Exercise 2

    In the 1940s, philanthropists began funding crop breeding programs, which resulted in several High Yielding Varieties (HYV) of staple crops. This "Green Revolution" resulted in a relative decrease of world hunger. The main variable that modernization theorists did not conceptualize was the decreased gap between exponential population growth and linear food production capabilities. This claim was made by Conditions of Agricultural Growth, a book written during the Green Revolution that countered Malthusian Theory. 

    The Malthusian Theory claims that exponential population growth will outpace the linear growth of food production. In this theory, it is accepted that population will grow to a point that the rate of food production cannot sustain, and the population will need to decline (people die) to a rate that will work with the available food production. This cycle continues endlessly. 

    Because Malthus made this theory during the industrial revolution (stage 2), he had no way of seeing the future development stages that would present in the years after the industrial revolution. Population growth did not continue to increase exponentially, and some countries today are even seeing a decline in population (development stage 5). 

    The green revolution in the 20th century resulted in the decrease in the gap between food production and population rate, but it did not foresee the negative implications. For example, the decrease in needed labor to produce large amounts of crops drove many in rural areas into urban ones. This urbanization resulted in a larger gap between wealthy and poor (generally urban and rural), as well as the loss of biodiversity and chemical pollution. 

   The conceptualization of modernization according to Gould and White supports the known affects of the green revolution, if more on a superficial level. Because the mental map of Ghana is created by Ghanaian university students, it is inherently skewed towards the students' opinions of how modernization looks. According to the students, the urban areas of Ghana (1970s) were far more modernized than the rural areas. 

    On the satellite base map, these areas are seen as brown, deforested blobs within the country. There is an area that is "highly modernized" for each major urban city in the country. Spanning from each "highly modernized" area are several larger "medium modernization" areas. These areas are larger than the highly modernized cities, which goes along with the data resulting from the green revolution. The rise in rural-to-urban migration is shown in these larger geographical areas, with the highest concentration of people living in the "most modernized" areas. 

    One of the quintessential marks of a "modern" society is the large-scale investment in modern technology. In Ghana, this can be seen in the addition of both the Akosombo Dam and the Aluminum Smelter. Though these are seen as an example of investments in technology, especially to the Ghanaian students,  they are also examples of how "modernization" can have devastating environmental impacts. 

    The satellite base map shows a high level of deforestation, erosion, and loss of biodiversity south of the Akosombo Dam and surrounding the aluminum smelter. These modern advancements in technology are resulting in the decline of the natural environment of the country. What is seen as an example of modern development during the early stages of Rostow's modernization model is often seen as an environmental decline during the late stages of the modernization model.