The correct answer is the letter B) They no longer needed to fear famine thanks to new high-yield rice varieties
Explanation:
Tom Standage, in “An Edible History of Humanity” (Rio de Janeiro; Zahar; 2010), states that Asia's rebirth has many causes, but it would not have been possible without the spectacular increase in agricultural productivity brought about by the green revolution. Between 1970 and 1995, cereal production in Asia doubled, the number of calories available per person increased by 30% and wheat and rice prices fell.
The immediate impact of agricultural progress is poverty reduction for the simple reason that the poor are more likely to work in agriculture and that food is responsible for most of their household spending. Indeed, the range of Asia's population living in poverty fell from about 50% in 1975 to 25% in 1995. The absolute number of Asians in this condition also declined, from 1.15 billion to 825 million in the period considered above. that the population has grown by 60%. Agricultural progress has set Asia on the path to economic development and industrialization.
For increased agricultural productivity to translate into broader economic growth and industrialization, however, several other things must happen:
farmers should have incentives to increase production;
there must be infrastructure to transport seeds and chemicals to farms as well as to allow products to flow from them; and
there must be adequate access to credit to allow farmers to buy seeds, fertilizer, tractors and so on.
Agricultural progress can trigger sudden economic growth, but the speed with which it occurs depends crucially on the simultaneous introduction of non-agricultural reforms. Consider the examples from India and China.
Following the failure of the Great Leap Forward, reformers within the Chinese government took a more conventional approach to increasing agricultural production, and arranged for the purchase of five medium-sized ammonia plants from Britain and the Netherlands between 1963 and 1965. Once ready and in operation, these factories supplied 25% of the nitrogen applied to the Chinese fields.
But the upheaval of the Cultural Revolution in the mid-1960s meant that in 1972 per capita food production was even lower than in the 1950s, and rapid population growth meant that the amount of land available for agriculture by person shrunk quickly. The only option was to increase productivity.
President Richard Nixon visited China in 1972, opening trade between the two countries, and the first agreement signed was an order from 13 of the largest and most modern fertilizer factories in the United States - the largest such purchase in history. Within a few years, China had moved ahead of the United States, becoming the largest consumer of fertilizer in the world, and then became the largest producer. The country also quickly adopted the new high yielding dwarf varieties of wheat and rice.
Political reforms were also needed. After Mao's death in 1976, reformers led by Deng Xiaoping concluded that agriculture was the bottleneck that prevented further economic progress. They then introduced a two-tier system where families were given land and could decide what to grow on it as long as they met a state quota of about 15 to 20 percent of their production, and could sell the rest and save the profit. This encouraged farmers to increase production.
Because the system proved to be a great success in the first areas where it was tested, it was expanded nationwide between 1979 and 1984. Targets and quotas were gradually removed, and this approach was then adopted as a model for the rest of the Chinese economy. , in which free enterprise was authorized under the supervision of the state sector, rapidly overcoming it.
As agriculture became more productive, rural workers were able to move to other areas, starting with food processing and distribution and gradually expanding to other industries and services.
In the mid-1990s, rural “village and village enterprises”, almost nonexistent in 1978, accounted for 25% of the Chinese economy. These firms began to put pressure on state-run companies in the less competitive cities. This, in turn, spurred broader economic reforms, the creation of special economic zones for industrial activity, efforts to attract foreign investment, and so on - things that fueled greater economic growth. The result was a staggering reduction in poverty from 33% of the population in 1978 to 3% in 2001.
India has been slower in introducing the policy reforms needed to allow improvements in agricultural productivity to translate into economic growth. Instead, their main concern was agricultural self-sufficiency, and to that end the sector was serious.
