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`No damage to forests from green revolution'

Our Bureau

NEW DELHI, Nov. 6

THE green revolution has not led to any major destruction of forests or grasslands, according to Dr Lloyd Evans, Honorary Research Fellow at the Canberra-based Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO).

He was delivering the first Sir John Crawford Lecture on Malthusian concerns and agricultural revolutions, jointly organised by the National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER) and the Australia-India Council here on Monday.

Dr Evans noted that the world population in 1960 amounted to three billion, which has since then doubled to around six billion.

But increase in population had not led to any significant increase in the area of arable land in the world.

The average yields of cereal crops keeping in step with the world population growth.

Before then, an additional 5-10 million hectares went under the plough each year.

So the green revolution has saved a great deal of land from clearing and biodiversity from its greatest threat. Without it the arable area might have had to double, bringing much more marginal land under cultivation, he pointed out.

Dr Evans said even in the case of India, there had been virtually no increase in arable area since the beginning of the green revolution.

The countrys population then was about 500 million.

This was again because of average cereal yields increasing faster than the population.

Along with the doubling of Indias population, average yields have increased 2.3-fold for all cereals, 2.7-fold for wheat, 2.1-fold for rice and 65 per cent for dryland crops such as sorghum and millet, he added.