Africa's Green Revolution: critical perspectives on new agricultural technologies and systems

Abstract

In a recent call for a new Green Revolution in the US, Sharp and Leshner (2016) claimed that "[n]ow, more than ever, we need to embrace 21st-century science, fund it and turn it loose so we can develop better methods of putting food on the table." Berry, Jackson, and Berry (2016) responded by fervently criticizing Sharp and Leshner for their ignorance of the serious negative ecological and social consequences of the Green Revolution, calling attention to their remarkable omission of farmland or farmers in their article about agriculture, and concluding that "…even eminent scientists, who propose to improve agriculture exclusively by scientific research and technological innovation with no regard for land and people, know little about agriculture." For them, the solutions to agricultural problems lay in the traditional methods of farmers that are both more ecologically sound and socially just than Green Revolution technologies