The Green Revolution began during the 1970s and 1980s in an attempt to increase the nutrition in food crops and to make species of food crops more uniform and robust. Scientists developed strains of hybrid plants, such as wheat, rice, and maize that quantitatively produced more food that was of better quality. This research was led by Dr Norman Borlaug in Mexico and others under the sponsorship of the Rockefeller Foundation during the 1960s.

The reason that the Green Revolution began was that the population of humans was increasing exponentially (in a J curve), while the amount of food produced per year was only increasing geometrically (in a straight line). The carrying capacity of the Earth was being strained. The Green Revolution seemed to solve everyone’s problems.

There were several techniques that scientists used to help increase yield and appearance of crops. First, genetic engineering...