dairy farms are taken from their mothers within days of being born – a traumatic experience for both animals. Males are of little use to a dairy farmer and more than one hundred thousand bull calves are shot in the UK every year.
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