ABSTRACT
The post-war Green Revolution with its emphasis on plant breeding in specialist centres tended to assume the required supporting infrastructure would be in place to assist the new technology. The twenty-first-century Green Revolution with its strong focus on Africa is repeating some of the mistakes of the past; that is, a focus on imported technology, particularly high yielding varieties from either China or the West into alien environments, without a full understanding of the local socio-political contexts, or even the differing agro-environmental contexts. The lessons learned from the Mexico, India, and the China experiences are the need for a more integrated approach in agricultural research, and more importantly to address gender issues and the importance that women farmers play as primary cultivators and farm managers. The success story of China and to a lesser extent India for a time, was that systems and policies were put in place to complement the technical changes.
