The Columbus

On 26 March 2006 there was an unprecedented and historic gathering in Columbus, Ohio. Approximately 3,000 Mexican and other Hispanic immigrant laborers gathered on the west plaza of the Ohio statehouse to protest proposed federal legislation that could deprive them of their employment and livelihood here. Merely a generation ago there may not have been 3,000 native speakers of Spanish in central Ohio. Nevertheless, within a decade, a Hispanic community had grown that could substantively and articulately demonstrate its socio-economic and political positions.

From what wider historic factors did this unprecedented local event arise? Considerable insight into this issue is achieved by reviewing global population growth over the last half century.

World population dramatically increased after the Second World War. From 1950 to 2000, human inhabitants of the globe grew from two billion to six, an extraordinary three-fold expansion. In one respect, this was due to the “Green Revolution. Sponsored by U.S. foundations and government agencies, this movement applied innovations in fertilizers, seeds, irrigation, and soils, which dramatically increased the food supply of developing countries.

In 1970 Dr. Norman Borlaug, an American agronomist, received the Nobel Peace Prize for his exceptional achievements in improving agricultural output and the food supply of developing countries, thereby alleviating world hunger. His first success had been in Mexico as a member of the team of research scientists at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center, sponsored by the Rockefeller Foundation.

Through genetic manipulation of seed grains that resulted in more productive and resistant strains, the center aided Mexico to become self-sufficient in food production. From the mid-forties to late sixties, Mexico tripled its production of corn and quintupled that of wheat. In 1968 the head of the U.S. Agency for International Development described the phenomenon whereby High Yield Variety (HYV) seeds radically increased the food supply of developing nations as a “Green Revolution.”

Extraordinary population growth ensued. In 1950 the population of Mexico reached 25 million, achieving for the first time since the Spanish Conquest, what had been its indigenous population before the invasion in the early sixteenth century. The introduction of European diseases, against which Amerindians (Type O blood) had no immunity, caused them to die in mass, rapidly reducing the native population by 90 percent. Just over three centuries were required to restore the original population. However, by the end of the twentieth century, the population of Mexico neared 100 million, an unprecedented four-fold increase in two generations.

Subsequent to Mexico, the Green Revolution engendered a further wave of famine-reduction, most notably India. One of the most populous countries in the world, infamous for mass famines, India spectacularly augmented its food supply during the nineteen seventies. It began to employ the use of HYV seeds, enlarged the area of land under cultivation, expanded irrigation, mechanized farming, and intensively applied chemical fertilizers and pesticides. These were methods the United States had been developing and applying for over a century, achieving its historic abundance of food.

By the late seventies India became one of the world’s major producers of grains, principally rice, wheat, corn, and millet, with well over a hundred million tons. Particularly noteworthy in this regard was the development of the K68 strain of wheat by Dr. M. P. Singh, a central figure in the advance of the Green Revolution in India. Pakistan, Indonesia, and the Philippines also obtained spectacular increases in grain foods, using similar methods.

However, at this time also, a disturbing consequence of the Green Revolution, along with global improvements in sanitation and public health, emerged ever more ominously. These improvements had extraordinary consequences in terms of mammoth, rapid population growth.

The population of the earth first reached one billion people during the nineteenth century. By the middle of the following century it doubled to over two billion. By the seventies, in little more than a generation, it doubled again, mounting to four billion people. Another two billion were added as the century closed.

The Green Revolution, praised for increasing the world’s food supply and drastically reducing hunger, was contributing to a growth of population that jeopardized the earth’s natural resources, perilously endangering other species. Critical re-assessment of the revolution grew. What initially had been viewed as miraculous now appeared as a Pandora’s Box of unexpected consequences.

It chemically increased the fertility of soils rather than naturally renewing them. Thereby they required ever more intensive and costly fertilizers. Moreover, the new agricultural techniques increased production through scientific improvements. However, they did not address, even ignored, economic and political issues that could achieve a more equitable social distribution of food.

In terms of socio-economic impact, the Green Revolution acted as a stimulant to other sectors, serving as an engine for development. Insofar as it required more water for irrigation, it stimulated construction of dams and thereby the expansion of a hydroelectric industry. Further manufacturing stimulants occurred in petrochemical industries as the demand rose for fertilizers and means of pest control.

By improving the production capacity of a country, it allowed an increase in national income and revenue to pay down loans for agricultural investments. The initial stages of the Green Revolution were primarily effective in expanding grain production but not other or all types of agricultural produce. Nonetheless, by considerably augmenting the food supply, it served purposes of social and political pacification. However, an infrastructure remained that maintained inequities.

From India the American techniques of the Green Revolution spread to China. By the end of the twentieth century each these countries had populations of over one billion people. The earth itself had six billion human inhabitants, an unprecedented triple increase from mid-century. Over the same period, species extinction accelerated at a rate that had not been seen since the end of the age of the dinosaurs, more than 70 million years ago. Moreover, many of the earth’s resources, such as fresh water, minerals, and petroleum, were being depleted at a rate whereby they could not be replenished by nature.

Homo sapiens is an omnivorous and ubiquitous species. Both a herbivore and carnivore, it can survive and thrive in almost ecological environment around the globe. Its diet, particularly due to protein, has given it exceptional and peculiar cerebral capacity. It can apply triangulated binary analogic analysis upon its environments at a rate and capacity far beyond its nearest compatible primate species, the chimpanzee and bonobo. Thereby, in its almost 200,000 years of existence, but especially in the past several centuries, it has achieved the capacity to dominate all other species (except, for the time being, certain viruses and bacteria). When a species achieves such capacity for absorption of its environment, it can enter a phase of parasitic self-destruction, consuming the means by which it survives. A fever burning out.

Despite the extraordinary growth of human population in the past decades, there are still approximately a billion people in the world who suffer from chronic hunger and malnutrition. Economies throughout the Americas, Africa, and Asia have not remotely been able to produce jobs for their populations that are adequate for a living wage. In this context, therefore, Hispanics have emigrated to the US. By the end of the twentieth century they comprised that country’s largest and fastest-growing ethnic minority.

The events in Columbus, Ohio of 26 March 2006 are a small reflection of the greatest challenge confronting the modern world. How can all the earth’s inhabitants survive and thrive in equal conditions with each other? And how can this be done with all other species and the resources of our global habitat?

Author Contact:
Edward A. "Ted" Riedinger, MLIS (Berkeley), MA, PhD (Chicago)
-- Professor and Head, Latin America, Spanish, and Portuguese Library Collection
-- Editor-in-Chief, Encyclopedia of Brazilian History and Culture (Routledge, 2005-2009)
-- Visiting Researcher, Centre for Brazilian Studies, Oxford University, autumn, 2006
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URL: http://library.osu.edu/sites/latinamerica/LATHOME.HTML