The Forum · BBC World Service

Feeding the world and the Green Revolution

April 20, 2024·49 min·3 clips

CRISPR gene editing has reduced a probable carcinogen in bread by 90% in field trials, Professor Nigel Halford reveals.

It starts at pot scale. A listener describes coaxing preferred avocado seeds into trees, counting about fifty fruits, and waiting proudly for the first crop. That closeness matters. Rajan Dattar uses ordinary growing to open a bigger question about feeding populations, not just keeping plants alive. The Green Revolution enters with care. Norman Borlaug's work comes through higher-yielding wheat, first in Mexico and then in India and Pakistan. But seed alone could not do the job. The programme keeps returning to the less glamorous parts: fertilizer, irrigation, modern machinery, storage and distribution. Local fit becomes the hinge. Borlaug estimated that much of the recommended agriculture practices developed in Mexico applied in India and Pakistan, while a portion did not. That limit changes the story. Other centres of plant research developed in Asia and elsewhere, working on crops and practices suited to local conditions. Nigel calls this yield-gap work. Better seed has to be crossed into local varieties if it is going to handle specific weather and farming environments. His note is careful but hopeful. There may still be room, he says, to raise wheat yields in parts of the world. Madhumita brings the practical snag. In India, warehousing mattered, but distribution looks like the bigger difficulty once harvests grew. Listeners bring the idea back home, with apartment produce, plant-based eating, and access to land, trees and kitchen crops for low-income communities.

As heard by us

A clear, human-scaled account of how the Green Revolution depended on better seeds, local adaptation, and the systems that move food.

Feeding the world and the Green Revolution brings a huge agricultural story down to the scale of ordinary lives, opening with listeners who grow peppers, avocados, and other crops before moving into wheat yields, plant research, fertilizer, irrigation, machinery, storage, and…

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Why you'd press play

You want the story of growing food, starting with a few pots and an apartment.

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