The ‘Green Revolution’ (GR) was a series of foundation-sponsored agricultural development programmes for third world countries begun in the 1940s. By the 1970s they had been remarkably successful in boosting cereals production so that some countries were no longer dependent upon imports. On the other hand, the programmes were generally perceived to have failed in achieving their major declared aim: alleviating rural hunger.  Several critics during the 1970s and ‘80s argued that this failure was due to inappropriate technology in that the high-yielding plant varieties upon which the GR relied were eagerly adopted by large commercial farmers but did not suit the circumstances of the great majority of small peasant farms.

Major questions about this failure remain to be answered, above all (a) precisely why the early GR programmes were so ill-suited to peasant needs and (b) to what extent GR programmes may have changed since the 1970s in response to criticism.  Answers are much needed, not least because the rise of plant biotechnology has prompted talk in recent years of a ‘second GR’ in which it is once again claimed that modern plant-breeding methods can solve the problem of world hunger. Unfortunately, a decline in the number of historical studies of the GR over the last decade makes this need yet more urgent. In this session, however, we present recent work which has begun to address both of these questions.

Two of the papers suggest that the first of the GR programmes, the Rockefeller Foundation sponsored Mexican Agricultural Program (MAP), was not quite as ‘peasant-unfriendly’ as it has often been portrayed. Paul Peterson’s study of  work during the 1950s on potato cultivation by the plant pathologist, John S. Niederhauser, shows that Niederhauser attempted to develop methods and varieties which did not require the expensive inputs which peasants could ill afford (in contrast with the MAP’s work in wheat-breeding).  Jonathan Harwood’s paper on the early years of the MAP demonstrates that from the outset its planners were aware of  the particular circumstances of peasant-farming and did endorse breeding- and cultivation-methods which were tailored to the needs of the small farmer but that this orientation had been largely abandoned by about 1950. Turning to the latest phase of the GR, Harro Maat’s analysis of  the ill-tempered controversy between advocates of the conventional high-yielding rice varieties and the more recent proponents of  a System of Rice Intensification suggests that some GR breeders have not found it easy to learn from the critiques of the 1970s.

Speakers:

Paul Peterson, ‘Improving potato production in Mexico: John S. Niederhauser and Rockefeller Foundation-sponsored research during the 1950s’.

Jonathan Harwood, ‘The Rockefeller Foundation and ‘peasant-friendly’ approaches to plant-breeding in the 1940s’.

Harro Maat, ‘Facing the ecology of Green Revolution rice: the controversy around the System of Rice Intensification and its consequences for future rice improvement strategies’.

Commentator: Francesca Bray