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Box 4-1 The Green Revolution in Agriculture as an Analogy to
Climate Forecasting
Evidence from India suggests that farmers consider two kinds of
information when faced with an innovation such as a new seed
variety or production practice: information about how to use the
innovation best and about whether the innovation, if used
optimally, will be profitable. Farmers learn about both from their
own experience—by trying the innovation themselves—and by
observing or talking with their neighbors about their experiences
with the innovation. Although essentially all farmers ultimately
adopt a practice if it is profitable, a number of patterns of
innovation adoption are observed. Farmers with larger land holdings
adopt new practices faster, partly because the return to a
profitable innovation is positively related to farm size, whereas
the cost of acquiring the innovation is scale-independent. Thus,
larger farmers have the biggest payoffs to an increase in
knowledge.
More educated farmers also appear to learn best practice for an
innovation faster than others, all else being equal. Such farmers
thus adopt new practices faster and gain the benefits earlier.
Uneducated farmers benefit later, by learning from their
better-educated neighbors. In sum, more educated farmers with large
land holdings bear more of the initial costs associated with
learning best practice but, at least initially, reap the most from
an innovation.
Because the best use of an innovation is not known initially,
many early adopters may experience initial losses even if the
innovation is profitable under best use. These losses are part of
the cost of learning about the innovation. Farmers thus have an
incentive to delay adoption when there is less known about how to
use the innovation because they will learn from their neighbors'
experiences without bearing the costs. This situation creates an
economic externality, in that a farmer's decision to adopt an
innovation does not take into account the learning benefits that go
to his or her neighbors. This situation creates a disincentive for
early adoption with the result that, in the absence of
interventions, adoption patterns are not efficient.
The green revolution in Mexico yielded some lessons that
elaborate on some possible consequences of unequal rates of use of
new and valuable information. Although agricultural production
increased dramatically, there were also increases in social
inequality and environmental degradation. In the Yaqui valley, for
example, the less-well-off farmers and indigenous peoples were
unable to afford the new seeds or the inputs required for them to
produce high yields, whereas wealthier farmers, who obtained bumper
harvests with the new seeds, became able to rent or buy the land of
the poor, who then became migrant workers or destitute. In some
cases, farm labor was mechanized, further increasing unemployment
and poverty (Hewitt de Alcantara, 1973, 1976). Regional inequality
also increased, as localities with irrigation infrastructure were
able to take advantage of the new technologies but rainfed areas
were not. Some have argued that the new technologies increased
Mexico's international debt by creating dependency on imported
fertilizers and pesticides; increased pollution from fertilizer and
pesticide runoff, erosion, and salinization; and increased
vulnerability of crop monocultures to disease (Wright, 1984). It
has also been suggested that the new seeds increased vulnerability
to climatic variations because of their extreme vulnerability to
drought and other climatic extremes (Michaels, 1979; Liverman,
1990). The majority of farmers, who could not afford insurance,
lost heavily in drought years such as 1982-1983, when they went
into debt to buy seeds and fertilizers and then suffered harvest
failures (Austin and Esteva, 1987). In response to these
developments, the Mexican government and research centers such as
Centro Internacional de Mejoramento de Maiz y Trigo (the
International Center for the Improvement of Corn and Wheat, or
CIMMYT) developed new programs to bring benefits to poorer farmers,
develop national seed and fertilizer industries, prevent
environmental degradation, and subsidize insurance.
If the experience of the green revolution is replicated with
climate forecasts, it is reasonable to expect that well-educated
farmers and those with large land holdings will be the first to
benefit from climate forecasts and will reap the greatest benefits,
at least in the early stages of climate prediction. The Mexican
experience also suggests that, if a forecast should prove overly
optimistic about crop production, the losses may be relatively
devastating to small, poorer farmers, with long-term negative
effects on social equity.
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