The story of the Green Revolution can be traced back to the synthesis of Ammonia by the Haber Bosch process. This is because it became clear to anyone who studied land productivity that we needed a way to bring back Nitrogen into the soil. Ammonia turned out to be the answer.
Synthesizing Ammonia, however, required a breakthrough. While this is often ascribed to two geniuses, Haber and Bosch, the truth was far from that.
While Haber provided the initial insight, Bosch and a large team of scientists at BASF synthesized ammonia after relentless iterative experimentation. The result was a process that enabled us to all benefit from cheap fertilizer that was crucial to ensure that soil remain productive for farmers.
The result wasn’t just profits. This laid the foundations for victory in a fight against famine and starvation. It was expected that countries like India and Pakistan would see hundreds of thousands of death due to starvation in the 1970s.
However, thanks to Ammonia-based fertilizers and disease resistant wheat varieties created by Norman Borlaug, the green revolution came to be.
In hindsight, it is also fascinating that there was a lot of resistance in India and Pakistan to this innovation. Opposition arguments warned about all sorts of societal problems if it worked or if it didn’t.
Thanks to fertilizer and the “dwarf wheat” varieties, India ended up becoming an exporter.
3 reflections:
(1) As I read Matt Ridley’s “How Innovation Works”, it is clear just how repetitive the pattern of innovation is. While one or two people get the credit, it took an army to go from insight to mass adoption.
(2) Even the most obvious innovations face opposition.
(3) Innovations build on each other and produce a compound effect. The Green revolution wouldn’t have been possible if it wasn’t for the synthesis of Ammonia. Compounding is the most powerful force in the world.
