History Of The Green Revolution

Mexico’s Yaqui Valley and Pesticides

In 1940, a new renovation of agricultural practices began in Mexico, later referred to as the Green Revolution. The beginnings of the Green Revolution are often attributed to an American scientist, interested in agriculture, Norman Borlaug. After much research, Borlaug was able to developed new disease resistance high-yield varieties of wheat. Along with the new disease resistant wheat and new mechanized agricultural technologies, Mexico was able to produce more wheat than was needed by its own citizen. Because of the success of the Green Revolution and Borlaug’s label as “The Man Who Saved a Billion Lives”, society was willing to look the away from the negative side of the Green Revolution. The use of inorganic fertilizers and synthetic pesticides would not be an issue until the case study conducted by Dr. Elizabeth Guillette, which proved by clear evidence that exposure to pesticides among the children of the Yaqui Valley in Mexico, did in fact impair the children’s development and motor skills.

In the late 1980’s, the Institute for Technology in Sonora conducted studies in the Yaqui Valley and found high levels of pesticides in cord blood and breast milk. The study also concluded children in the Yaqui Valley had extremely high levels of pesticides located in their hair and in the skin. The Mexican government halted the study because they thought it would cause undue alarm among the residence of the Yaqui Valley. Equipped with the information from the institute, Dr. Guillette, used an anthropological approach to evaluate the preschool children exposed to pesticides in the valley. In the study, two groups of four and five year old children were selected, one study group resided i...

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...around we would have to cover our mouths with our hands or go inside. As I read the research on the pesticides used in the Yaqui Valley, these imagines quickly came back. I learned that the greater good outweighed the risk of a few. The cost of the Green Revolution through the greed of the farmers and government officials outweighed the wellness of the children in the valley. I think if it had not been for the research of Dr. Guillette, the children of the valley and for generations to follow would have suffered from developmental and cognitive delays due to the use of pesticides. The Green Revolution was an act to save millions and which it did but not without a high cost of sacrifices of the children of Yaqui Valley. In the end, changes were made and the use of pesticides were regulated which in turn saved an astonishing number of lives.