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Lessons from the Asian Green Revolution in Rice

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Abstract

The Asian Green Revolution in rice entailed a long-term evolutionary process spanning more than four decades since the mid-1960s. The purpose of this chapter is to identify important lessons from the Asian Green Revolution in rice and examine whether the modern rice technology in Asia could be appropriately transferred to contemporary sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). While there are many lessons to learn, this study focuses on high-yielding well-adapted lowland rice varieties, appropriate fertilizer application, and favorable institutional and policy environment that played pivotal roles in launching and sustaining the Asian Green Revolution in rice. The Green Revolution in SSA could include more than one commodity as none of which dominates; we argue that such Green Revolution should include rice for a number of reasons.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    See Chandler (1982) and Khush (1987, 1995) for a review of the history of rice breeding program.

  2. 2.

    According to Balasubramanian et al. (2007), upland rice accounts for roughly 40% of rice area in SSA.

  3. 3.

    Byerlee and Fisher (2002) explore the policy and institutional option for biotechnology in developing countries given the presence of market failures in developing countries in accessing the new tools and technologies. The authors argue for a public-private partnership and market segmentation with active participation of the national agricultural systems to access proprietary tools and technologies.

  4. 4.

    According to Herdt (2010, p. 3267), aid agencies and international organizations such as the United States Agency for International Aid, World Bank, and Asian Development Bank recognized irrigation as one of the most important agricultural development assistance targets. Investments of these institutions on irrigation were at its peak level in the 1970s following the introduction of IR8, the first MV, in 1966.

  5. 5.

    We converted the border price of milled rice to rough rice equivalent by adjusting the border price of milled rice for marketing and processing costs of 25% and milling recovery rate of 65% (Estudillo et al. 1999).

  6. 6.

    Data on the adoption of MVs in India are available from 1961 to 1998 only while separate data on the yield of

    MVs and TVs are not available. Thus, we simply extrapolated the yield of MVs and TVs by regressing yield using MV ratio, time, and interaction between MV ratio and time as explanatory variables.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies, 7-22-1 Roppongi, Minato-ku, Tokyo, 106-8677, Japan

    Jonna P. Estudillo & Keijiro Otsuka

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  1. Jonna P. Estudillo
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  2. Keijiro Otsuka
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Correspondence to Keijiro Otsuka .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. National Graduate Institute for Policy S, Roppongi 7-22-1, Minato, 106-8677, Tokyo, Japan

    Keijiro Otsuka

  2. , Research Group, World Bank, H Street, NW 1818, Washington, 20433, District of Columbia, USA

    Donald F. Larson

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Estudillo, J.P., Otsuka, K. (2013). Lessons from the Asian Green Revolution in Rice. In: Otsuka, K., Larson, D. (eds) An African Green Revolution. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-5760-8_2

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