Indian Agricultural: Growth, Generation, Policy & Problem Indian Agricultural | Page 34

Pg.no. 33
Nevertheless, the world community has clearly acknowledged the negative aspects of agricultural
expansion as the 1992 Rio Treaty, signed by 189 nations, has generated numerous national
Biodiversity Action Plans which assign significant biodiversity loss to agriculture's expansion into new
domains.
The Green Revolution has been criticized for an agricultural model which relied on a few staple and
market profitable crops, and pursuing a model which limited the biodiversity of Mexico. One of the
critics against these techniques and the Green Revolution as a whole was Carl O. Sauer, a
geography professor at the University of California, Berkeley. According to Sauer these techniques of
plant breeding would result in negative effects on the country's resources, and the culture:
"A good aggressive bunch of American agronomists and plant breeders could ruin the native
resources for good and all by pushing their American commercial stocks… And Mexican agriculture
cannot be pointed toward standardization on a few commercial types without upsetting native
economy and culture hopelessly... Unless the Americans understand that, they'd better keep out of
this country entirely. That must be approached from an appreciation of native economies as being
basically sound".
Greenhouse gas emissions
According to a study published in 2013 in PNAS, in the absence of the crop germplasm improvement
associated with the Green Revolution, greenhouse gas emissions would have been 5.2-7.4 Gt higher
than observed in 1965–2004. High yield agriculture has dramatic effects on the amount of carbon
cycling in the atmosphere. The way in which farms are grown, in tandem with the seasonal carbon
cycling of various crops, could alter the impact carbon in the atmosphere has on global warming.
Wheat, rice, and soybean crops account for a significant amount of the increase in carbon in the
atmosphere over the last 50 years.
Dependence on non-renewable resources
Ramesh Kumar P