Seeds of Sustainability: Lessons from the Birthplace of the Green Revolution in Agriculture ed. by Pamela A. Matson (review)

Norman Borlaug, the prominent figure of the twentieth century’s Green Revolution that spread high-yielding hybrid seeds, irrigation, fertilizers and pesticides throughout much of the developing world, began his world-changing experiments in the 1940s in a dilapidated, abandoned agricultural research station among the tumbleweeds of northwestern Mexico’s semi-arid Yaqui Valley. Wheat yields at the time were dreadfully low and stem rust had decimated the crops in the newly-irrigated valley. The outcome of Borlaug’s plant breeding experiments is legendary (Borlaug 2007, Ortiz et al. 2007). Wheat yields soared with dwarfed varieties resistant to the fungal disease and able to respond to fertilizers without lodging. The Yaqui Valley transformed Mexico from a wheat-importing to a wheat-exporting country with some of the highest yields in the world. The valley deservedly earned its reputation as the homeland of the Green Revolution. Today, satellite images of the Yaqui Valley show crisscrossed canals and large fields that are tell-tale signs of a region devoted to heavily-fertilized, irrigated, large-scale intensive production of wheat and other crops.

More than half a century later, Seeds of Sustainability: Lessons from the Birthplace of the Green Revolution in Agriculture, edited by Pamela A. Matson, takes an in-depth, balanced, and exceptionally interdisciplinary view of Borlaug’s legacy in the Yaqui Valley and future possibilities for the region. While the Green Revolution aimed to increase yields, Matson and colleagues view the valley from the contemporary perspective of sustainability that balances needs to produce food, maintain the environment, and protect people’s health and welfare. The authored chapters in the book cover a broad scope including the history of the valley, the economics and policies that have shaped its transformation, and patterns and possibilities for improving efficiencies of nitrogenous fertilizer and water resources. The book notably explores the challenges and successes of engaging stakeholders in research, communicating results, and funding and integrating a multidisciplinary, international team in a non-traditional research endeavor.

The chapters in this text synthesize hundreds of published papers, presentations, and meetings over a fifteen year span. The research team’s results are based on a wide range of methods including household surveys, biogeochemical analyses, hydrologic modeling, remote sensing, and historical records. Scales of analyses range from plot-level soil samples for quantifying nitrogen uptake to large watersheds for tracking downstream transfer of nutrients from fields to the Gulf of California. Throughout the chapters, a systems view of the coupled biophysical and sociopolitical factors shaping the region prevails. The culminating book is refreshingly readable, free from technical jargon and accessible to all disciplines. The team’s efforts are rightfully a path-breaking model for place-based research in the emerging field of sustainability science.

A key lesson from Seeds of Sustainability is that highly sought win-win solutions that simultaneously maintain agricultural production and minimize environmental externalities are not so easily achieved. For example, the team’s research identified a potential win-win solution to farmers’ excessive application of nitrogen fertilizer causing downstream algal blooms and adverse health impacts. Application of fertilizer closer to the planting date than the farmers’ usual practice would require less fertilizer, save money, reduce leaching and emissions of excess nitrogen, and maintain yields and grain quality. However, farmers did not adopt this seemingly win-win solution. The risk from delaying fertilizer application and missing the onset of rain when nitrogen is most needed was not worth the savings from the farmers’ perspective. Practical considerations also interfered. Machinery is more difficult to operate in moist soils at planting time than in pre-planting dry soils. The team also identified win-win solutions to scarce water resources by surface-water allocation rules and lining of irrigation canals to reduce losses. Despite the team’s laudable efforts with engaging boundary individuals and...