The Wizard and the Prophet: Two Remarkable Scientists and Their Dueling Visions to Shape Tomorrow's World

by Charles C. Mann

Criticisms like these began to appear soon after Borlaug won the Nobel. Between 1972 and 1979 the United Nations Research Institute for Social Development published fifteen analyses of the Green Revolution. Every single one was sharply negative. To Biplab Dasgusta, a prominent economist and Marxist politician in India, the major consequences of the Green Revolution included an “increase in the number and proportion of homeless households” and “growing concentration of land and assets in fewer hands.” The Green Revolution, observed Per Olav Reinton of Oslo’s International Peace Research Institute (PRIO), “demonstrates more clearly than most aid programs how good intentions produce misery.”