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ABSTRACT
Origin narratives of the Green Revolution have been periodized to influence who is seen as an expert and memorialized as such. This article pushes us to reframe technical assistance to include in country agricultural aid activities needed for many foreign assistance initiatives to succeed. Many agricultural-based technical assistance projects of the twentieth century trace their origins to the emergence of a Rockefeller Foundation-led Green Revolution. This essay argues that in Mexico the arrival of so-called foreign technical assistance was not new but rather a continuation of socialist-based agricultural initiatives based on transforming rural life thru science. In addition to missing the influence of pivotal national institutions and scientists, key transnational, pre-exisiting relationships are often overlooked. This essay illustrates the importance of pushing back the time-line by using the case of Pandurang Khankhoje, an Indian agronomist working in Mexico before the arrival of Norman Borlaug and the Rockefeller Foundation.
Acknowledgements
I am grateful to Savitri Sawhney who in 2016 generously opened the doors of her home in Delhi to show me the papers of her father, Pandurang Khankhoje, and also arranged for me to have access to the yet unprocessed photographs she donated to the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library. I am also grateful to co-editors Edna Suárez-Díaz and Gisela Mateos for inviting me to a Spring 2016 workshop at UNAM where an early version of this article was presented. A revised version of that essay was later presented and discussed at Yale University at an October 2016 workshop on Technocrats and Expertise in Latin America organized by Andra Chastain and Timothy Lorek. I appreciate the comments from participants at both workshops, as well as the editors of History and Technology.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 Martin Kropff, director of the CIMMYT, quipped “We are DHL’s largest customer in Mexico.” See Kropff, “Cimmyt 50 Years.”
2 Moreover, a 2016 study analyzed the “pedigrees of 4,604 wheat varieties released worldwide during 1994–2014, based on survey responses from public and private breeding programs in 66 countries. Fully 63% of the varieties featured genetic contributions from the breeding research of CIMMYT or of the International Center for Agricultural Research in Dry Areas (ICARDA), both members of CGIAR, a publicly-funded agricultural-research-for-development consortium.” https://www.cimmyt.org/news/global-wheat-breeding-provides-billions-in-benefits-cimmyt-study-shows/
3 Soto Laveaga, “Mexican Canals.”
4 Norman Borlaug, an American agronomist, was part of the Rockefeller Foundation’s team of agricultural experts in Mexico. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970 for combatting world hunger through the use of hybrid wheat seeds developed in Northern Mexico.
5 Created in 1949, the EPTA was a United Nations program that pushed to bring development thru “multilateral” technical assistance.
6 Matchett’s research illustrates the “false dichotomy” between hybrid and open-pollinated corn or science versus tradition had been built in the literature. She shows that in the 1940s corn breeders at both the Office of Special Studies and the Mexican Agricultural Research Institute began the “unpretcedented work of developing corn that was intermediate between the two.” To do so required that researchers rely on the platform built in large part by Mexican scientists who had long been working on corn hybrids. Karin Matchett’s research on the initial corn breeding programs illustrates the tensions in the initial years of the program. Matchett also shows how success of hybrid seeds in American cornfields did not translate well into fields in other countries. Though hybrid corn seeds might have seemed attractive “to Mexican scientists and government leaders because it signified modern, scientific agriculture, open-pollinated varieties that had reusable seed were the only feasible kind of corn for most Mexican growers to cultivate.” Matchett, “Untold Innovation,” 5.
7 I first wrote about Khankhoje to illustrate largo dislocare as an interpretative tool focusing on individuals on the fringes of scientific production. That much shorter essay introduced some key biographical points which I re-introduce in this essay. See: Soto Laveaga, “Largo dislocare.”
8 Sigrid Schmalzer’s new book presents a similar argument for the case of China. See: Schmalzer, Red Revolution, Green Revolution.
9 Most notably, Hewitt De Alcantara’s La Modernización De La Agricultura Mexicana, 1940–1970 became the textbook to understand the Green Revolution in Mexico. Prior to that she published Hewitt De Alcántara, “The “Green Revolution” as History.” Hewitt de Alcántara was Deputy Director and Research coordinator at the United Nations Research Institute for Social Development (UNRISD). From 1971–1974, as a consultant, she directed the Institute-sponsored research program on the socio-economic implications of the Green Revolution in Mexico.
10 RAC, RF Annual Meetings on Mexico 1945–46, Collection, RF. Record Group: 6.13Series 1.1 Box 32 Folder 353, Agenda for meeting of Advisory Committee p. 1, Oct 1946.
11 Rockefeller Archive Center, website. https://rockfound.rockarch.org/mexico Accessed December 2018 and re-accessed 28 February 2019.
12 A frequently expressed exasperation was that Mexico had no extension program and the existing one was not only insufficient but agricultural staff seldom came in contact with farmers. Cotter (Troubled Harvest) argued that agronomists, who wore pressed pants and shirts, often with ties, did not wish to get dirty in the fields. While Harwood (“Peasant Friendly Plant Breeding,” 393) argued that staff had “no means of transportation” and so “never came into direct contact with farmers and were thus reduced to distributing leaflets and answering letters.” This often-repeated story emphasizes that the initial major contribution that the RF and Borlaug had was their contact with farmers.
13 Comisión Impulsadora y Coordinadora de la Investigación Científica in “Decreto Del El Colegio Nacional,” El Colegio Nacional, accessed Fall 2018, http://colnal.mx/la-institucion/historia/1943/decreto.
14 Kloppenburg, First the Seed, 2.
15 Cullather, The Hungry World.
16 The National School of Agriculture founded in 1854 was established as a research college with the intent of using scientific principles to develop the nation’s agriculture. Funding for the school was unstable from the start and reflected the country’s politically turbulent times.
17 Deborah Fitzgerald found a similar situation in post-Revolution Russia in which “tractors, threshing machines, and combines” were actively sought to transform agriculture. See Fitzgerald, “Blinded by Technology.”
18 This essay is part of a larger book project that traces the history of international wheat programs and wheat exchange from the 1930s through the emergence, development, and rise of Cimmyt as a global paradigm of research. The larger project expands the known chronology of the Green Revolution in both directions to examine the individuals and countries that provided precursor knowledge while also examining institutions that developed long after the focus on Mexico shifted to South Asia. In so doing, we redefine what development aid in agriculture looks like in mid-twentieth century Latin America.
19 Among the key architects of the MAP was A.R. Mann, Dean of Cornell’s School of Agriculture, who in that capacity was familiar with the leading experiment stations in Europe. Jonathan Harwood argues that Mann was certainly familiar with Germany’s emphasis on peasant-friendly practices. Moreover, Mann directed the Southern Agriculture Program with a strong focus on extension and dissemination of knowledge rather than research (‘Peasant Friend Plant Breeding’).
20 Harwood, “Peasant Friendly Plant Breeding,” 392.
21 Marci Baranski’s focus on wide adaptation further posits how Rockefeller Foundation officials were aware of Mexican farmer needs yet pursued seeds that would not be beneficial to them. See Baranski, “Wide Adaptation,” 41–50; and Baranski, “The Wide Adaptation of Green Revolution Wheat.”
22 “Re-apertura de la Escuela Agrícola ‘Emiliano Zapata’ de Chiconcuac, Mex.” El Machete IV, no. Q4 128 (Agosto 25, 1928).
23 Unless otherwise indicated, information pertaining to the free schools of agriculture and Pandurang Khankhoje come from the Savitri Sawhney private collection that was donated to the Mexican government and is now housed in the Fototeca Nacional in Hidalgo, Mexico. See: “Re-apertura de la Escuela Agricola.”
24 Karin Matchett, referring to the work of Eduardo Limon, a leader in corn inbreeding programs and Edmundo Taboada, Jefe de Operación de Distritos de Riego y Director de los Campos Agrícolas Experimentales en el Banco Nacional de Crédito Agrícola, and the possible influence of Khankhoje’s findings on their work, or vice versa states, “Although I have thus far found no explicit relationship between Khankhoje’s earlier work and Taboada and Limon’s hybrid program, the similarities are clear.” (“Untold Innovation,” 98).
25 In 1960 an average ejido plot was 6.5 hectares of cultivable land, of those 44% of the country’s ejidatarios had less than 4 hectares each. See: Stavenhagen, “Social Aspects.”
26 When Khankhoje was in his sixties he began writing his autobiography in Marathi and excerpts were serialized in the newspaper Kesari but the work remained incomplete. His main concern was that the history of the Ghadar movement not be forgotten so he continued writing even after his sight began to fail him. After his death, his eldest daughter Savitri Sawhney was able to collect the writings, had them translated and filled in several gaps from her own memories to produce I Shall Never Ask for Pardon: A Memoir of Pandurang Khankhoje in 2008. To my knowledge it is the most complete account of Khankhoje’s life.
27 Sawhney, I Shall Never Ask for Pardon, 57.
28 Ibid., 60.
29 Ramnath, 66.
30 Ibid., 66.
31 Ibid., 66.
32 Ibid., 212.
33 Interview with Savitri Sawhney, Delhi, India. May 2016.
34 Sawhney, Revolutionary Work; text of the publication provided by Sawhney.
35 It was not uncommon to have foreign agronomists as professors in Mexican institutions. For example, agronomist Egidio Gaetano Rebonato, ‘an Italian anti-fascist refugee’ was also hired to teach in this time period. In addition, under Cardenas agricultural students were sent to countries ‘that used state-of-the art farming techniques.’ The arrows of influence went both ways as in the case of National School of Agriculture student Elias Kesselbruner, son of Russian immigrants, who in 1932 was hired by the U.S.S.R. to ‘conduct a botanical survey in South America,’ Kesselbruner later donated some specimens to the school. See: Cotter, Troubled Harvest, 84–85.
36 Sawhney, I Shall Never Ask for Pardon, 124.
37 León and Castro, “Informe De La Fundación,” 233–37.
38 Ibid., 237.
39 Ibid., 236.
40 Soto Laveaga, Largo Dislocare. Khankhoje met Diego Rivera and Tina Modotti when the muralist traveled to Chapingo to paint the school’s walls, with Modotti serving as his model. The three would remain steadfast friends with Rivera eventually joining the board of the free schools of agriculture and attending, as newspaper articles attest, many of the schools’ events. As biographer Sawhney noted, ‘Khankhoje and Rivera had many points in common. Both shared a compassion for the poor farmer. Both had an abiding interest in communism and Khankhoje’s meetings with Lenin were just one of the many topics they discussed’ (237). It is also obvious that Khankhoje and Rivera fueled and influenced each other’s work. Man at the Crossroads, a replica mural found today in the Palace of Fine Arts in Mexico City and originally intended for the Rockefeller Center in New York has a variety of Khankhoje’s corn varieties at the bottom of the mural, agriculture as the foundation of science. As is well known, soon after its unveiling the mural was torn down in New York for prominently portraying Lenin yet the section on agriculture would return in different guises to Rivera’s murals. Khankhoje’s experimental corn also became the focus of Modotti’s photographs. One of her most recognized images, “Bandolier with Corn,” which has graced countless Mexican history texts reportedly uses one of Khankhoje’s hybrid corns.
41 Cotter, “Cultural Wars.”
42 The Australian experiments were mentioned in “Memoria de los trabajos ejecutados ….”
43 Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (Secretaria de Agricultura y Desarollos Rural).
44 El Sabino, octubre 19 de 1908.-Raúl E. Rincón.- Al Señor Presidente de la Unión Agrícola de Chiapas.- Tuxtla Gutiérrez. [Secretaría de Agricultura, Ganadería, Desarrollo Rural, Pesca y Alimentación (SAGARPA), Servicio de Información Agroalimentaria y Pesquera, “El maíz de Jerusalén. Informe” en Boletín de la Unión Agrícola de Chiapas, Primera Época, Tomo I, Núm. 5, Tuxtla Gutiérrez-Chiapas, 1908, p. 2.
45 Memoria de los trabajos ejecutados …,” 12.
46 Ibid., 22.
47 Cotter, “Cultural Wars.”
48 Matchett, “Untold Innovation,” 353.
49 Sawhney, “Rare Photos of Pandurang Khankhoje.”
50 Matchett notes that Institute biologists were appalled by the collection of “contaminated” corn used by Mexican ejidatarios. See Matchett, “At Odds over Inbreeding,” 353–354.
51 Initially in Olsson, “Sharecroppers and Campesinos,” and later in Agrarian Crossings.
52 In addition to disparaging remarks, there are also moments of recognition of the utility of local farmer knowledge. In the initial years, however, it seems that the balance leans toward discrediting local knowledge. The above Diaries and Memoranda, RG 6, Series 1.1, Box 33, Folder 366, Rockefeller Archive Center, New York.
53 Diaries and Memoranda, RG 6, Series 1.1, Box 33, folder 366:3, Rockefeller Archive Center, New York.
54 Ibid.
55 William C. Cobb, “The historical backgrounds of the Mexican Agricultural Program (annotated edition), Rockefeller Archive Center, RF records, Projects, RG 1.2, series 323, box 9, folder 62. 1 March 1956.
56 Ibid., 8–11. In 1906 the Rockefeller Foundation’s agricultural program started, as had its health programs, in the U.S. southern states. It was initially modeled on farm demonstration campaigns aimed at combating the boll weevil, a cotton pest. From the southern states it moved, with a different plan, on to Mexico. According to William Cobb’s version of events it was Seaman A. Knapp, a retired Department of Agriculture employee, who developed a method to teach farmers by forgoing the experts and having them teach themselves and their neighbors. The method formed the foundation of the Extension Service of the Department of Agriculture established through the Smith-Lever act of 1914. Women also participated ‘trained in domestic science’ and were taught about keeping house and canning while ‘a group of Negro agents’ were trained to ‘work with farmers of their race.’
57 Administration, Program, and Policy, RG 3.1 Series 915, Box 3, Folder 20, Rockefeller Archive Center, New York.
58 Ibid.
59 Diaries and Memoranda, RG 6, Series 1.1, Box 33, folder 366:26, Rockefeller Archive Center, New York.
60 Matchett, “Untold Innovation,” 56.
61 Administration, Program, and Policy, RG 3.1 Series 915, Box 3, Folder 20, Rockefeller Archive Center, New York.
62 Cullather, The Hungry World, 44.
63 Agricultural Education Extension Service 1958, R.G. 6.13, Series 1.1, Box 1, Folder 7, Rockefeller Archive Center, New York.
64 Ibid.
65 Agricultural Education Extension Service 1958, R.G. 6.13, Series 1.1, Box 1, Folder 7:5, Rockefeller Archive Center, New York.
66 Ibid.
67 ‘Letter to Lewis from Wycliffe, 4 December 1963.’ RAC, Collection RF Farm Income Study, RG, FA078, Series 3, Box 1, Folder 8.
68 Rodriguez, “Small Farmer’s in Mexico.”
69 Agricultural Education Extension Service 1958, R.G. 6.13, Series 1.1, Box 1, Folder 7:5, Rockefeller Archive Center, New York.
70 Fitzgerald, “Exporting American Agriculture,” 458.