Revisiting the Legacy of the Green Revolution: The Mexican Agricultural Program



The Rockefeller Foundation’s 1943 Mexican Agriculture Program (MAP) launched the worldwide agricultural movement known as the Green Revolution. The MAP has retained a master narrative, securing its place in historical memory as a great success—a prototype to be replanted throughout the world. In an attempt to understand this legacy, one can only turn to comedian Stephen Colbert, who coined the term “truthiness” to mean a subjective or intuitive understanding of truth. Merriam Webster awarded it “Word of the Year” in 2006, defining it in two ways: as "truth that comes from the gut, not books" and as "the quality of preferring concepts or facts one wishes to be true, rather than concepts of facts known to be true."[1] The Green Revolution exemplifies a similar(ly made up) term: peaciness. Pursued in the name of improving nutrition for the poor, of lightening the burden of importing food, of increasing profit and investment, and of providing employment in industrial fields, the Green Revolution was coated in the language of peace, hidden behind the guise of it, and evaluated only in light of its sanctity. It was peaceful because it was believed to be so—because it was in the interest of the US government to be so.
The name—the Green Revolution—is a misnomer. It conjures up images of a grassroots movement, of protesters combatting environmental injustice or corporate environmental degradation. Rather, it was a US-developed model of industrial agricultural technologies that were implemented across the developing world in attempt to alleviate hunger, promote market-driven economies, and eliminate the threat of communism. Proponents of the MAP and the Green Revolution failed to consider the potential impact the new agricultural technologies would have on the lives of those adopting it—or more devastatingly, on the lives of those unable to adopt it. In Mexico in particular, American post-war security, in conjunction with a budding sense of WWII-driven philanthropy, were at the root of foreign agricultural reform.[2] While the MAP increased overall production exponentially, it also heightened the socio-economic divide, narrowed the country’s genetic agricultural base, and spurred considerable northward migration. In Nealtican, a village in the Mexican Highlands, the refusal to embrace the program’s technologies demonstrates that they were not in fact designed to aid poor farmers in less arable regions of Mexico.[3]
In the early 1940s, the industrial agricultural scene was just getting off the ground in the US. Groundbreaking technologies—hybrid seeds, synthetic fertilizers, mechanized tools, and industrial irrigation systems—were leveraging crop production across the country. Between 1914 and 1943, total crop production in the US increased by over 61 percent.[4] Just south of the Rio Grande, however, during a trip to attend the 1940 inauguration of President Ávila Camacho, then Vice President of the US, Henry Wallace, found that it took a typical Mexican farmer at least 200 hours of backbreaking labor to produce each bushel of corn. In his home state of Iowa, it only took ten hours.[5]  This disparity became the impetus for the creation of the MAP, the program that became the prototype for agricultural intervention in third world countries across the world.
Mexican President Camacho marked a rightward shift from the former President, Lázaros Cárdenas, who nationalized oil and promoted agrarian land reform, distributing large amounts of land to the people for communal farming. Camacho had a more pro-Washington stance than his predecessor and was open to privatizing a segment of the previously communal land.[6] The American government saw this change in leadership as an opportunity to form a partnership. In response to Vice President Wallace’s findings, the Rockefeller Foundation sent plant pathologist J. George Harrar to Mexico in 1943 to develop an agricultural research program aimed to increase crop production.[7] Harrar, in conjunction with the US Ambassador to the Government of Mexico and Henry Wallace, established the office of Special Studies in Mexico, a joint-operation between the Rockefeller Foundation and the Mexican Government.[8]
The US armed the office of Special Studies with natural scientists, agricultural specialists, officials and politicians. It set up plant breeding programs and established new, higher-yielding varieties of maize and wheat. Then, it disseminated the seeds, chemical and synthetic fertilizers, pesticides, and mechanized tools. Due to their price tag, these packages of modern agricultural technologies were designed for large-scale, irrigated farms.[9]
However, there were larger political implications for the creation of the MAP. It was the midst of World War II, a time of great fear around national security as well as a deep desire to make and maintain allies.[10] American scientist Warren Weaver, in a letter to the Rockefeller Foundation president Chester Barnard, wrote, “The Western Democracies are handicapped because Asiatic and other underprivileged people attribute their present plight to the domination of the capitalist colonial system (…) In this struggle for the minds of men the side that best helps satisfy man’s primary needs for food, clothing and shelter is likely to win.”[11] Weaver was encouraging the Rockefeller Foundation to find a way to reduce hunger, increase production, and help Mexicans feed themselves in order to prevent communism from catching on in the region. The US, who had been previously unconcerned with its southern neighbors, took a sudden interest in Latin America.[12]
While the link between the new seeds and abundance was scientifically evident, the connection between abundance and food sufficiency was faulty. Increased production does not translate to accessible food or equal distribution, just as a country with a gross domestic product of millions does not mean that all of its citizens are rich. This flawed logic led to problems within the MAP as well as foundational issues with the Green Revolution model. As political economist Bruce Jennings discusses in his book on the intersections of science and politics in Mexican agriculture, the MAP scientists “perceive[d] the problem of hunger as a problem of production and insufficient food, [which] subverted their ability to understand the real causes of hunger and poverty in the rural areas of Mexico.”[13] If US experts could simply increase the yield of a given crop per unit of area planted—a discretely technological challenge—it was believed standard of living would also improve.
Increased production was extended to the concept of peace, a linkage that can be traced to President Herbert Hoover, who defined food as both a source of instability in the international order as well as a key form of US influence.[14] A decade later, on November 1, 1943, Franklin D. Roosevelt lays this out clearly in a message to congress on the Food Program: “Food is as important as any other weapon in the successful prosecution of the war. It will be equally important in rehabilitation and relief in the liberated areas, and in the shaping of the peace that is to come.”[15]
International charity is a post-World War II phenomenon, solidified in light of the atomic bomb, war-torn Europe, and a growing fear of communism. The US saw the growing population in rural Mexico and the perceived instability as an open invitation to communism. Lending a hand to a struggling next-door neighbor was not only the right thing to do, but it was a way of promoting market-driven capitalism by raising incomes and living standards for farmers—a sort of mini-New Deal for Mexico.
At the time, reports were coming into the US about poor rural populations living in substandard conditions with no access to education.[16] According to the Rockefeller Survey Commission of 1941, “the level of subsistence was low; dietary standards were bad…Mexico was trying to support her people on 0.9 acres of cultivated land per capita…”[17] In other words, Mexico possessed “many of the aspects of an over-populated land.”[18] Conditions were similar to many of the colonial regions around the world, and in order to, according to President Hoover, “preserve these countries from Bolshevism and rank anarchy,”[19] the US had to pour capital, technological development, and most importantly, food, into threatened regions.
However, the way forward had, according to the Rockefeller Foundation, “two objectives—research versus dissemination—and two methods—direct operation versus grant making—[which could] be combined in four different ways.”[20] The combination of dissemination and direct operation was the most attractive to “laymen in the United States, partly because of the simple idea on which it is based and partly because it is closely akin in spirit and method to the missionary efforts of the evangelical sects and orders.” Even Josephus Daniels, the Ambassador to Mexico from 1933 to 1941, believed that sending a Survey Commission to study agriculture in Mexico was a waste of time (“…the Rockefeller Foundation ought to plunge into Mexico instead of attempting to study agriculture so carefully prior to a much later decision by officers and Trustees…”). This reluctance to understand the cultural climate or region-specific agricultural nuances was part of an intentional effort to create a prototype for agricultural intervention that could be implemented across the world. On the ground in Mexico, Norman Borlaug, the main scientific mastermind behind the operation, said, “We are consciously, and very early…discarding those things that fit only one environment.”[21] The US’s tendency to implement panacean, one-size-fits-all agricultural solutions had been hatched. 
This is not to say that some foundation officials and advisors did not appear to, at least initially, have genuine concern for the improvement of rural living standards through increased production of peasant farms. It was quickly realized, though, that “the task of getting new varieties and cultivation practices to small farmers, though urgent, was going to be difficult, not least because the MAP possessed neither the facilities nor the formal authority to undertake this task on its own.”[22] The political incentives behind the MAP explain the lack of facilities and authority, as well as the underlining indifference in regard to the conditions of small farmers in less fertile corners of the country.
While the industrial agricultural system being replicated had increased production in the US, it came at a cost. Anthropologist Robert Redfield wrote that the US agriculture’s “problems are a function of our bigness, our rapid change, and the extension of urban characteristics over large parts of our nation.”[23] The industrial revolution created “the paradox of scarcity in the midst of plenty.”[24] In other words, millions of farmers were driven to near ruin by low prices, alongside millions of consumers unable to afford enough to eat. The government, in attempt to contain the crisis, devised a system of subsidies and regulations, essentially paying farmers to destroy crops.
Despite this paradox, the increase in annual production in Mexico was immense. Corn production raised from 1.6 million tons in 1940 to 14 million tons in 1985, bean production increased from 97,000 tons to nearly 1.5 million tons, and wheat production grew from 464,000 tons to over 5.2 million tons.[25] The market was suddenly flooded with industrially grown crops. The benefits of this increase did not accrue equally to all segments of the population, however. Large commercial landowners as well as urban industrial capitalists benefited disproportionately, and at the expense of small-scale farmers and laborers. Anthropologist Cynthia Hewitt de Alcantara wrote that, “land was the ultimate resource transferred from smaller to larger farms during the course of the technification of the Mexican countryside.”[26]
In some regions, the implemented system led to increased poverty and social conflict, creating what agricultural economist Alain de Janvry dubbed functional dualism, a description of the heightened relationship between peasant and capitalist agriculture. The MAP’s expensive technological toolkit (hybrid seeds, synthetic fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides etc.) accelerated production through high-yielding plant varieties and mechanized cultivation methods, but lack of capital and environmental incompatibilities excluded smaller farmers from the benefits.[27] Peasant farmers who didn’t have the land or resources to implement the new technologies saw their crops devalued as commercial production skyrocketed and prices fell. As subsistence farming became less and less sustainable, they began to rent their land to industrial agrarians—those that had embraced the new technologies disseminated by the MAP—and provide cheap labor for this flourishing capitalist agriculture. Functional dualism refers to this destruction of peasant production at the hands of capitalist agriculture. This predatory system is so strong that the tendency is to “proletarianize the peasantry anyway.”[28]
            For many of these reasons, the village of Nealtican, a community of 700 households in the highlands of central Mexico, refused to adopt the Plan Puebla, a branch of the Rockefeller Foundation-sponsored International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center. More specifically, the project failed to attract the participation of residents because the hybrid maize offered to the community—a prerequisite for access to other facets of the program—was deemed inferior to the local corn.[29] It was rejected for many reasons: the hybrid maize grew larger cobs and smaller kernels; produced a short stalk that would provide insufficient fodder for animals during the dry season; was susceptible to worm infestation and therefore relied on expensive insecticides; and had to be sown at the same time, meaning farmers would be forced to rely on the productivity of one season, rather than staggered production.[30] Nealtican’s abstention from these Green Revolution technologies was indicative of a greater trend among poor agrarian villages in Mexico. Investing in the Rockefeller’s programs was costly and often inappropriate in distinct environmental and cultural contexts. By 1977, the hybrid maize seeds only accounted for 15 percent of all planted corn in Mexico.[31]
One of the many effects of the growing wealth disparity in Mexico was mass migration northward, to the US. Peasant farmers were being pushed off land as crop prices fell and output rose. The rate of migration out of rural areas occurred disproportionately to the rate in which employment opportunities grew, creating a transfer of poverty rather than a reduction of it.[32] By the 1950s, 1.5 million migrants were crossing the border each year in search of employment.[33] This migratory movement was an unexpected but egregious consequence of the Green Revolution.
*
Norman Borlaug is remembered as the father of the Green Revolution. He won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970 “for a lifetime of work to feed a hungry world.”[34] He is credited with saving over a billion people from starvation, “more lives than any other person who has ever lived.”[35] According to the New York Times, he “did more than anyone else in the 20th century to teach the world to feed itself.” [36]
“We need another green revolution, and we need it in half the time,” said National Geographic writer Joel Bourne Jr. at the 2014 North Carolina Agriculture and Biotechnology Summit.[37] One in every nine people on Earth face critical food shortage in 2016.[38] This presents a confusing reality, for our technology has only become more efficient, our crops more resistant to drought and pests, our production greater, and our commitment to feeding the hungry more steadfast. Perhaps our model for enduring global agricultural reform wasn’t as effective as it is remembered to be.

  

Works Cited

"About Norman Borlaug." The World Food Prize. N.p., n.d. Web. 27 Nov. 2016.

Alfano, Sean. "The Truth Of Truthiness." CBSNews. CBS Interactive, 12 Dec. 2006. Web. 30 Nov. 2016.

Altieri, Miguel A. "Review." Rev. of Foundations of International Agricultural Research: Science and Politics
in Mexican Agriculture, by Bruce H. Jennings. Human Ecology 16.3 (1988): 353-54. JSTOR [JSTOR]. Web. 1 Dec. 2016.

Bane, Suda Lorena, and Ralph Haswell Lutz. Organization of American Relief in Europe, 1918-1919:
Including Negotiations Leading up to the Establishment of the Office of Director General of Relief at Paris by the Allied and Associated Powers. Stanford: Stanford UP, 1943. 36. Print.

Clawson, David L., and Don R. Hoy. "Nealtican, Mexico: A Peasant Community That Rejected the 'Green
Revolution'" American Journal of Economics and Sociology, vol. 38, no. 4, 1979, pp. 371–387. JSTOR [JSTOR].

Cleaver, Harry M. "The Contradictions of the Green Revolution." The American Economic Review 62.1/2
(1972). Web.

Cobb, William C. The Historical Backgrounds of the Mexican Agricultural Program (Annotated Edition). Rep.
N.p.: Rockefeller Foundation, 1956. The Historical Backgrounds of the Mexican Agricultural Program. 11 Dec. 1964. Web. 25 Nov. 2016. 

Cullather, Nick. "Mexico's Way Out." The Hungry World: America's Cold War Battle Against Poverty in Asia.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 2010. Print.

Dillin, John. "How Eisenhower Solved Illegal Border Crossings from Mexico." The Christian Science
Monitor. The Christian Science Monitor, 06 July 2006. Web. 25 Nov. 2016.

Franklin D. Roosevelt: "Message to Congress on the Food Program.," November 1, 1943. Online by
Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project.

"Full Text of ‘Economic Progress of Agriculture in Developing Nations, 1950-68’" Full Text of "Economic
Progress of Agriculture in Developing Nations, 1950-68" The Rockefeller Survey Commission of 1941. Web. 1 Dec. 2016. <https://archive.org/stream/CAT87209208/CAT87209208_djvu.txt>.

Ganzel, Bill. "Mexican Agricultural Program Begins the Green Revolution." Wessels Living History Farm.
N.p., 2007. Web. 15 Nov. 2016.

Gillis, Justin. "Norman Borlaug, Plant Scientist Who Fought Famine, Dies at 95." The New York Times. The
New York Times, 13 Sept. 2009. Web. 1 Dec. 2016.

Harwood, Jonathan. "Peasant Friendly Plant Breeding and the Early Years of the Green Revolution in
Mexico." Agricultural History 83.3 (2009): 387. JSTOR [JSTOR]. Web. 26 Nov. 2016.

Hewitt de Alcantara, Cynthia, Modernizing Mexican Agriculture: Socioeconomic Implications of
Technological Change 1940-1970 (Geneva: UN Research Institute for Social Development, 1976).

“Hunger Statistics.” World Food Programme, https://www.wfp.org/hunger/stats. Accessed 18 Oct. 2016.

Jones, David M. "The Green Revolution In Latin America: Success or Failure?" Publication Series (Conference
of Latin Americanist Geographers) vol. 6, 1977, p. 56. JSTOR [JSTOR].

Latham, Michael E. "Technocratic Faith: From Birth Control to the Green Revolution." Right Kind of
Revolution: Modernization and U.S. Foreign Policy from the Cold War to the Present. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 2010. Print.

Philip, George. Oil and Politics in Latin America: Nationalist Movements and State Companies. Cambridge:
Cambridge UP, 1982. Print.

Pingali, Prabhu L. "Green Revolution: Impacts, Limits, and the Path Ahead." PNAS 109.31 (2012): n.
pag. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA. Web. 20 Nov. 2016.

Reinhardt, Nola. Our Daily Bread: The Peasant Question and Family Farming in the Colombian Andes.
Berkeley: U of California, 1988. 37. Print.

Sonnenfeld, David A. “Mexico's ‘Green Revolution," 1940-1980: Towards an Environmental
History.” Environmental History Review, vol. 16, no. 4, 1992. JSTOR [JSTOR]. Web. 26 Nov. 2016.


Sheehan, James J. Where Have All the Soldiers Gone? The Transformation of Modern Europe. 1st ed. Boston:
Houghton Mifflin, 2008. p155. Print.

Shiva, Vandana. The Violence of the Green Revolution: Third World Agriculture, Ecology, and Politics.
London: Zed, 1991. Print.

Shore, Dee. “The Green Revolution Legacy.” NC State University, 5 Feb. 2015. Accessed 15 Oct. 2016

Weaver, Warren. "THE WORLD FOOD PROBLEM, AGRICULTURE, AND THE ROCKEFELLER
FOUNDATION." Letter to Chester Barnard. 21 June 1951. 100 Years The Rockefeller Foundation. N.p., n.d. Web. 1 Dec. 2016.




[1] Alfano, Sean. "The Truth Of Truthiness." CBSNews. CBS Interactive, 12 Dec. 2006. Web. 30 Nov. 2016.
[2] Latham, Michael E. "Technocratic Faith: From Birth Control to the Green Revolution." Right Kind of Revolution: Modernization and U.S. Foreign Policy from the Cold War to the Present. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 2010. 110. Print.
[3] Clawson, David L., and Don R. Hoy. "Nealtican, Mexico: A Peasant Community That Rejected the 'Green Revolution'" American Journal of Economics and Sociology, vol. 38, no. 4, 1979, pp. 371-87. JSTOR [JSTOR].
[4] Franklin D. Roosevelt: "Message to Congress on the Food Program.," November 1, 1943. Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project.
[5] Ganzel, Bill. "Mexican Agricultural Program Begins the Green Revolution." Wessels Living History Farm. N.p., 2007. Web. 20 Nov. 2016.
[6] Philip, George. Oil and Politics in Latin America: Nationalist Movements and State Companies. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1982. 330. Print.
[7] Shiva, Vandana. The Violence of the Green Revolution: Third World Agriculture, Ecology, and Politics. London: Zed, 1991. Print.
[8] Ibid.
[9] Latham, Michael E. "Technocratic Faith: From Birth Control to the Green Revolution." Right Kind of Revolution: Modernization and U.S. Foreign Policy from the Cold War to the Present. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 2010. 112.
[10] Cleaver, Harry M. "The Contradictions of the Green Revolution." The American Economic Review 62.1/2 (1972): 177-86. Web.
[11] Weaver, Warren. "THE WORLD FOOD PROBLEM, AGRICULTURE, AND THE ROCKEFELLER FOUNDATION." Letter to Chester Barnard. 21 June 1951. 100 Years The Rockefeller Foundation. N.p., n.d. Web. 1 Dec. 2016.
[12] To illustrate this indifference, the Rockefeller Foundation, in the period between its founding in 1913 and the creation of the MAP in 1943, had made grants to Europe totaling nearly $55 million dollars, in comparison to grants to Latin America totaling only $90,000. (Cobb, William C. The Historical Backgrounds of the Mexican Agricultural Program (Annotated Edition). Rep. N.p.: Rockefeller Foundation, 1956. The Historical Backgrounds of the Mexican Agricultural Program. 11 Dec. 1964. Web. 2 Dec. 2016.)
[13] Altieri, Miguel A. "Review." Rev. of Foundations of International Agricultural Research: Science and Politics in Mexican Agriculture, by Bruce H. Jennings. Human Ecology, vol. 16, no. 3, 1988, pp. 353-54. JSTOR [JSTOR].
[14] Cullather, Nick. "Mexico's Way Out." The Hungry World: America's Cold War Battle Against Poverty in Asia. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 2010. 20. Print.
[15] Franklin D. Roosevelt: "Message to Congress on the Food Program.," November 1, 1943. Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project.
[16] Cullather, Nick. "Mexico's Way Out." The Hungry World: America's Cold War Battle Against Poverty in Asia. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 2010. 44. Print.
[17] "Full Text of ‘Economic Progress of Agriculture in Developing Nations, 1950-68’" Full Text of "Economic Progress of Agriculture in Developing Nations, 1950-68" The Rockefeller Survey Commission of 1941. Web. 11 Dec. 2016. <https://archive.org/stream/CAT87209208/CAT87209208_djvu.txt>.
[18] Ibid.
[19] Bane, Suda Lorena, and Ralph Haswell Lutz. Organization of American Relief in Europe, 1918-1919: Including Negotiations Leading up to the Establishment of the Office of Director General of Relief at Paris by the Allied and Associated Powers. Stanford: Stanford UP, 1943. 36. Print.
[20] Cobb, William C. THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUNDS OF THE MEXICAN AGRICULTURAL PROGRAM (Annotated Edition). Rep. N.p.: Rockefeller Foundation, 1956. The Historical Backgrounds of the Mexican Agricultural Program. 31-32. 11 Dec. 1964. Web. 28 Nov. 2016. 
[21] Cullather, Nick. "Mexico's Way Out." The Hungry World: America's Cold War Battle Against Poverty in Asia. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 2010. 44. Print.
[22] Harwood, Jonathan. "Peasant Friendly Plant Breeding and the Early Years of the Green Revolution in Mexico." Agricultural History, vol. 83, no. 3, 2009, pp. 387. JSTOR [JSTOR].
[23] Cullather, Nick. "Mexico's Way Out." The Hungry World: America's Cold War Battle Against Poverty in Asia. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 2010. 47. Print.
[24] Ibid.
[25] Sonnenfeld, David A. “Mexico's ‘Green Revolution," 1940-1980: Towards an Environmental History.” Environmental History Review, vol. 16, no. 4, 1992. 33. JSTOR [JSTOR]. Web. 26 Nov. 2016.
[26] Hewitt de Alcantara, Cynthia, Modernizing Mexican Agriculture: Socioeconomic Implications of Technological Change 1940-1970 (Geneva: UN Research Institute for Social Development, 1976), 313.
[27] Latham, Michael E. "Technocratic Faith: From Birth Control to the Green Revolution." Right Kind of Revolution: Modernization and U.S. Foreign Policy from the Cold War to the Present. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 2010. 112.
[28] Reinhardt, Nola. Our Daily Bread: The Peasant Question and Family Farming in the Colombian Andes. Berkeley: U of California, 1988. 37. Print.
[29] Clawson, David L., and Don R. Hoy. "Nealtican, Mexico: A Peasant Community That Rejected the 'Green Revolution'" American Journal of Economics and Sociology, vol. 38, no. 4, 1979, pp. 371–387. JSTOR [JSTOR].
[30] Ibid. 379-380.
[31] Jones, David M. "The Green Revolution In Latin America: Success or Failure?" Publication Series (Conference of Latin Americanist Geographers) vol. 6, 1977, p. 56. JSTOR [JSTOR].
[32] Pingali, Prabhu L. "Green Revolution: Impacts, Limits, and the Path Ahead." PNAS 109.31 (2012): n. pag. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA. Web. 20 Nov. 2016.
[33] Dillin, John. "How Eisenhower Solved Illegal Border Crossings from Mexico." The Christian Science Monitor. The Christian Science Monitor, 06 July 2006. Web. 30 Nov. 2016.
[34] "About Norman Borlaug." The World Food Prize. N.p., n.d. Web. 3 Dec. 2016.
[35] Ibid.
[36] Gillis, Justin. "Norman Borlaug, Plant Scientist Who Fought Famine, Dies at 95." The New York Times. The New York Times, 13 Sept. 2009. Web. 8 Dec. 2016.
[37] Shore, Dee. “The Green Revolution Legacy.” NC State University, 5 Feb. 2015. Accessed 15 Oct. 2016
[38] “Hunger Statistics.” World Food Programme, https://www.wfp.org/hunger/stats. Accessed 18 Oct. 2016.