You Are Browsing ‘Opinion’ Category

Almost everyone acknowledges that the Green Revolution has substantially increased the yield and supply of cereals in the developing world during the past 30 years. However, some critics maintain that these improvements in productivity perversely encouraged farmers to specialize in growing cereals at the...

(Photo: IRRI) The most recent World Food Summit, in 1996, set the target of halving by 2015 the number of people who go to bed hungry. Such rapid progress...

(Photo: IRRI) A defining moment in the history of biology was the elucidation of the laws of genetics by Gregor Mendel, whose work was rediscovered and...

An irrigated rice field in Laos. (Photo: IRRI) The most intensively cropped experimental site in Asia began four decades ago largely as a demonstration...

A vendor scooping rice in the marketplace in the Philippines. (Photo: IRRI) Approximately 70% of the world’s 1.3 billion poor people live in Asia, where...

(Photo: IRRI) In the years following World War II, there was growing concern about the food problem in Asia. The population was growing at close to 3%...

(Photo: IRRI) The first Green Revolution substantially increased rice production in the Philippines, using a package of new seeds, fertilizer and irrigation....