Science and the Green Revolution 1945-1975

In the years after the end of World War II, farmers, agricultural scientists, and policy makers in many countries all knew, or learned, that higher yields of wheat were what they wanted, and they were successful in achieving them. Their specific motivations were different, but their objectives were not. Not only were the objectives clear, but a central method by which the higher yields were to be achieved was plant breeding. Plant breeding itself was an applied science that had to be nested within organizations that supported it and its allies in the agricultural, biological, and engineering sciences. By 1950 wheat breeders believed that the number of factors governing yield was small, which meant that the research avenues likely to be fruitful were also few in number. The amount of water available and the responsiveness to soil fertility, especially nitrogen, were in most cases the key ingredients for higher yields. For wheat, the ability of the plant to resist invasion by fungal pathogens was almost as important as water and soil fertility. Water and fertility were needed in every crop year, but damage from fungal pathogens varied with weather. Thus plant disease was not necessarily a destructive factor every year. Control of water, soil fertility, and plant disease was therefore at the center of research programs in wheat breeding. A wheat breeder would find success if his or her program produced new varieties that gave higher yields within the context of water, soil fertility, and plant disease existing in the area. Ancillary questions also existed and in some cases matched the major factors in importance. Weed control was always a problem, so high-yielding wheat had to have some capacity to resist competition from weeds. Similarly, in some areas and some years, insects could cause damage. Wheat varieties therefore had to be able to withstand them somehow. Other factors of importance to wheat breeders were habit of growth and the color and quality of the grain. Winter wheats were useful in climates that had winters mild enough to allow planting in the fall and thus higher yields the next summer.

Wheat Breeding and the Exercise of American Power, 1940-1970

American power at the end of World War II was paramount. The usual image of this might, however, is formed more by the array of military and industrial components of American culture than by something as seemingly mundane as wheat breeding. Nuclear-tipped missiles, airplane and tank factories, engineering prowess, and motivated soldiers are more generally assumed to be the components of military strength, not scientists patiently crossing one strain of wheat with another and searching through the progeny for a better variety. In the direct exercise of military power, of course, the weapon systems and soldiers are the most important elements of power. Armies, however, exist only on the foundation of food supplies that are adequate for both the military personnel and their civilian support force. American strategists in both world wars were acutely aware of the role of agriculture in the projection of military might, and they considerably amplified agriculture’s importance in the aftermath of World War II. Specifically, through a variety of public and private initiatives, wheat breeding and other lines of agricultural science became an integral part of postwar American strategic planning. Put somewhat differently, after 1945, wheat breeding by American scientists became more than just an exercise in the modernization of agriculture. Old motivations for seeking new varieties did not disappear, but new motivations arose to justify expenditures. In addition, American scientists came to do their work not only in the United States for American farmers but overseas for foreign governments. Wheat breeding acquired ideological dimensions more elaborate than simply “the promo tion of progress.” Instead, wheat breeding and other agricultural science became part of the “battle for freedom.” In the process, many countries moved to new relationships with each other and with their own natural resource base. How did wheat breeding get caught up with strategic and national security considerations? It is necessary to follow a somewhat convoluted trail to answer this question, and the story can begin with the status of the United States after the collapse of Germany and Japan in 1945.

Wheat Breeding : Coalescence of a Modern Science, 1900-1939

Plant breeding in general and wheat breeding specifically were rudimentary activities on many grounds in the nineteenth century. Not many people engaged in the activity. Those who did were self-taught. because no formal educational programs existed in the subject. For the most part, they had only a few very modest institutional bases within which to work. Many farmers paid them little or no attention, and governments usually ignored their contributions and gave them next to no support. They had no organized way of broadly disseminating their results, which in any case were few in number. By 1970, wheat and other plant breeders occupied a very different position within both the scientific and political economic landscapes. Many people worked as breeders. They were highly trained in educational programs dedicated to the reproduction of plant breeders. Elaborate networks of institutions gave them employment. A substantial proportion of farmers cared very much what they did, and governments gave substantial, sometimes lavish, support. They had means of communicating their work that included both scientific and popular outlets. And they had substantial results to convey to farmers and the general public, some of them remarkable either for their scientific cleverness or for their broad political, economic, and ecological impacts, or both. Another way of gaining perspective on the change in status of wheat and other plant breeders is to suggest that their absence might not have been noticed by anybody but their families had they suddenly disappeared in the nineteenth century. In contrast, the twentieth century came increasingly to depend upon the plant breeders. Cessation of wheat breeding after 1970, for example, would have put some agricultural systems in distinct danger of slow decline or even collapse and failure. In both political economic and ecological terms, an increasing portion of the global human community became absolutely dependent upon wheat breeders and other plant scientists, certainly for prosperity as we now know it and possibly for survival and security. The transformation of wheat breeding from nearly invisible to virtually indispensable resulted from two mutually interacting events: a commercial-industrial revolution in agriculture and construction of a new science of plant breeding.

The Rockefeller Foundation in Mexico : The New International Politics of Plant Breeding, 1941-1945

Events during World War I and in the years between the two world wars demonstrated that agricultural production was essential for the security of individual nations. No country could afford to neglect its food supply if it wished to maintain its status as a major military power. In addition, pressures from technically sophisticated farmers and industrialists, both interested in efficient agricultural production, solidified the use of scientific research in reforming the agricultural economy. Underlying the drive for both military power and efficient agricultural production was a powerful vision of the nation-state as an industrial economy in which all natural resources, including agriculture, were marshaled by the rational control of modern science. Both people and nature were subservient to the imperatives of power and rationalism in the new scheme of things. What was largely missing from the pre-1939 vision, however, was a sense of how nations might interact to address issues of industrialization and agricultural modernization. By 1939 industrial states like the United Kingdom and the United States developed a sense of how individually they should manage their industrial and agricultural resources, and the British government certainly had a clear sense of how the Indian economy should be controlled. Outside of the realms of direct imperialism, however, industrial countries had only vague notions about how to use scientific and economic policy to foster their aims internationally. Furthermore, no country had any profound sense, incorporated into policy, that rich and powerful countries should assist the poor countries to achieve a better standard of living for humanitarian reasons. Aside from imperialism, therefore, in 1939 no analytical framework existed to see how agricultural science and technology and modernization of agriculture fit into the overall scheme of international relations and power. Perhaps the only exception to this situation was a small program of the Rockefeller Foundation in China. In 1924 the International Education Board of the Rockefeller Foundation began to assist the University of Nanking with wheat improvement, economic issues, and other projects. In addition, during the 1920s, the foundation supported medical reform in China.

Wheat Breeding and the Consolidation of Indian Autonomy, 1940-1970

Between 1940 and 1970, India vastly increased its wheat-breeding efforts, which in turn became part of the country’s capacity for high-yielding agriculture. These changes in agricultural science and production practices were by no means incidental to Indian politics. On the contrary, the embrace of science and high-yielding practices was the result of intense debate and experimentation with a number of policies. On the surface, the arguments were about how best to increase food production, but the debates had a far deeper meaning. They touched the very heart and soul of what independent India was to be, and on their outcome rested India’s ability to be an autonomous nation. The debate sharpened its focus at independence in 1947, when a single question became paramount: Should India aspire to be an industrialized, urban society? Or should India create a more prosperous but agrarian society based on hundreds of thousands of largely self-sufficient rural villages? Finding an acceptable answer to this question posed far more difficult problems for Indian politics than the central question that had existed for nearly a century: how to get the British to leave. During the three decades from 1940 to 1970, India at various times (1) expanded the amount of land devoted to food production; (2) managed food shortages through a system of price control and state procurement of grain; (3) launched community development programs in an attempt to raise the well-being of villages in an egalitarian way; (4) obtained grants and low-cost sales of surplus wheat from the United States and elsewhere in order to cover its food production deficit; and (5) embraced the promise of science to increase yields, reluctantly at first, then enthusiastically. In the end, it was the science, particularly the key contributions of plant breeding, that tipped the balance toward higher levels of wheat production. Repercussions of the ideological clashes involved in making this choice continue within India even today. This chapter covers the events in three phases. First, at independence India was already in a food crisis caused by the collapse of food production in the last years of the British raj and the effects of partition.

Hunger, Overpopulation, and National Security : A New Strategic Theory for Plant Breeding, 1945-1956

The Mexican Agricultural Program (MAP) was the catalyst that brought plantbreeding science into the arena of international relations. During the first few years of the MAP’s operations, however, no programmatic framework existed to promote plant breeding on a global basis. Although a private philanthropy like the Rockefeller Foundation might support plant-breeding research, it was not clear that governments would be interested in the field as a way of achieving their international ambitions. The trustees of the Rockefeller Foundation, with their sense that success with MAP might lead to further ventures, were possibly the only group with even the rudiments of an idea about the international importance of plant breeding. By 1970, however, plant breeding was firmly entrenched in global international relations. Extensive national research organizations in many countries, a collection of prestigious international research stations, and an international coordinating network of supporters created a complex institutional nexus within which plant breeding and allied sciences were well supported. Research conducted in this network of national and international experiment stations led to the high-yielding varieties of wheat and rice that significantly altered regional, national, and international economies. Several factors governed the ability of plant breeding to become a “normal” part of international dealings. First, the science had to have something to offer. As described in chapters 3 through 5, by 1945 plant breeding had demonstrated that it could produce results of interest. Second, national governments wanting to extend or receive international aid in plant breeding had to have a national capacity to con duct the science. Chapters 4 and 5 provide an account of how the United States, Britain, India, and Mexico each gained this capacity. A full comprehension of why and how wheat breeding entered the international arena requires attention to three additional points. First, what was the general intellectual and political climate that promoted the science’s entry into international relations? Second, what specifically did individual countries do to participate in aid programs including wheat-breeding research? Finally, what was the research program that led to the high-yielding wheat varieties, and how was this program created? In this chapter we turn to the first of these three questions.

Political Ecology and the Yield Transformation

Something quite remarkable happened during the past century, and especially since 1950. Yields rose dramatically in the basic cereal crops such as wheat, rice, and maize, and in other crops as well. Casual inquiry to an agricultural expert about the source of the increase is likely to bring a response such as, “Well, farmers now use better plant varieties and more fertilizer than they used to, so the yields went up.” At the simplest level, this response is perfectly adequate and true. Better varieties and more fertilizer have made it possible to get larger harvests from the same plot of ground. Unfortunately, the simple answer immediately provokes yet further questions: How did farmers obtain the new and better plant varieties? Why did they use more fertilizer? When did farmers start changing their practices? Where? Why? Who helped them? The last question quickly leads the inquiry into the realm of agricultural science, because scientists enabled farmers to change their practices. Especially important were plant breeders and soil fertility experts. Thus a new realm of questions is opened: How did scientists discover the methods for higher yields? When did they do their research? Where? Why? Who paid for the research? Why? What is the significance of this scientific change? These questions seem simple, but agriculture is a tricky topic to address. It generates an inordinate number of paradoxes, puzzles, and ironies, which makes answering the queries difficult. Consider, for example, just a few: . . . Agriculture was once the place where the vast majority of human beings worked and lived, but now it increasingly provides a place for only a small minority of people. Agriculture’s harvests are the only source from which most people obtain enough food to stay alive, but few nonfarmers understand or care about its workings. Agriculture is often considered to be a landscape that is alive, verdant, lush, and redolent of wholesome naturalness, but in reality it represents the complete destruction, indeed obliteration, of natural ecosystems and wildlife habitat. . . .

Wheat Breeding and the Reconstruction of Postimperial Britain, 1935-1954

Most discussions about the green revolution focus on it as a package of technologies used to increase cereals production in the less industrialized world. Adoption of this package is generally asserted to stem from a crisis of overpopulation. The argument of chapters 6 through 8 was that a better understanding of the green revolution comes from recognition of deeper political questions, particularly those centered around national security issues. The United States promoted highyielding agriculture in countries such as Mexico and India for reasons of its own perception of national security. Mexico and India, similarly, were driven to adopt the technologies in order to foster their own processes of industrialization and preservation of national security. These last two chapters bring forth yet another dimension: adoption of highyielding practices was by no means confined to the less industrialized countries. Both Britain and the United States also had a green revolution. Moreover, industrialized countries adopted the high-yielding practices for reasons related to questions of national security. Revitalization of the British countryside, especially in its ability to produce wheat, had been a fond dream of many agriculturalists and agricultural scientists since the 1870s. Although the food emergency of the First World War temporarily rekindled an interest in British wheat production, its effects did not last after 1920. In contrast, the events during and after the Second World War sparked a rebirth of production and the construction of an integrated agricultural research system. Wheat breeding was a key component of the postwar agricultural reconstruction in the United Kingdom. This chapter focuses on why and how Britain decided to adopt the technology package of the green revolution on a timetable that paralleled events in India. “Dismal” is probably the adjective best suited to describe agriculture and agricultural science in the 1930s, at least among those British who supported more domestic production of foodstuffs. Price guarantees in the Wheat Act of 1932 encouraged British wheat farmers to increase their production, but the increase was not enough to affect imports significantly. In 1939, for example, wheat was grown on 1.76 million acres, up from about 1.2 million acres in 1931.

Plant Breeding in Its Institutional and Political Economic Setting, 1900-1940

Geneticists such as Liberty Hyde Bailey and Rowland Harry Biffen were prominent leaders in the new science of plant breeding. By 1940 they and their successors had constructed an elaborate body of theory and methods and had acquired a working collection of plant germ plasm. Plant breeding was an ongoing enterprise in a few countries, and production of such crops as wheat and maize already showed the commercial importance of the science. As noted in chapter 3, the promotion of plant breeding and other agricultural science was part of the industrial revolution and stemmed from (1) the repeal of the Corn Laws in Britain, (2) the development of international markets for wheat and other grains, (3) the population growth and emigration of European peoples to many other parts of earth, (4) the subsequent expansion of land in agriculture, and (5) the increasing mechanization of agriculture. Each of these interlinked factors reflected that the growing of wheat and other grains was increasingly a commercial matter and enhanced the role of science. Conditions conducive to the use of plant breeding also spawned organizations to train plant breeders, support their research, and provide easy access to their results. Agriculture, in turn, came increasingly to depend on a steady stream of new varieties from plant-breeding research. Institutional development in plant breeding did not occur in neat synchrony with the conceptual and methodological breakthroughs outlined in chapter 3. Instead, the growth of organizations depended upon (1) the promotion of the science by scientists, (2) the stresses imposed on farmers by market competition in agricultural products, (3) the perils nations faced in war, and (4) in the case of India, efforts by the British to alleviate famine so that India would remain profitable and governable. Both the organizational infrastructure created by 1940 and the conceptual developments were critically important to the subsequent transformation of wheat yields that occurred between 1940 and 1970. This chapter explores the institutional developments to 1940. Britain, America, and India each started to organize agricultural science before 1900 by forming scientific societies, agricultural improvement associations, private and public experiment stations, educational institutions, and government ministries to promote science.

Wheat, People, and Plant Breeding

Selecting improved varieties of wheat from among existing wheat plants is an ancient art that dates back thousands of years. In contrast, the deliberate generation of new varieties by controlled breeding is more recent. Wheat breeding developed from an arcane art practiced only by a few isolated individuals into a global community of professional scientists in the period from about the mid-eighteenth century to about 1925, but especially from about 1875 to 1925. Wheat improvement, however, ultimately involved more than just finding or creating varieties with greater utility. A relationship between people and wheat developed over the millennia that increasingly left both species in a state of ever higher mutual dependency. Put another way, wheat and people coevolved in ways that left neither much ability to prosper without the other. Professional wheat breeders occupied a pivotal role in this ongoing coevolutionary process, especially after the nineteenth century. An understanding of wheat breeding thus depends upon understanding how wheat and people “grew up together.” Wheat in everyday English designates a particular grassy plant that produces a starchy grain or seed. Most people think of wheat primarily in terms of this grain, which is used to make bread, cookies (biscuits), pastries, and pasta. Consumers easily distinguish between wheat and other grains such as rice, oats, maize, rye, and barley as they appear in manufactured products or as ready-to-consume grain in food stores. In contrast to their savvy as consumers, most urban dwellers probably could not differentiate between these grains in the farmer's field, particularly between wheat, rye, and barley. Nor could they necessarily give a good explanation of why wheat is particularly suitable for the products in which it is used. Moreover, they probably would be unfamiliar with other uses of wheat, such as using the grain for feed or the straw for fodder and roof thatching. Finally, in all likelihood these consumers would be hard-pressed to give details about the quantities of grain that can be obtained per hectare per year or much about how yields have increased in recent decades. In short, most consumers know and appreciate wheat but only on rather narrow and unsophisticated grounds.