Normal Borlaug has been considered by many to be the founder of the Green Revolution. Borlaug's work in Mexico in the 1960s involved propagating high-yielding strains of wheat immune to fungus and rust diseases. His success rate was phenomenal. The net result of the work Borlaug inspired was an average annual increase in harvests of 2.1 percent a year between 1950 and 1990, the compounding growth curve that led to a tripling of harvests during that period. From the very beginning, the Green Revolution has had its share of evaluations. Timothy Reeves, the director of the International Center for the Improvement of Wheat and Maize (CIMMYT), poses the following question: In feeding ourselves, are we starving our descendants? This question is fitting in context in that the Green Revolution is believed to rely heavily on high inputs of water, capital, fertilizers, and pesticides "these things are simply not sustainable. We are at a crossroads in which the techniques of the Green Revolution that have brought us thus far will not sustain us in the future.
Genetically engineered foods are the single most important advance to come out of the Green Revolution. The genetically engineered crops are plants with DNA in which biotechnologists have added one or more genes. Genetically modified (GM) foods contain components made from GM crops or from other feats of genetic engineering. Genes are models used by cells to create proteins, which influence many of the characteristics that organisms will develop. Altering an organism's genes, consequently, could cause its cells to create new proteins, thus causing it to display a new trait. Traditional breeding is another way of introducing genes into an organism to cause it to show signs of a new trait. The bioengineering sector would want the public to believe that genetic engineering is no different from traditional breeding but they are wrong.