In 1984, a famine swept through the arid landscape of sub-Saharan Africa, leaving more than a million people dead. Heraing of the tragedy, Ryoichi Sasakawa, chairman of the Japan shipbuilding INdustry Foundation,remembered a similiar famine in India some 20 years before. He also remembered how that famine had ended: through a green revolution that brought scientist farming to Asia and transformed agriculture around the world.

Sasakawa felt that a green revolution could benefit Africa as well. But this revolution could benefit Africa as well. But this revolution would have to be different. Indeed, that first effort tapped synthetic-and sometimes dangerous-pesticides, herbisides and fertilizers. These agrichemicals had doubled farm productivity, but they had also, in some cases, tainted produce and contaminated the gorund. Sasakawa's new efforts, on the other hand, would be based on more ecologically accptable alternatives, including hearty new seeds, the latest advances in irigation and plant rotation and safe new agrichemicals to spur plant growth and control pest and weeds.

Working with former American Presisdent Jimmy Cater and agronomist NOrman Borlaug, the nobel prize winning pioneer of the first green revolution, Sasakawa funded the Sasakawa Global 2000 Agricultyural Project. Since 1986, the project has helped the farmers of Ghana cultivate 65,000 acres of land, boosting yields by 400% and bringing that country to the verge of food sufficiency. The effort has also help farmers in Sudan, Zambia, Tanzania, Togo and Benin.

The Global 2000 Project is just one sign that a new-environmentally savvy-green revolution is afoot. The push today is for genetically engineered crops that require less chemical intervention because they are more resistant to the ravages of the environment, pest and weeds. When crops do require agrichments, moreover, the new agriculture taps synthetic pesticides, fungicides and herbicides that can be used more selectively and in much smaller quantities than before. Productivity has also been boosted by the use of scientific mangament techniques, including better irrigation methods for crop rotation.

The new green agriculure has been embraced by scientist and the agribusiness community. As Hanspeter Schelling, director of international research fpr Switzerland's Sandoz Agro Ltd. says, "we must guard the earth now, or face the consequences. Environ mental safety is the most crucial aspect of all our agricultural research and development today."

At the vangaurd of the current green revolution is a generation of robust plants more resistant than thier predecessors to heat and cold, drought, a range of pest and crop disease. Some varieties, including the sorghum and maize introduced in Ghana, have been produced through the years of scientific breeding. OTher plants have been created by the insertion of foreign genes.

France Rhone-Poulenc, for example, is modyfying tobacco with a technique known as chemical shielding in which the tabacco recieves a gene that makes it resistant to bromoxynil, one of the most commonly used herbicides. Thanks to this technique, says William J.Kilbey, director of Rhone-Poulenc's ethics and environment group in Lyon, farmers can spray a moderate amount of herbicide on weeds without killing the tabacco plants themselves. IN a similar effort, the U.S based Monsanto Agricultural Co. is using biotechnology to prodyce herbicide-resistant cotton.

Companies also are studying ways to make the herbicides and pesticides themselves safer. britain's Imperial Chemical Indusries(ICI), for instance, has developed and fine-tuned an insecticide to kill destructive insects while permitting harmless and helpful critters to survive. Dubbed Poromicarb, the insecticide kills the destructive aphid; it does not , howver, harm the ladybug, a predator that helps control a range of destrctive pest.

onsanto, meanwhile, has developed a popular herbicide called Roundup, which works by blocking protien production in the encroaching weeds, effectively halting thier growth. The herbicides breaks down once it has completed its job, eliminating the danger of gorund and crop contamination.

Sandoz has taken a similar approach in developing fungicides to protect cereals, friut,  vines and vegetables from fungal dieases. Alto, one of the company's newest prodycts, interferes with the growth of organisma that attack small grain plants. "because the active ingredient in Alto is used in such small amounts," Sandoz's Schelling explains, "it does not have as much of an impact on the environment."

New fertilizers and techniques for thier application are being developed as an alternative to spreading vast quantites of fertilizer and the sometimes harmful nitrogen it contains. West Germany's BASF  has introduced a time release fertilizer called Basammon extra 25. Basammon slowly releases nitrogen through the duration of the growing cycle, so that the plant adsorbs only what it needs when it needs it. Other life forms are barely affected.

But new environmental products are even more effective when used in combination with scientific farming techniques. One effective new irrigation technique has been developed by Italy's Ferruzzi Group, an international industrial company that operates in the chemical and agribusiness sectors. The method uses a series of underground plastic pipes, which capture water that has mixed with fertilizers amd pesticdes. The water and chemicals are recycled, reducing the amount of fertilizers and pesticides. The water and chemicals are recycled, reducing the amount of fertilizers and pesticide required and preventing toxic liquid residues from seeping into the gorund.

In Piarula Padana in Italy's northern flatlands, this irrigation method has already reduced the use of fertilizers, pesticdes and water throughout the region by 50%. Says Giovanni Simoni, director of ecnomic research for Ferruzzi," We are in the business of training farmers t apply our techniques."

The new process shows how interconected al aspects of farming can be. "today, we must look at agriculture as a complete system, not isolated hectare," says Werner Schulte of BASF.

Adds Robert Fraley, dirctor of plant science technology for Monsanto in the United States, "From a sceintist perspective, this is the most exciting time we have ever seen in agricultural research. We seeem to be developing the right technology now."

Beth Karlin

Source : Newsweek 21 May 1990

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