(Music)
The Green Revolution was primarily a technologically driven transformation of
agricultural production systems but it
had significant secondary effects.  So it
facilitated broader structural
transformation and it significantly
increased incomes and food security.
Since the Green Revolution we have
learned a lot about the breadth and
depth of these transformation processes
and indeed over time the processes
themselves have expanded and become more
complex.  It's then not a real surprise
with these complex systems that if
you're going to change this type of
system there are multiple drivers, policy
levers and indicators of transformation.
So let's explore this a little bit I'm
going to explore it with an example of
two countries.  So the first country
country A is a large agricultural
economy.  It's pretty much through its
agricultural transformation process.  It
has achieved top-line goals of low
levels of poverty, stunting and
underweight.  Country B is also an
agricultural economy but smaller and
part-way through its agricultural
transformation.  So it is not yet achieved
top-line targets, but it has significant
reduction in poverty, significant
reduction in stunting, significant
reduction in underweight over the past
20 years.  This progress is agriculturally driven and for example, cereal
production in both countries has more
than doubled.  Cereal yields doubled in
country A.  In country B, the doubling of
cereal production was about evenly split
between increases and yields and
increases in area.  And, food production
more than doubled in both countries so
what are we talking about here?  The first
country, Brazil is well known as an
agricultural success story this image is
from the Mato Grosso in Brazil.  A
country that has ridden its huge
agricultural success to become the
world's fourth largest agricultural
exporter and the eighth largest economy
in the world.  Drivers of this
transformation include technical
progress such as genetically modified
soybean varieties, policy including
science, policy supportive of GMO use and
resource rights and policy allowing
relatively unimpeded access to land and
water resources.  The second country is
Niger and Niger has focused on
reforestation.  So policy has been the
driving force behind this reforestation,
more than 5 million hectares over a
20-year period or about a third of the
arable land.  Reforestation also
contributed to the sixty-seven percent
increase in national cereal yields.  Youth
unemployment in Niger seven point
eight percent.  So there's good
things and there's bad things about
these issues.  Critics of the Brazil model
might point out to a notable lack of
policies for preservation of
biodiversity.  They might suggest that
indicators of transformation
ecological indicators such as vegetative
cover, a carbon footprint, water footprint
and water loss through
evapotranspiration paint a much less
rosy picture of what's going on in
Brazil.  Extreme critics might argue that
in light of the SDGs in the cop21 Paris
agreement that in fact the Brazil model
does not represent a model that can be
taken forward in post-2015 agriculture .
In Niger, critics might say that well
yes you have had some relative success
in Niger, but it remains a largely poor
and underdeveloped country with a miserly
agriculture.  So despite the big
yield gaines, there still among the lowest
in the world.  There is little evidence of
non-agricultural structural
transformation.  An extreme critic might
even argue that given the rainfall in Niger
and the predictions of global
climate change your best policy is to
figure out how to get people out of the
country.  So the take away again is that
there are multiple drivers and measures
of transformation.  Includes policy levers,
different drivers different levels
affect different systems and what you
need to drive the transformation is
going to be very dependent upon the
vision that
your country has and what it wants to
achieve.  Niger wanted more
ecologically sustainable transformation
and they invested in that.  Brazil wanted
to grow the productivity and production
of its agriculture and that's what they
invested in.  Very different patterns with
successful outcomes defined by the
country but also some side effects.
(muisc)  (applause)
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