ABSTRACT
In the early 1960s, the spectre of global famine spurred agricultural researchers and policy-makers to give a very high priority to agricultural improvement. This gave rise to the so-called Green Revolution. As a result of the modernisation of rice, wheat and maize varieties, and increased consumption of fertilisers and pesticides, food production per capita has, since the mid 1960s, risen by 7 per cent for the world as a whole, with the greatest increases in Asia — up by about 40 per cent. Nitrogen consumption has increased from two to 75 million tonnes in the last 50 years, and pesticide consumption in many individual countries has increased by 10 to 30 per cent since the 1980s alone.
