{"id":10364,"date":"2014-09-22T05:00:48","date_gmt":"2014-09-22T09:00:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/?p=10364"},"modified":"2014-09-21T11:45:04","modified_gmt":"2014-09-21T15:45:04","slug":"what-would-an-african-green-revolution-entail-for-land-use-and-co2-emissions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/10364","title":{"rendered":"What Would an African Green Revolution Entail for Land Use and CO2 Emissions?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"WheatIsrael\"<\/a>
Wheat in Israel. (Source: Wikimedia Commons.)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Most of the readers of this blog are familiar with the Green Revolution<\/a>\u00a0which, according to Wikipedia,<\/p>\n

refers to a series of research, and development, and technology transfer initiatives, occurring between the 1940s and the late 1960s, that increased agricultural production worldwide, particularly in the developing world, beginning most markedly in the late 1960s.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The name most often associated with the Green Revolution is that of Norman Borlaug<\/a>. Borlaug was a plant scientist and University of Minnesota alumnus whose work on plant breeding led to the maize yield improvements that paved the way for greater food security since the 1970s. Borlaug also won the Nobel peace prize for his work.<\/p>\n

The innovations brought forth by the Green Revolution worked really well in Asia and, to a lesser extent, in Latin America (in his book Food Politics<\/em><\/a>, Rob Paarlberg has a good discussion of the institutional differences that led to different outcomes). The Green Revolution, however, has almost completely bypassed Africa (with the result that African yields have either stagnated or decreased over the last few decades), so a lot of the discussion surrounding food policy debates\u00a0in recent years has focused on how an African Green Revolution can happen, and what it will look like.<\/p>\n

A Green Revolution for Africa<\/h3>\n

What would an African Green Revolution do to global land use and CO2 emissions? That’s the question my Purdue colleague Tom Hertel and his coauthors set out to answer in an\u00a0article<\/a>\u00a0(ungated) titled “Global market integration increases likelihood that a future African Green Revolution could increase crop land use and CO2 emissions” published recently in\u00a0PNAS<\/em>. Here is their abstract:<\/p>\n

There has been a resurgence of interest in the impacts of agricultural\u00a0productivity on land use and the environment. At the center of this\u00a0debate is the assertion that agricultural innovation is land sparing.\u00a0However, numerous case studies and global empirical studies have\u00a0found little evidence of higher yields being accompanied by reduced\u00a0area. We find that these studies overlook two crucial factors:\u00a0estimation of a true counterfactual scenario and a tendency to adopt\u00a0a regional, rather than a global, perspective.<\/strong> This paper introduces\u00a0a general framework for analyzing the impacts of regional and\u00a0global innovation on long run crop output, prices, land rents, land\u00a0use, and associated CO2 emissions. In so doing, it facilitates a reconciliation\u00a0of the apparently conflicting views of the impacts of\u00a0agricultural productivity growth on global land use and environmental\u00a0quality. Our historical analysis demonstrates that the Green\u00a0Revolution in Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East was unambiguously\u00a0land and emissions sparing, compared with a counterfactual\u00a0world without these innovations. In contrast, we find that the\u00a0environmental impacts of a prospective African Green Revolution\u00a0are \u00a0potentially ambiguous.<\/strong> We trace these divergent outcomes to\u00a0relative differences between the innovating region and the rest of\u00a0the world in yields, emissions efficiencies, cropland supply response,\u00a0and intensification potential. Globalization of agriculture raises the\u00a0potential for adverse environmental consequences. However, if sustained\u00a0for several decades, an African Green Revolution will eventually\u00a0become land sparing.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Among other results, here is what they find:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. The Green Revolution was land- and emissions-sparing. That is, it did not come at the cost of more land farmed or more CO2 emissions.<\/li>\n
  2. If global markets remain segmented, the African Green Revolution will have similar impacts. That is, if food markets do not become more integrated, there is nothing to fear from a potential African Green Revolution regarding land use or CO2 emissions.<\/li>\n
  3. Conversely, with a fully integrated global economy, a potential African Green Revolution will increase CO2 emissions. But given the slow pace at which the trade of agricultural and food\u00a0commodities is being liberated, I’m not sure there is much to worry about.<\/li>\n
  4. Also conversely, with a fully integrated global economy, a potential African Green Revolution can be land-sparing, but only in the long run.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Most of the readers of this blog are familiar with the Green Revolution\u00a0which, according to Wikipedia, refers to a series of research, and development, and<\/p>\n

    Continue readingWhat Would an African Green Revolution Entail for Land Use and CO2 Emissions?<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10364","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1gPg8-2Ha","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10364","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10364"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10364\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10373,"href":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10364\/revisions\/10373"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10364"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10364"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10364"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}