Editors’ Note: John Perkins contributes to HistPhil’s forum on the Green Revolution. Scholarship over the past 20 years has produced a much richer understanding of the Green Revolution, but one critical angle has received little attention: the role of energy. This post will sketch the important issues connecting energy with the Green Revolution and explain why they … Continue reading
Category Archives: The Green Revolution
The Green Revolution as Philanthropy
Editors’ Note: For readers who worried that HistPhil’s forum on the Green Revolution had ended, take heart! It’s still very much open, though we will be rolling out new posts at a slower pace in the weeks ahead. Here David Nally continues the forum with a post probing the philanthropic roots of the Revolution. The Green Revolution can … Continue reading
A Practitioner’s History of the Green Revolution
Editors’ Note: Gary Toenniessen, who worked for more than four decades on agricultural policy for the Rockefeller Foundation, continues HistPhil’s forum on the Green Revolution. When I joined the Rockefeller Foundation in 1971, I quickly learned from my experienced colleagues the value of history as a resource for program development. The Foundation’s cooperative work in Mexico was … Continue reading
Why Wheat? Borlaug and his Cosmopolitan Wheat Varieties in the Green Revolution
Editors’ Note: In the latest post in HistPhil’s forum on the Green Revolution, Marci Baranski explains the special place wheat played within the Green Revolution, and why that history might not necessarily work as a model for future programs of agricultural development. Very recently, wheat overtook rice as the highest acreage food crop in the … Continue reading
Raising Yields and Losing Genes
Editors’ Note: Helen Anne Curry continues HistPhil‘s forum on the Green Revolution. Here, she argues that the history of the Rockefeller Foundation’s involvement in the conservation of crop biodiversity offers insight into how the foundation navigated the science and politics of a problem that it had itself contributed significantly to generating. In 1943, the Rockefeller Foundation … Continue reading
Can Philanthropy Feed the World?: A Review of David Rieff’s The Reproach of Hunger
Editors’ Note: HistPhil continues its forum on the Green Revolution with this review of David Rieff’s The Reproach of Hunger from Gilbert Levine and Ruth Levine. The world has done a remarkable job of feeding itself. Despite population growth, the Food and Agriculture Organization reports that the prevalence of hunger in most parts of the developing world … Continue reading
U.S. Regionalism and the Many Histories of the Green Revolution
Editors’ Note: Tore Olsson continues HistPhil’s forum on the Green Revolution. The reach of U.S. philanthropy has rarely been contained by national boundaries, and in the twentieth century, this was especially true. Readers of this blog are likely familiar with the vast global footprint left by institutions such as the Ford, Rockefeller, and Carnegie endowments, … Continue reading
Was the Green Revolution a Humanitarian Undertaking?
Editors’ Note: With this post from Jonathan Harwood, HistPhil begins a forum on the Green Revolution. The GR is often touted as one of the greatest achievements of twentieth century philanthropy, but perhaps with no other initiative is the gap between assessment of its impact and significance by scholars and practitioners so wide. With this … Continue reading
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