Green Revolution and Its Impacts on Pakistan Assignment

Umair Alam

1817143

Bs Social Sciences 6th

Submitted to Dr Syed Aziz Rasool

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 Green Revolution and Its Impacts on Pakistan Assignment

The Green Revolution in Pakistan

By Umair Alam

Background

The Green Revolution had effects and consequences spanning the entire globe. With an increase
in agricultural trade of about 4.3% a year between the years of 1960-1980 the Green Revolution
allowed for an increase in agricultural production in any country that employed it (Kaul 386).
The ability to produce crops at any time of the year in an increased capacity far exceeding
previous farming techniques was seen as an innovation of the ages. Yet the results of the Green
Revolution were always promising at the start, as years went on they rarely lived up to the hopes.
This is the case for the Green Revolution in Pakistan; it started out promising with high yields of
production and a boom to the economy that may actually have been worth the risk, but as time
went on the Pakistan government was unable to sustain this output.

Case Study of Pakistan

Pakistan adopted the technique of using dwarf varieties of grain in the 1960’s. These new types
of grain were more responsive to fertilizer and thus would be able to grow in harsh environments
as long as there was a source of fertilizer. Using this new type of grain Pakistan was able to
outperform most of South Asia in the starting years of the Green Revolution, with an increase in
productivity as well as being able to sell surplus crops to neighboring countries. Pakistan’s main
crop that they were able to better cultivate with the new farming techniques was wheat; the
production of wheat increased by 79 percent in the first couple years. Naturally with the ability
to produce more crops the need for more workers to farm these crops arose. Thus the agricultural
economy grew and allowed for rural residents of Pakistan to have an increase in income as well.
The exact numbers and various other effects to the economy will be discussed later, for now it is
enough to say that the demand for workers increased. The agricultural output changed
dramatically, with a 3-6 percent annual increase during the period 1961-1965 with the peak
annual increase being 15 percent from 1967-1968. Along with an increase in crops, there was an
increase in the things that are necessary for farming. Pakistan saw an increase in tube wells,
supply water, and ground water supply during the period of 1967-1976, these things allowing for
the better irrigation of the farmland.

Pakistan is a developing country and agriculture plays an important role in the economy of
Pakistan as beside contribution towards its GDP, agriculture sector provides raw material for
industrial sector and further helps in poverty reduction in country. In the Financial Year 2015-
2016, agriculture sector part in GDP was 19.8% and overall agriculture sector contribution in

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 Green Revolution and Its Impacts on Pakistan Assignment

country labor force was 42.3%. Further to this, the importance of agriculture in Pakistan
economy can be viewed from the fact that any loss in the agriculture sector impacts the GDP of
Pakistan and in the financial year 2015-16, Pakistan was unable to achieve the growth target of
5.5% due to lower growth in agriculture sector (Economic Survey of Pakistan, 2015-16). The
agricultural basket of Pakistan is mainly comprises of the wheat, sugarcane, rice crop and cotton
and Pakistan is having integrated irrigation system in order to give support to its agriculture
development. During in 1960s at the time of introduction of green revolution in Pakistan, there
were massive investments in the irrigation sector and for the development of the market.
Subsequently, the Pakistani society was transformed and the wheat saw massive growth and the
fear of food insecurity were retreated.

Outcomes of Green Revolution in Pakistan

The green revolution in Pakistan was introduced in 1960s and the introduction of high yield
varieties in Pakistan’s agriculture along with the better chemical fertilizers and tube well
irrigation has impacted the agricultural production in Pakistan to the great extent. In Pakistan, the
Green revolution was first introduced in its Punjab province and with regard to wheat
production; Punjab experienced the increase of yield in wheat by 2.3% during the period from
1972 to 1987 due to the introduction of new wheat varieties. However, the effects of the green
revolution on different sectors of Pakistan economy remained a topic of discussion throughout
the many years. In this regard, there are conflicting arguments on the effects of the green
revolution on rural income distribution as Khan studied the Pakistani provinces of Sindh and
Punjab and observed that in Pakistan despite beneficial effects of the green revolution regional
income disparities increases. He further mentioned that large farm holders gained more benefits
of green revolution as compared to the small farm holders mainly because of the fact that the
small land owners face the problems of credit constraints and small land holdings.

Whereas on the other hand, Chaudhary presented opposite remarks on this aspect as according to
him, both large and small farm holders are the beneficiaries of the green revolution. Further to
this, the green revolution helped Pakistan in achieving handsome surplus and the adoption of
green revolution varieties along with better market system and there was the fear among the
workers of lower prices. The other sectors of the economy further saw the benefit of the green
revolution with increase usage of modern equipment of tractors. These tractors made the market
approach easier and faster for the farmers helping scaling up the market and helped the farmers
to take advantage of the market of the scale which were previously not available to them and
further enable them to take advantage of the differing levels of markets in Pakistan. Inequalities
increased due to the advent of the green revolution in Pakistan and the root of these inequalities
is in the innovations of the green revolution as the capital intensive products made it difficult for
the small farmers to attain full benefits of the green revolution as compared to the larger farmers.

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 Green Revolution and Its Impacts on Pakistan Assignment

The states decide to go for that sector of the economy for economic development where it enjoys
factor abundance in order to gain maximum benefits of it. In this regard, Pakistan enjoys
availability of the abundant labor sources which it can use for development of its agriculture
sector. In this regard, in order to develop its agriculture sector, government of Pakistan
introduced number of development plans. In this connection, the agriculture in Pakistan was
grew by 1.8% per year in first such plan which was followed by 3.8% and 6 % growth in second
and third plan respectively in West1 Pakistan. Further to this, this growth helped Pakistan in
achieving the food requirement for both West and East Pakistan. Pakistan saw increase in
agriculture production due to green revolution when the wheat output was increased from 4.5
million to 8.4 million which becomes 83%. This increase in wheat output led towards increase in
agriculture income which was earlier estimated at rupees 7.7 billion in 1959-1960 to 15.5 billion
in 1969-70. Further to this, wheat production saw a double production from 3.7 million tons to
6.8 million tons and on the same lines rice production was also increased from 0.9 million tons to
2.1 million tons. Furthermore, Economic growth in Pakistan saw upward plunge when
government provides subsidies and credit in order to encourage people to adopt and develop new
technologies for agriculture growth. Moreover, the improvement in the pays of the daily wages
rural workers was also witnessed in this regard. Sindh and Baluchistan with traditional irrigation
system also see a significant increase in agricultural output. In this regard, Baluchistan shows
commodity growth rate of 7.2% during 1964-70 against 7.1% and 7.3% growth of Punjab and
Sindh Respectively.

During this time of green revolution, the demand of labor was increased by 20-40% due to
introduction of modern techniques in agriculture sector and its subsequent increased production
(GILL). Furthermore, the impact of this progress was also seen on other aspects of the economy
when it was estimated that 8000 jobs were created in the industrial towns of Pakistan in tube well
manufacturing factories. Moreover, over 106,000 jobs were also added in the employment
market of Pakistan in the manufacturing sector of Pakistan due to manufacturing of agriculture
related equipment and products (reference).

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