Introduction

The phycological human factor of trust is one of many key elements that lead to successful change management (Bordia, Restbog, Jimmieson, Irmer, 2011).  The green revolution’s failure lies in breaking rather than developing trust between the farmers and the agricultural policies that defined trade mechanisms, pricing, and technologies.

Due to poor transition sequencing, high power distance and lack of tacit knowledge, Indian farmers lost trust in the agricultural systems that were established during the Green Revolution of the 1960’s, leading to extreme hopelessness and high rates of suicide among Indian farmers, that continues to present day (Munster, 2012).

The Green Revolution refers to an agricultural, social and political movement that occurred in the 1960’s lead by American Norman Borlaug and, the United States and Indian governments (Brainerd, Menon, 2014). The Green Revolution is most well known for the introduction of “miracle” grains, high yielding varieties of rice and wheat that shifted India’s food system from “being import dependant to feeding itself” (Brainerd, Menon, 2014). 

This system wide shift in Indian food production was heavily influenced by American Public Law 480 (PL 480), and is reliant on several new ways of growing.  Including increased land area under farming, increased use of tractors and machinery, increased use of irrigation, double cropping (planting two crops instead of one annually), adoption of high-yield variety and, increased use of synthetic agricultural inputs (Brainerd, Menon, 2014). 

Despite the benefits of higher volume of food, I raise the flag that the steadily rising number of “economically-related suicides by Punjabi farmers” since the 1960’s and the Green Revolution is evidence of its failure (Kaur, 2010).

Bhartiya Kisan Union (farmer’s union) estimates 90,000 suicides between 1990 and 2006 (Kaur, 2019); the Punjab state government estimated in 2005 that there are approximately 2,000 farmer suicides per year (Kaur, 2019).  However, many reporting groups identify that these numbers are likely underestimated due to lack of reporting (Kaur, 2019; Ashraf, Patway, Shoib, 2024). 

For this paper, I will focus primarily on the phycological human factor of trust, however, there is a strong case that could be made for political human factor failure to adequately integrate new American industrial agri-tech into the Indian context. 

It is also important to note that there are a wide range of human factors linked to the geo-political aftermath of colonization and Indian independence of 1947, cold-war strategies, implications on environment and health, that will not be discussed due to the scope of this paper. 

Transition Sequencing and Trust

Transition sequencing is introduced in week three within the Sensemaking module in the reading Making Sense of Sensemaking 2: A Macrocognitive Model by Klein, Moon, and Hoffman. 

Transition sequences relate to decision making and the beliefs that individuals have about an event or topic, as it transitions from one situation to another.  The casual reasoning and over simplification of implementing a new agricultural model coupled with poor transition sequencing in the Green Revolution are contributing factors to the failure to establish trust in the system and ultimately contribute to the farmer suicide crisis (Klein, Moon, Hoffman, 2006).

Campus and Marin-Gonzalez (2020), describe transitions as non-linear regime shifts resulting from the interactions between two or more systems as they begin to interact.  Depending on the regime shift and level of change, a variety of transition interventions can assist individuals and thus the collective, in moving through a change in a successful manner.  When considering the impact of a poor transition, one may consider that transitions impact behaviours, thoughts, evaluations of services, processes and products, and a person’s expectations (Zhang, Cheng, 2024).  

In organizations with a history of poor transition sequencing, employees of an organization may experience an increased loss of faith in the organization and loss of belief in successful changes in the future, resulting in lower job satisfaction.  Lower job satisfaction leads to increases of individuals leaving an organization (Bordia, Restbog, Jimmison, Irmer, 2011).  

When examining the case study of the Green Revolution and farmer suicides, we examine how poor transition sequencing from largely swidden (low mechanization, no synthetic inputs, non-stationary) traditional agriculture system to industrial agriculture system failed to establish trust between farmers and the new high technology methods of farming thus resulting in failure (Munster, 2012). 

Transition Sequence of the Green Revolution

To begin, it is important to note that this paper is only sharing broad strokes of the transition due to the scope of the paper. 

Before Indian Independence, farmers under the colonial regime grew significant volumes of non-food crops such as cotton, indigo and opium poppies for the purpose of colonial export (John, Babu, 2021).  The Indian independence occurred in 1947, shortly after in 1950 and 1956, the government began to implement new agriculture reform policies to reduce taxes and redistribute land to landless farmers; Zamindari Abolition and Land Reforms and, the Assam Fixation of Ceiling on Land Holdings (John, Babu, 2021). 

Although with these reform policies India began to see an increase in production, due to a poor national distribution system, India continued to experience significant pockets of famine, with surplus and deficit food states (Munster, 2012).

The American Government used PL 480 to redistribute surplus American grains to urban centres across India as international aid (John, Babu, 2021). After PL 480 grains were well established in the Indian market, as the primary and lowest cost food option, the American Government used this position to strong arm the Indian government, politically as well as to adopt the Borlaug’s seeds and industrial agriculture (Bordia, Restbog, Jimmison, Irmer, 2011).  

New government markets, universities and pricing structures were then established across the country to strongly encourage farmers to focus only on rice and wheat production.  During this time period, an estimated 1 lakh (one hundred thousand) varieties of traditional grains were lost (John, Babu, 2021).

In the transition from one system of food production to another, farmers were led to believe that the new agriculture system would increase their yields and therefore their profits (Pinstrup-Andersen, Hazell, 1985).  However, in reality they were transitioned from swidden agriculture system with lower inputs and lower outputs, to an industrial agriculture system with high inputs and high outputs.

The new system succeeded in creating high volumes of wheat and rice, in 1980 it was reported that due to industrial varieties of rice, synthetic fertilizers and irrigation, an additional 90 million tons of rice was produced across eight Asian countries including India (Pinstrup-Andersen, Hazell, 1985).  The high inputs for high outputs model, is only viable if the market can support a high wage to offset the cost of inputs.  The sequence of events that created this “successful” change did not consider the financial needs of the farmers themselves. 

Bordia, Restbog, Jimmison, Irmer, account that organizations with a history of poor transition sequencing can lead to individuals leaving an organization; the Indian government’s failure to provide meaningful financial support and sequencing in the green revolution transition, has contributed to farmers “choosing” to leave their farms and families behind through death. 

Farmer’s overwhelming hopelessness and lack of trust in positive future changes contributes to the green revolution’s failure of exacerbating the farmer suicide crisis. 

Power Distance 

The concept of power distance is introduced by Tian et al’s 2018 article How does Culture Influence Innovation? A Systematic Literature Review, introduced in week 3 module on culture.

Power distance describes the extent to which less powerful members of institutions, organizations in a given country expect and accept that power is distributed.  In low power-distance cultures, there is an expectation that the hierarchy is less rigid and individuals can engage in breaking down barriers.  In high power-distance cultures, it is expected that there will be a lack of resources or opportunities for those at bottom to make decisions or go against the direction of those with more power.

In the organizational context, power distance will determine how individuals at different levels of the hierarchy interact with one another.  One such interaction is an employee’s ability to seek help when struggling (Yanling, et al, 2015).  Organizations with a low – power distance experience working cultures where individuals lower in the hierarchy were more likely trust their supervisors, and reach out to seek help when needed. High-power distance cultures demonstrated the opposite (Yanling, et al, 2015). 

In a high power-distance culture there is the expectation and acceptance of inequality. In a study by Istvan (2014) it is reported that in high power distance organizations, if a senior member is being abusive toward a lower member, a typical recourse would be for the junior member to accept the abuse or leave the organization.  

High Power Distance and Seeking Help

Within the Hofstede dimension ranking system India is reported to have a power-distance rank of 77 compared to the global average of 56.5 (Sivasubramanian, Goodman-Delahunty, 2006).  

The high power-distance that farmers experience in relation to those who set prices, and determine trade systems, means that the farmers do not have reliable means to discuss their needs with those in power. 

An espoused value of high power-distance cultures is that there is a high tolerance and expectation of harsh treatment from authorities (Istvan, 2014).  This social belief coupled with the fact that attempted suicide is a crime in India and is punishable under Section 3099 of the Indian Penal Code (1860), means that farmers become convinced that they do no have any autonomy over their agri-business.  For those who are deeply in debt and cannot trust the trading system to provide them fair value for their products or change to accommodate their needs, hopelessness and suicide is a logical and devastating outcome (Munster, 2012).

Tacit Knowledge and Agriculture

Tacit knowledge is introduced in week two, the knowledge module by Nonaka, in the 1994 paper A Dynamic Theory of Organizational Knowledge Creation.  Tacit knowledge is described as knowledge that is based on personal knowledge, perceptions and understandings of a task or system. 

Words are often used as a tool in sharing tacit knowledge, but alternate methods including instructor demonstrations or allowing one to practice and experiment may also occur (Johannessen, 2022). 

In my view, one key element to understand is that when the person who is the knowledge holder is lost from the organization, the knowledge is lost with them (Johannessen, 2022). 

The agriculture sector is highly reliant on tacit knowledge.  B. Adolf references Blackler’s work that tacit knowledge can be described as “encultured, embodied and embedded” and explicit knowledge described as “embrained and encoded”. B. Adolf goes on to describe that the process of decision making in relation to agriculture irrigation, has high embodied, embedded and encultured knowledge with low embrained and medium encoded knowledge.  This irrigation example, is relevant across many on-farm activities that rely on strategic timing of events; such as knowing when to plant, when to work the soil, when to treat for disease, when to harvest, etc.

When knowledge transfer is unevenly distributed, it can be costly and create inefficiencies, and transferring tacit knowledge is highly dependant on the recipient’s ability to access the subject matter expert who is sharing the new knowledge (Parminter, Neild, 2013). 

As agricultural systems in the Green Revolution shifted from one set of tacit knowledge another set of tacit knowledge in industrial mechanized farming. Many of the rural Indian farmers did not have continual access to experts in the new industrial methods (Parminter, Neild, 2013; Bergmann, 1963).   

This became an issue as there are many daily decisions that rely on tacit knowledge, where farmers recount the decisions coming from a place of “inherent skills” or “intuition”, while in reality, is highly skilled tacit understanding of a problem related to a specific field that can take generations to establish (Parminter, Neild, 2013; Bergmann, 1963). 

Tractors and a Lack of Tacit Knowledge

Between 1956 and 1961, the number of tractors in India rose by 148%.  They began primarily on government or institutional farms, then the larger scale farms, eventually finding their way onto small hold farms, often in the form of tractor rentals (Bergmann, 1963).  Suddenly, farmers needed to build a new set of tacit knowledge with the shifting system, draft animal care to mechanical care, sourcing parts etc.

Without the knowledge required to fix, maintain or adapt a tractor to their needs, many famers could not trust in their tractors, and would keep their draft animals as a back up, for when their tractors inevitably failed, (due to lack of maintenance and harsh use), further increasing the cost of production and adding to debt cycles (Bergmann, 1963). 

Farmers may perceive their lack of understanding as a personal failure, leading them to desperation, doom and death. Rather than viewing the lack of understanding as a systematic failure to provide communities with access to tacit knowledge that is needed to effectively move into new systems of knowledge (Munshi, 2017).  

Conclusion

In conducting my research, it is evident that the Green Revolution was beneficial from the perspective of producing increased calories (John, Babu, 2021). And it is evident that shifting from one agriculture system to another, resulted in a phycological failure for the already vulnerable farmer (Munshi, 2017). 

The Green Revolution’s sequencing of events, in part due to the strong arm of PL 480, meant that change happened artificially fast (Bordia, Restbog, Jimmison, Irmer, 2011). Resulting in farmers who did not have appropriate support while having to establish whole new personal “databases” of tacit knowledge, in a high power-distance environment where they could not reach out for support (Parminter, Neild, 2013; Bergmann, 1963).

The phycological human factor of trust, became a failure when farmers could no longer trust in the possibility of being able to remain financially viable in the new industrialized agri-food system, eventually leading to a suicide crisis. 

The failures that lead to loss of trust in the food system and fostered the environment for the suicide crisis to grow, highlight the need for communication between those on the ground and those influencing, writing and enforcing policy. As I continue to study the agri-food system I hope to research ways of developing policies, trade mechanisms and technologies that serve the farmer and help to reduce the metal illness among those who provide us all with the food we need each and every day.  

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