The first Green Revolution has yet to reach large parts of the country - especially dryland areas, where poverty incidence and farming risk tend to be highest

The Second Green Revolution is a change in agricultural production widely thought necessary to feed and sustain the growing population on Earth. These calls have precipitated in part, as a response to rising food commodity prices, and fears of peak oil among other factors
India’s 2010-11 harvest was its largest ever, more than 240 million tons. The next harvest is expected to be even bigger. The government recently announced its target for year 2020: 400 million tons. Is this realistic? What changes would it require, in technology, policies and approach? And could these ideas be applied in other developing countries?
To answer these questions, we first look at the Green Revolution of the 1960s and ‘70s, which transformed a chronically food-deficient country into the world’s second largest agricultural producer. Between the mid ‘60s and the mid ‘90s, food production more than doubled, while the intensity of hunger and poverty was cut by half.
The Green Revolution was driven by greater use of inputs – irrigation, fertilizer, and high-yielding photoperiod-insensitive ‘dwarf’ varieties of wheat and rice. But what set it apart from similar but less successful efforts in other countries was the integrated approach, combining research, education, policy, institutions and services, backed by strong political will.

THE LIMITS OF SUCCESS
The Green Revolution has now waned. India’s agricultural sector is growing, but much slower than the rest of the economy. Total factor productivity growth has leveled off or even declined. The income gap between farmers and nonfarmers is widening.
Although largely self sufficient in food production, India still needs to import some commodities in some years, and pulses (the