The Green Revolution didn’t go down in many history books. The revolution was actually more of a change in agricultural planning involving maize, wheat and nine other crops.

A Yale University professor said dictionaries define the revolution as a shift between the 1960s and 1980s that came about by using “high-yielding and high-protein hybrids.”

“This is wrong,” said Evenson, professor at Yale’s Economic Growth Center. He spoke at Heady Hall on Tuesday.

Evenson, who has worked on 17 books related to the field of agriculture, based his speech around the 11 crops involved in the Green Revolution and the various countries involved.

“Rice, wheat, maize, sorghum, millet, barley, beans, lentils, groundnuts, cassava and potatoes were the crops studied from the 1960s through the ’90s,” Evenson said.

With population booms in developing countries, “there needed to be a way to increase food production per capita,” he said.

He used the example of Pakistan, where the population jumped from 43 million in 1947 to 143 million in 1997.

“What would happen if we did not have this revolution?” Evenson asked.

He said crop prices would have risen, imports from developing countries would go up, there would be an increase in the number of children’s deaths and malnourished children and more families in poverty.

“The programs were certainly productive and globally successful, but they have not reached everywhere,” Evenson said.

“All the studies show this has been a wonderful investment,” he said.

Fernando Feuchter, graduate student in animal science, attended the lecture, but said it was all review for him.

“I come from Sonora, Mexico, an area where the Green Revolution took place,” Feuchter said.

“This gave me more of a global and world perspective,” he said