hello there geographers and welcome back to the Mr sin Channel today we are going to continue talking about the different agricultural revolutions as we expand our conversation to the Green Revolution but before we do that I do want to remind you to take out your guided notes and follow along with the video you can get a copy of my guided notes by clicking the link in the description down below remember you need to be active in your learning not passive now the Green Revolution was characterized by high yield seeds and increased chemical usage and mechanized farming all of which led to a drastic increase in food production for Farmers allowing countries to have a greater food surplus which meant more food was accessible to the people and since the supply of food went up countries also saw the food prices decrease resulting in more people being able to afford food all of this was started thanks to the work of Dr Norman borlock who is known as the father of the Green Revolution Dr Boro ended up developing a new semid dwarf high yield disease resistant wheat variety that could prosper in the growing conditions in Mexico Dr Boro ended up transforming not just Mexico's agricultural production but Pakistan's and India's as well his work allowed for increased food supplies for countries around the world resulting in millions of lives being saved from starvation Dr Boro ended up winning a Nobel Peace Prize started the Green Revolution and is credited for saving over A Billion Lives from starvation now to get high yield seeds individuals such as Dr Boro used crossbreeding this is when different species of plants are mixed to produce a new variant that has the best genetic characteristics of both for seeds this often results in hybrid seeds that have shorter growing seasons and are more resistant to different climates But ultimately it's up to the scientist who is doing the crossbreeding for instance going back to Dr Boro his semi dwarf wheat varieties that revolutionized farming in Mexico and India had shorter growing Seasons which allowed Farmers to have multiple harvests in a year now one quick clarification I want to make here is that hybrid plants are different from genetically modified plants hybrid plants were a central part to the Green Revolution however genetically modified organisms or GMOs for short did not come until later make sure you don't mix that up on your test remember hybrid plants involve mixing different species of plants while GMOs involve altering in organisms DNA to achieve specific traits real quick before we go on I do want to point out that I know that many students mix up Concepts from the different agricultural revolutions so to help you out I created different practice quizzes for each of the different agricultural revolutions each of the quizzes also comes with explanations that explain why each answer is either right or wrong that way you can make sure that you fully understand the content to check out these resources simply go to my ultimate review packet by clicking the link in the description below now besides hybrid plants the Green Revolution also had new ad advancements in chemical usage such as chemical fertilizers pesticides and herbicides all of which led to increased yields of crops new chemical fertilizers such as nitrogen and phosphite allowed plants to grow faster compared to previous natural fertilizers pesticides stopped insects from destroying the crops which increased Farmers yield and herbicides targeted invasive plants to prevent weeds from growing in the fields allowing more water and nutrients to go to the crops lastly we saw the rise of mechanized farming with new Machinery often replacing manual labor making farming more efficient tractors irrigation pumps and Harvesters started to become more and more common across the agricultural landscape all of which led to increased food production a reduction in global hunger New Economic growth cheaper food and lower production cost now I do want to quickly highlight that while the increase in machinery and agricultural production did increase the amount of agricultural output it also decreased the amount of jobs for women who traditionally worked in agriculture this resulted in more inequalities between individuals in certain societies which leads us to the next part of the Green Revolution which is the negative consequences as Farmers started to use more and more chemical fertilizers pesticides and herbicides we started to see more soil degradation and water contamination occur while at the same time more and more Farmers started practicing monoculture farming which resulted in a loss of biodiversity remember biodiversity refers to the variety of life forms in a given geographic area and monoculture is when a farmer cultivates one type of crop livestock or fish species at a period of time so now instead of having a variety of species Farmers just focused on one this allowed them to become more efficient at producing that particular species but it did reduce the variety as well putting more strain on the ecosystem the Green Revolution also led to new economic opportunities as new large-scale Farms began to become more profitable however this also led to the decline of Family Farms as industrial Farms gained momentum now I do want to note that the Green Revolution did not single-handedly create Agro businesses but it did laid the foundation for them to become possible and definitely helped accelerate the growth of them this shift in production also led to unequal Economic Development with smaller Family Farms struggling to compete with large scale Farms you can see this globally as well many countries that are in the periphery or semi- periphery became more dependent on core countries and multinational corporations this is because large aggro businesses often controlled the high yield seeds and chemical fertilizers at the end of the day we can see that the Green Revolution increased the world's food security and transformed how we as a society produce food but it also created some new environmental and societal issues that still impact society today I will well there you have it that's the Green Revolution and now comes the important part you need to practice you can see a couple questions on the screen right now and you can check the comment section for the answers but more importantly go take those full practice quizzes on each of the Agricultural revolutions inside my ultimate review packet that way you can see if this is truly making sense as always thank you so much for watching I'm Mr sin and I'll see you next time online