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Workers at the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) pause after weeding a field of pearl millet. The research center near Hyderabad, India, was founded in 1972 with the help of India’s legendary plant breeder Dr. M. S. Swaminathan. Based on the Green Revolution’s success, which nearly quadrupled grain yields in South Asia, Swaminathan and his colleagues turned their attention to other crops that were critical to subsistence farmers on non-irrigated land in Asia and Africa that feed the bulk of the world’s poor, including sorghum, millets, chickpeas, pigeon peas, and groundnuts. Today they maintain a gene bank with more than 120,000 varieties of these crops from nearly 150 countries around the world. Swaminathan, who passed away in 2023 at the age of ninety-eight, was outspoken about the benefits of the Green Revolution as well as the significant harm it caused to water, soil, and the environment. Toward the end of his long career, he argued for an “Evergreen Revolution,” which, he wrote, “implies productivity improvement in perpetuity without ecological or social harm.” A half century after the last great boost in food production, the world needs it more than ever.

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Workers at the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) pause after weeding a field of pearl millet. The research center near Hyderabad, India, was founded in 1972 with the help of India’s legendary plant breeder Dr. M. S. Swaminathan. Based on the Green Revolution’s success, which nearly quadrupled grain yields in South Asia, Swaminathan and his colleagues turned their attention to other crops that were critical to subsistence farmers on non-irrigated land in Asia and Africa that feed the bulk of the world’s poor, including sorghum, millets, chickpeas, pigeon peas, and groundnuts. Today they maintain a gene bank with more than 120,000 varieties of these crops from nearly 150 countries around the world. Swaminathan, who passed away in 2023 at the age of ninety-eight, was outspoken about the benefits of the Green Revolution as well as the significant harm it caused to water, soil, and the environment. Toward the end of his long career, he argued for an “Evergreen Revolution,” which, he wrote, “implies productivity improvement in perpetuity without ecological or social harm.” A half century after the last great boost in food production, the world needs it more than ever.

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