The Rockefeller Foundation and the green revolution ... - Springer Link

The Rockefeller Foundation and the Green Revolution, 1941-1956

J o h n H. P e r k i n s

John H. Perkins currently teaches environmental studies at The Evergreen State College in Olympia and was formerly at Miami University in Ohio. He has published a number of articles plus a book (Insects, Experts, and the Insecticide Crisis, Plenum, 1982) on the history of American applied entomology. Currently he is working on a history of the green revolution as it occurred in India, Mexico, the United States, and the United Kingdom. He is interested in the origins of new technology and the ways in which technological innovation both creates and solves environmental problems. He is a member of several environmental, scientific, and historical societies and currently serves as an Editorial Advisor for Agriculture and Human Values.

A B S T R A C T High yielding agriculture in less-industrialized countries, the green revolution, has been both honored and criticized over the past twenty years. Supporters point to the increased food supplies produced with the new practices, but detractors argue that the new technologies are environmentally destructive, unsustainable, and socially inequitable. This paper explores the origins of high yielding agriculture in order better to understand how the arguments over sustainability and equity originated. The Rockefeller Foundation was an important agency in promoting the development of the new agricultural science. Its programs in Mexico and India, initiated in 1941 and 1956, were key building blocks in creating high yielding agricultural practices. The Foundation scientists saw rapid population growth as the main source of hunger and communist subversion. In order to alleviate hunger and instability, they created a strategy of agricultural development based on increased yields but paid no attention to the problem of distribution of harvested food. Sustainability was not recognized as a problem at the time Foundation scientists began their work. Indeed the technical successes of their programs prompted the development of concerns about sustainability. Equity of distribution was brought to the attention of the Foundation before it began its work, but the scientists paid no attention to the issue.

Introduction The Rockefeller Foundation was central to the development of technologies and social practices that enabled farmers in the Third World to increase their yields dramatically. Foundation literature and much of the popular press lauded this "Green Revolution" as fulfillment of the terms of the Foundation's founding principle, to support programs for the improvement of the well being of people. Enormous prestige came when Foundation scientist Norman E. Borlaug won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1971 for his work in breeding the wheat varieties of the Green Revolution. Nevertheless, the results of the Foundation's efforts in agriculture spawned an important controversy. First, some said the new technologies damaged the environment and will not be sustainable

due to their uses of natural resources. 1Specifically, critics argued that the Green Revolution resulted in the disappearance of genetic diversity, exhaustion of fertilizers and petrochemicals, soil salinization from irrigation, and dangers of pest outbreaks from monocroping. Second, critics argued that the adoption of the new practices exacerbated already severe inequities in countries like India or were only partially successful in reaching the total farming population.2 Specifically, some social scientists argued that the Green Revolution resulted in the displacement of marginal farmers, downgrading of the status of women agriculturalists, and the tragic irony of increased hunger in the presence of enhanced agricultural productivity.

Perkins: The Rockefeller Foundation and the Green Revolution

How did a set of agricultural practices designed for such ostensibly noble purposes end up in such a controversy? Do the arguments over sustainability and equity have anything to do with the factors that led the Foundation to begin its agricultural research programs? Do the historical origins of the Green Revolution provide any insights into current efforts to improve the sustainability and equity of agricultural assistance programs from the industrialized world? ~ Answers to these questions must begin with the notion that how to design an agricultural development assistance program was one of the first problems that Foundation officers had to solve. Prior to 1940, neither Foundation nor government officials had thought extensively about how to design an assistance program. Staff at the Rockefeller Foundation were the first to devote serious thought to this problem. Mexico and India were the sites of the Foundation's most important initiatives in agriculture, begun in 1941 and 1956, respectively. Planning the Mexican agricultural program began before the United States formally entered World War II, but the outbreak of war in Asia (1937) and Europe (1939) had important effects on the Foundation's interest and ability to initiate a program of agricultural research. Planning the Indian agricultural program occurred shortly after the victory of the Communist Chinese over the Nationalists in 1949 and in the midst of an overpowering cold war ideology in America. Staff and trustees of the Foundation were again sensitive to strategic concerns of the U.S. administration in their agricultural work. As a result, the two programs most central to the Green Revolution were heavily influenced by the dominant political and military concerns of the time. In addition, launching the program in India was tightly tied to concerns about overpopulation, a factor that did not enter into thinking about Mexico. Foundation staff and trustees linked worries about overpopulation to strategic ideological concerns. Efforts to resolve the contemporary debate over sustainability and equity must recognize these deeper strategic and ideological concepts.

The Rockefeller F o u n d a t i o n initiates a program in agriculture

The world of agricultural science in 1940 differed vastly from today's. At that time, the industrialized nations of Western Europe, North America, and Japan performed virtually the only intensive scientific work on agricultural problems. Countries that did not yet have much industry, i.e., those countries with predominantly agricultural economies, had lit-

tle or no capacity for experimentation on methods of improving agricultural yields. Countries that were predominantly agricultural are now called "developing countries," "less developed countries,""underdeveloped countries,"or some other label that signifies their lack of a more diversified economy. Most of these nations were tropical or sub-tropical, and at that time many were under the imperial domination of more industrialized countries. For example, in 1940 Britain ruled an India with a largely agricultural economy. More than 75% of all Indians lived in the rural areas and engaged primarily in subsistence agriculture. India then had a small agricultural science establishment, but its efforts were directed more to cash, export crops rather than staple food crops. 4 India's situation was typical of most non-industrialized countries with the exception that the Imperial Agricultural Research Institute sponsored some work on wheat improvement before Independence. 5 Not only were the non-industrialized countries minimally active in agricultural science, no international body concerned itself with the promotion of agricultural science or with efforts to have the industrialized nations assist other countries in agricultural science. Only through the ties of empire was tropical agricultural science generated, and it generally served the interests of the imperial powers, not the colonies2 The Rockefeller Foundation moved into the uncharted territory of agricultural assistance between 1906 and 1935 with a concern for agriculture and rural life. Foundation officers supported extension programs in the American south and crop improvement research at the University of Nanking in China. 7 In 1941, the Foundation began a new effort in Mexico that was extraordinary in its boldness and originality: the Foundation decided it could help Mexico create an agricultural science establishment to improve the productivity of staple foods. 8 Several features distinguished the Mexican agricultural program from earlier efforts. First, other than the Rockefeller Foundation, few if any philanthropies had ventured into agriculture before. Second, no government, let alone a small foundation, had consciously aimed at creating a scientific infrastructure in a foreign country on basic food crops. Finally, aside from public health and engineering, little thought had been devoted to how technically trained experts of an industrialized country could or should assist individuals in a non-industrialized country in acquiring the trappings of modern science and technology. Proposals for the Foundation's involvement in

A G R I C U L T U R E AND HUMAN V A L U E S - - S U M M E R - F A L L

Mexico began as early as 1933 with discussions between the Foundation's regional director for public health, John A. Ferrell, and Josephus Daniels, the American ambassador to Mexico." Little came of these early talks, and relations between the Mexican and American governments became strained when Mexico's President Lazaro Cardenas seized American-owned oil properties and other real estate after 1934. TM A reconciliation began in 1940 when President Franklin Roosevelt decided to send Vice Presidentelect Henry A. Wallace to attend the inauguration of Mexico's new President, Manuel Avila Camacho. 11 During Wallace's stay with Ambassador Daniels, Wallace was much impressed by Daniels' concern with the plight of poor, rural Mexicans. 12 After Wallace's return to the United States, a number of conversations among Wallace, Nelson Rockefeller, Ferrell, and Daniels led to a meeting of Wallace, Ferrell, and Raymond B. Fosdick, president of the Rockefeller Foundation. 13Fosdick recounts that Wallace remarked on the benefits that could come to Mexico if anyone could improve the productivity of corn and beans, the staples of the Mexican diet. Fosdick was also probably seeking new philanthropic activities for the Foundation, because the war had ended the Foundation's major programs in Europe and China. 14 Upon his return to New York, Fosdick consulted with Warren Weaver, director of the natural science program at the Foundation25 Weaver, whose technical background was in mathematics and the physical sciences, remembered that he did not at first know how to respond to Wallace's suggestion. Nevertheless, the natural science staffmet with Albert R. Mann, who had formerly been Dean of Agriculture at Cornell University and who had directed the Foundation's work in Chinese agriculture. They proposed to send three experts to Mexico: Paul Mangelsdorf, a geneticist and plant breeder from Harvard University; Richard Bradfield, a soils specialist from Cornell; and E1vin C. Stakman, a plant pathologist from the University of Minnesota.16 The survey team toured extensively in Mexico in the summer of 1941. Their lengthy report was in some ways sensitive to the cultural and social diversity of Mexican agriculture, but it was quite specific in its main recommendation: the Rockefeller Foundation could best assist the improvement of Mexican agriculture by establishing a four-man commission in or near Mexico City to advise the Mexican Department of Agriculture. In priority ranking, the four men should be (1) an agronomist/ soil scientist, (2) plant breeder, (3) plant

pathologist/entomologist, and (4) animal husbandman. 17 Once the experts' report was in, the Foundation negotiated with the Mexican government for an invitation to provide assistance in developing Mexican agriculture. Invitation in hand, the Foundation selected J. George Harrar as director of the program and launched activities in February 1943. TM Several features of the Rockefeller Foundation's program in Mexico need to be noted, because these attributes were important in the evolution of the Foundation's strategy in agriculture, including efforts in India. First, although Rockefeller philanthropy was not a complete stranger to agriculture, the dimensions of the effort in Mexico far surpassed all previous grants. 1."Furthermore, the decision to move into agricultural science was in some ways unanticipated. In 1938, Warren Weaver had identified no agricultural fields of work in a strategic planning exercise for the natural science program of the Rockefeller Foundation. In fact, Weaver had explicitly ruled out animal and plant breeding and instead suggested a concentrated effort in basic genetic research. ~° Yet by 1945, the Rockefeller Foundation was spending nearly $100,000 per year on the Mexican agricultural program when the entire natural science expenditure per year averaged only $1.7 million.21 Second, the Mexican program was an operational program, not just the usual Rockefeller Foundation effort that relied on the disbursement of grants to others responsible for actual scientific operations. 22Perhaps the lack of sufficiently trained Mexican nationals led the Foundation to move directly into operating a research station, but this pattern became characteristic of other Rockefeller Foundation work in agriculture. Third, the types of scientific work undertaken were perhaps set even before the Foundation had made a major commitment to enter agricultural science. The exploratory committee of Mangelsdorf, Bradfield, and Stakman each had a background in an agricultural science discipline oriented to the quantity and stability of agricultural yields. It is understandable that the three committee members would recommend studies on subjects about which they knew. However, some of the original concerns of Ferrell, Daniels, and Wallace were oriented to the problems of feeding hungry people, a problem that might or might not be solved by increasing the quantities and stabilities of crop yields. Finally, when the Foundation began the Mexican agricultural program, it became involved in a country that had strategic importance in U.S. foreign and military policy. Considerable concern


existed in the U.S. State Department that President Cardenas would either take his country too far to the left or would fall to a fascist coup led by dissident army officers. ~ The Roosevelt administration wanted neither a socialist nor a fascist state on its southern border. ~4 Foundation officials had to maintain a delicate balance in moving into such a sensitive arena. On the one hand, they did not want to move at cross purposes to the State Department's concerns. On the other hand, Foundation staff were jealous of their independence of the U.S. government and did not want the Mexicans to see them as a tool of Washington. 25Working to be consistent with U.S. government policy yet independent of Washington's control was a constant theme guiding the Foundation's later agricultural programs.

Population consciousness at the Rockefeller Foundation As the Rockefeller Foundation began an agricultural research station in Mexico, officers and trustees of the Foundation continued a concern about the numbers of people on the Earth and the rate at which they were increasing• The concept of"population explosion" increasingly underlay Foundation thinking about how their resources should be spent. Studies on the human population had long been of interest to the Foundation, but grants before World War II had centered on eugenics, genetics of mental deficiency, and studies of population redistributions. ~ In 1946, population concerns at the Foundation took a radically different course• Raymond Fosdick, President of the Foundation, became concerned about criticisms of public health programs, which the Rockefeller Foundation had supported for more than forty years. 27 Critics called public health protection measures unethical if they resulted in a massive increase in the population with no prospects for feeding the new people. Fosdick agreed with the idea that public health science should pay attention to population size, but he was troubled by the corollary, which implied that the Rockefeller Foundation should not sponsor public health projects. He felt at a loss to rebut the arguments: I confess . . . [the criticisms sound] faintly unethical to me, and I am not convinced that it is the course to follow; but I don't know exactly how to answer the argument. I have always had a feeling that a country like India in a sense represented a vicious circle. You have an enormous population, with the result that food supplies are inadequate. Con-

sequently you have the always-present problem of undernourishment and starvation. Out of this comes the impossibility of providing adequate educational systems or the basis of an industrial life, and because you have no organized industry and no education, you have an over crowded population. 2~ Fosdick shared his thoughts with George K. Strode, Director of the Foundation's International Health Division (IHD) which guided the work in public health. Strode agreed that specialists in public health science should be concerned about the population increases caused by their work and that ending public health work was inappropriate. He specifically felt it was difficult to argue that India was worse offbecause of increased efforts in public health, despite its comparatively rapidly growing population. However, Strode had no suggestions as to how the IHD could begin to attack the question of population growth. 29Trustee John D. Rockefeller, III, raised the issue again a year later in December, 1947. 39Strode promised to bring the question of population and public health to the Scientific Directors of the IHD21 In June, 1948, Strode reported that Marshall C. Balfour, a physician and long-time staffer directing IHD programs abroad, had agreed to take on the task of drafting a plan for population research as it might interest IHD. In addition, Strode announced that the Foundation was sending a delegation headed by Frank Notestein and including Balfour to survey the population situation in Japan, China, Formosa, and possibly Java and the Philippines. This trip, combined with Balfour's report, was to provide the blueprint for future IHD work in population and public health22 Subsequently, Strode asked Marston Bates, an ecologist, to work with Balfour on the population question. Bates readily agreed, and the team gave both the medical and ecological perspectives. ~ While Strode worked to put together a team for IHD, discussions occurred elsewhere in the Foundation. In August, 1948, the new President of the Foundation, Chester I. Barnard, discussed with Warren Weaver, director of Natural Sciences, the disturbing implications of William Vogt's new book, Road to Survival: humans had already exceeded the carrying capacity of the Earth in some locations24 Barnard, perhaps painfully to Weaver, directly linked the question of rapidly growing populations with the still young agricultural program in Mexico: • . . at least I myself raised very seriously the question of the usefulness of what we are doing

A G R I C U L T U R E AND H U M A N V A L U E S - - S U M M E R - F A L L

in practically every field in view of the population problem. In view of Vogt's b o o k . . . how do we justify the Mexican agricultural program, considering his strictures? 3~ Strode, Balfour, and Bates, however, remained for some years the focus of Rockefeller Foundation thinking on the question of overpopulation. The report from Balfour and Bates, in October, 1949, 36 was partly an effort to articulate a conceptual framework for the field of "human ecology." The latter part of their proposal outlined a field study of human fertility and demographics in relationship to economic and cultural factors, possibly to be conducted in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka). Field operations would be under the direction of IHD and ultimately might have as their objective the control and manipulation of fertility rates and population size. 37 Other staff and some trustees sharply criticized the report. Warren Weaver objected to the possibility that the Scientific Directors of IHD might send recommendations to the Board of Trustees without thorough discussion among all divisions of the Foundation with clear interests in population and resources28 Trustee Henry A. Moe was highly critical because the report did not answer what was to be done, by whom, at what cost2 ~ Barnard defended the report as adding great clarity to the issues at hand. He told Moe that such negative reactions indicated the Trustees did not know what was happening inthe field of population. Barnard was especially defensive because the Balfour-Bates report was the result of a request by a special Trustee committe on policy and program, and John D. Rockefeller III was the prime protagonist in that request. ~6 Subsequent discussions by the officers of the Foundation never led to a consensus on the matter, especially one that could lead to a Foundation-operated program on population control. 41 Nevertheless, the debate on population firmly entrenched the subject in the thinking of Foundation staffmembers. '2 Grants to other organizations continued, '3 but a new issue had to be added to the discussion before the idea of population explosion could be effectively employed directly in Foundation efforts. That issue involved connecting the ideas of population growth, susceptibility to communist agitation, and the role of agricultural science in creating the conditions for political stability (meaning thwarting communist overtures on terms favorable to the United States). Warren Weaver connected population-stability-science in the course of outlining a theory for an agricultural development assistance program in India.

10

The India Agricultural Program: the mixing of population theory and agricultural science Results of research sponsored in Mexico and in India were the foundations of what came to be called the Green Revolution. In 1956 the Foundation began a relationship with the Government of India that was to change India's rural landscape and agricultural economy. Establishing an agricultural research operation in India took at least five years of internal debate at the Foundation, and full acceptance of the Foundation's recommendations took the Indian Government even longer. The first decision that the Foundation had to make was to allocate a significant level of resources to agricultural science research. The Mexican program and a second operation in Columbia added in 1950 were significant, but the Natural Sciences division was still primarily supporting experimental biology in the early 1950s. The division had allocated about $27 million between 1933 and 1948. More than eighty percent of the expenditures were in experimental biology. '4 Weaver, in fact, had been brought into the Foundation in 1932 as a mathematician and physical scientist to develop an effort that would apply the best insights and methods of chemistry, physics, and mathematics to biology. Weaver created the experimental biology program, and he, along with J. George Harrar, was the chief planner in ending that effort and developing a new emphasis in agriculture. He argued for this transition before President Chester Barnard in 1951. Experimental biology, he said, was now well supported by many other foundations and especially the Federal government. Whereas Foundation support of the field had been unique in the 1930s, the Foundation's funds had dropped to about 6 percent of the total. Most of the drop came when the United States initiated the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation. Weaver advocated phasing out the remaining grants in experimental biology, redirecting those funds to agricultural research, and augmenting existing budgets to create an agricultural research budget of about $1.5 million per year. 4~ Weaver had to have had a significant proposal on agriculture in mind, because from the beginning, the Foundation's trustees had insisted that their expenditures must be for something unique and far-reaching. '6 Therefore if the Foundation was to enter agricultural science in a major way, it had to differentiate itself from the huge programs of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the land grant universities. An additional $1.5


million from a private foundation would make little impact, unless the new money went for a remarkably new approach. The program in Mexico was the model for the unique contribution that Weaver believed the Foundation could make. The second major task for the Foundation was to create a program philosophy for agricultural science. Some months before Weaver had made the fundamental budgetary argument on how the Natural Sciences division should spend its money, he and an Advisory Committee for Agricultural Science had prepared a report, "The World Food Problem, Agriculture, and the Rockefeller Foundation." This report united concerns about overpopulation and global politics: first, "The World Food Problem" was fundamentally based on the concept that global tensions stemmed from " . . . the conflict between population growth and unequally divided and inadequate resources." Overpopulation, in other words, was at the root of basic human problems. 47 In addition, Weaver persuaded the Committe to argue that agricultural science had an important political role to play in the emerging US-USSR struggle: The problem of food has become one of the world's most acute and pressing problems; and directly or indirectly it is the cause of much of the world's present tension and unr e s t . . . Agitators from Communist countries are making the most of the situation. The time is now ripe, in places possibly over-ripe for sharing some of our technical knowledge with these people. Appropriate action now may help them to attain by evolution the improvements, including those in agriculture, which otherwise may have to come by revolution. 48 Weaver and the other agriculturalists at the Foundation succeeded. The Trustees received the report with enthusiasm in June, 1951. One trustee, Karl T. Compton, President of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, suggested that India was indeed a place for the Rockefeller Foundation to engage in agricultural science efforts: I suspect that India may be fertile ground for activity in this field. The overpopulation, the low living standards and the threat of communism are of course well known. 49 In October, 1951, President Barnard recommended to the Trustees that:

* agriculture be a major line of work with an initial appropriation of about $1.5 million per year, * the Natural Sciences division be renamed the Division of Natural Sciences and Agriculture, * the Director of the Mexican agricultural program (Dr. J. George Harrar) be designated a Deputy Director of the new Division, and * Warren Weaver continue to direct the overall Division. ~° The trustees accepted these recommendations, and the Foundation thus established a major commitment to agricultural science. In addition, the trustees had accepted this line of research within a context of (a) overpopulation as the cause of poverty and misery and (b) a militantly anti-communist political ideology.51 Once the Foundation had a budgetary commitment to agriculture and a program philosophy from which to work, it faced its third critical decision point: Was it feasible to open an agricultural science program in India? Warren Weaver, J. George Harrar, and Paul C. Mangelsdorfwent as a study commission to India and prepared a report, "Notes on Indian Agriculture," April, 1952. 52Just as the report on the world food problem the previous June had been decisive in establishing the framework for a Foundation program in agriculture, the new report outlined the strategy and tactics by which the larger plan could be fulfilled in India. "Notes on Indian Agriculture" contained important images and conclusions about India that were critical to the types of research the Foundation recommended and ultimately conducted. "Notes" defined overpopulation as the cause of India's problems: Reduced to its simplest terms, the agricultural problem of India is that there are too many people on too little l a n d . . . Her population has already outrun her food supply, and she is making desperate efforts to solve the numerous problems which this situation imposes. 5~ Coupled with the assertion that the fundamental problem of India was overpopulation was an image of that population as an unthinking collective driven more by instinct than reason: The villages . . . within a r e g i o n . . , are as uniform as so many ant hills. Indeed, from the air, where a number of villages may be seen simultaneously, they have the appearance of structures built by creatures motivated

11

A G R I C U L T U R E AND HUMAN V A L U E S - - S U M M E R - F A L L

largely by inherited animal instincts, and devoid of any inclination to depart from a fixed hereditary pattern• The inheritance in this instance, of course, is social. ~ The population of India was so high, "Notes" argued, that the new nation could not hope to exhibit the creativity necessary for improving itself: the villages maintain themselves on a subsistence level with respect to food, but do not produce a surplus for the cities. India has reached a point where the practice of agriculture no longer serves the traditional and important purpose of providing leisure for the development of the creative aspects of culture, the arts, the sciences, and religions. 55 •

.

.

India, in the view of the Foundation scientists, had lost all capacity for innovation and problem solving: "More millions are enslaved by centuries of tradition and are not truly free to try new methods or to exploit their own ingenuity. ''56 "Notes" also argued that the greatest handicaps to overcome were those imposed by caste, ignorance, religious prejudices, multiple languages, stifling customs, and habits of thought that prized tradition over improvement. Threats from communism were seen by Weaver, Harrar, and Mangelsdorfto surround the question of overpopulation and a stifled imagination resulting from too many people: Mr. Munshi, the Minister of Food and Agriculture, told us that unless the food problem is solved within the next five years, at least South India will go Communist. Other observers are not certain that this is true. There can, however, be little doubt that India will remain a world danger spot so long as she has an acute food problem. 57 Weaver, Harrar, and Mangelsdorfbelieved that an infusion of modern, Western knowledge was capable of overcoming the massive problems faced by overpopulated India. Specifically, they recommended that the Rockefeller Foundation could usefully support (a) improvement of wheat and rice varieties, (b) reform of agricultural education to make Indian agricultural universities more like the land grant universities of the United States, and (c) some participation in village improvement projects involving extension education• They envisioned both a participatory program involving Rockefeller scientists working with Indians and a grant program to enable Indian scientists to travel and do research. ~

12

"Notes on Indian Agriculture" launched the Foundation into the India Agricultural Program (IAP), but a series of meetings between Indian officials and Foundation officers were needed to create a specific agenda. 59 Reaching agreement with the Government of India took until early 1956, nearly four years after Weaver, Harrar, and Mangelsdorf made their original fact-finding mission. In the intervening time, a few small grants were made to various Indian institutions to support indigenous activity, but a major program involving a Foundation-sponsored research laboratory took longer to materialize. Part of the problem stemmed from differences about the specific objectives of the most important research. Harrar and Weaver wanted basic research, especially on rice and wheat. Moreover, they came to see the research needed on rice as a problem that covered all Asia, not just India. The Indians, led by Dr. Badri Nath Uppal and Dr. B. P. Pal, however, wanted a short-term project on corn, which would lead to field trials and the establishment of a hybrid corn seed industry. They may not have opposed thinking about rice over all Asia, but their immediate thoughts were on India's situation. 6o Another factor in the negotiations between the Foundation and the Government of India was the entry of other major actors. The Ford Foundation signed an agreement of $1.2 million in 1951for training personnel for the Community Development Project. Douglas Ensminger, a former USDA man with extension experience, was Ford's project director in India, and he was an advocate for immediate extension education programs. 61 In early 1952, an even larger agreement was signed between the U.S. Technical Cooperation Administration (predecessor to the U.S. Agency for International Development) and the Government of India. The U.S. agreed to support the Community Development effort plus extensive programs to improve rural infrastructure. The U.S. contribution was to be $50 million with the Government of India more than matching that with Rs. 410 million (about $86 million). 62 The Community Development project emerged from work of the Grow More Food campaign, which the Government of India launched immediately after Independence. Community Development had the full endorsement of Prime Minister Nehru and reflected some of the egalitarian ideals of independent India's new government. Both the Grow More Food and the Community Development efforts avoided the creation of new scientific knowledge as a means to agricultural assistance.


A pilot Community Development project began in the Etawah District of Uttar Pradesh in 1948. 63 The Etawah project was well respected by the Rockefeller Foundation officers, but they were highly skeptical of the ability of the U.S. Technical Cooperation Administration and the Ford Foundation to expand the work in that one district over 600 fold and to increase the amount spent in each district by ten fold. Weaver felt that the project could crumble for one or more reasons: lack of trained personnel, technical problems that would soon demand answers, or insufficient genetic variety in crops planted. In other words, Weaver was firmly convinced that new scientific research was essential to genuine change in Indian rural life. He was also critical of the caliber of personnel representing the Technical Cooperation Administration24 It's possible that the Rockefeller Foundation's insistence that the most important task at hand was basic research led to the four year delay in establishing an operational program in India. The Government of India, the U.S. Technical Cooperation Administration, and the Ford Foundation were more interested in using existing knowledge for Community Development. At the start of the Mexican agricultural program, the Foundation scientists believed that extension developments would not be useful because no really useful knowledge existed to extend.65 In some ways, George Harrar, Warren Weaver, and the other Foundation scientists had much the same attitude as they designed a program for India: they did not believe that the appropriate knowledge existed, so a scientific agriculture for India had to be created almost from the beginning. Despite the lengthy negotiations needed to launch Foundation research in India, agreement was reached in late 1955, and the formal contract was signed in April, 1956. The Government of India asked for help in developing three agricultural institutes, each with a cooperating researcher. In addition, the Indians sought assistance to improve hybrid maize and wanted the Foundation to coordinate its research with the larger program financed by the Technical Cooperation Administration. 66 The Foundation granted assistance on two fronts. It agreed to help India develop the Indian Agricultural Research Institute in New Delhi into a modern facility and post-graduate educational institution granting MSc and PhD degrees. In addition, the Foundation agreed to enterinto a"cereals" improvement program; the term cereals was insisted upon by Harrar, probably to mask the Foundation's sense of disappointment that maize was the focus of Indian interest when the Americans really wanted to work on rice and wheat. 67 The

Board of Trustees approved a grant of $1.38 million in April, and the Foundation was firmly established with an operating agricultural program in India. ~ Major increases in Indian cereal yields (the "Green Revolution") did not come until after 1967, when the Foundation facilitated the transfer to India of improved wheat varieties from the Mexican agricultural program. The groundwork that made the transfer possible was crucially dependent upon the development of scientific infrastructure insisted upon by the Rockefeller Foundation. It was also dependent upon the experience with the Community Development program and the efforts to create a network of extension personnel, but without the scientific infrastructure no extension of the new Mexican varieties would have been possible. The detailed story of creating the improved varieties, however, is beyond the scope of this paper. C o n c l u s i o n : W h a t a difference a t h e o r y m a k e s

Rockefeller Foundation staff and trustees saw India as an overpopulated nation, caught in a Malthusian trap and teetering on the brink of communism. No one would argue that India was not a poor country with a high population growth rate or that India might not have been better off if her citizens had a better material standard of living. At issue, however, was why those conditions prevailed, a question of relevance even now, more than twenty years after the beginning of the Green Revolution. Did the population theories, which ascribed all problems of poverty and political unrest to overpopulation, have a fundamental impact on the development of modern agriculture? Analysis of India as overpopulated took its starkest form in equations such as the following,69 which was put forth by Joseph Willits, head of the Social Science Division of the Foundation: (population)/(resources) = (well being) This equation suggested that two types of actions could be used to improve the well being of a people. Either the resources available to the people could be increased, or the size of the population could be limited or reduced. The Foundation's officers and trustees decided they could not directly get involved in the limitation of the Indian population, so their only recourse was to improve Indian agricultural science. Unfortunately, the population theories stereotyped the Indian people and hid the social complexities that lay behind India's poor agricultural yields, poverty, high fertility rates, and political unrest. Moreover, the population analysis brushed aside

13

A G R I C U L T U R E AND H U M A N V A L U E S - - S U M M E R - F A L L

any consideration that the Indian people might be acting intelligently, even if they were poor, illiterate, and desiring a large family. Undoubtedly, the most important flaw in the assessment of India by Foundation officials was the failure to realize that distribution of food was as important as production. Unlike air and water, food was owned. People gained access to food either because they raised it on land they owned or had some rights to or because they had income with which to purchase it. No access to land or to income from other sources meant, in India, no access to food. (India was no different in this regard than the United States in the years 1946-1956, nor has either country changed much since then.) Failure to consider the distribution problem may have stemmed from an inability or unwillingness to interpret the complexities of caste and class of India in terms of how people gained access to food. In addition, Foundation officers may not have been able to consider how the low productivities in Indian agriculture were tied to the complexities of caste, class, and land tenure relationships. Alternatively, Foundation officers may have believed that the widely discussed land reform programs of the early 1950s would produce sufficient social justice that food distribution would not be a problem. This paper cannot thoroughly resolve the complexities of how class, caste, and land tenure affect distribution and production, but overpopulation was not the cause of low yields in Indian agriculture or the poverty that left many in chronic malnourishment and periodically in famine. 7° Land ownership was highly unequal in post-independence India. Members of the higher castes tended to have greater access to land resources and to other sources of wealth in the new Nation. Members of the lower castes and the "untouchables" tended to have more meager resources and were under the domination of the upper castes/classes. Land reform has been ineffective in bringing social justice to the Indian countryside, other than the first wave of land reforms that abolished intermediary "landlords" established by the British as part of the tax collection system. 71 Hunger hurt the poor, not the rich. Merely increasing the level of production in agriculture benefitted those who controlled the produce and did not necessarily benefit the poor. The Rockefeller Foundation was important in raising the average productivity of Indian wheat land from about 700 kilograms per hectare to over 2000 kilograms per hectare. 72 What the Foundation never considered was the question of who would benefit from the increase. That poverty and lack of food persists in

14

today's India, despite grain s e l f sufficiency, testitles to the persistence of the distribution problem. Reasons for the failure of Foundation officers to see the importance of the distribution question are complex. Partly their avoidance of the issue stemmed from the institutional context from which they worked. The Rockefeller Foundation was founded upon the immense wealth of one American, John D. Rockefeller. Although the Rockefeller family lost direct control over this wealth after he gave it to the Foundation, the people he selected to be the first trustees were not inclined to question or criticize the legitimacy of the Foundation's resources. Subsequent trustees and officers were of the same inclination. Warren Weaver and J. George Harrar fell into a long tradition of Foundation personnel who presumed that class and wealth were not interesting issues, if they even existed. It is doubtful that Weaver and Harrar thought deeply about the caste/class structure of India and its relation to agriculture, food, and hunger. They assumed caste and superstition were barriers to improved productivity, but they did not follow their thoughts with an analysis of distribution. The presence of John D. Rockefeller III on the board of trustees during the period 1946-1956 was probably immaterial to the types of questions Foundation officers addressed. Nevertheless it is interesting to note that a Rockefeller raised such persistent questions about overpopulation and its implications for the Foundation's programs in public health and agriculture. Perhaps a rich person was more likely than a poor one to see danger from communism lurking in the presence of many poor people. On the other hand, the roots of American anti-communism were deeper than any one person's worries. It would be inappropriate, therefore, to lay the cause of the Foundations's decisions to any single individual. Another problem in the way the Foundation formulated its plans for India stemmed from the presumption that had been made as early as 1941. The first Foundation explorations of the potential for work in Mexico relied upon the study of Mangelsdorf, Bradfield, and Stakman, a plant breeder, soils scientist, and plant pathologist, respectively. As noted earlier, the Foundation programs in Mexico and India were based on the scientific disciplines represented by the study team. The potential for each of these scientific disciplines to contribute to agriculture was limited. Each of these scientific specialties developed in a context in which the overwhelming question was how to get higher yields for lower inputs of human labor. People trained in these scientific disciplines were


preoccupied with how to make yields higher and more reliable from year to year. Specialists trained in these disciplines in the United States were not likely to ask questions about any issue other than yield. Distribution of yield and the social complexities that governed distribution were simply not of interest to these scientists, nor did they have any experience in studying them. Given that the most important agricultural advisors to the Foundation during the critical decade of 1946-1956 were Mangelsdorf, Bradfield, Stakman, Harrar, and a few others, it was not surprising that the Foundation's programs were insensitive to the complexities of distribution. A deep irony attends the issue of overpopulation on the subcontinent, because it was concern that population growth rates caused political instability that shaped the Rockefeller Foundation's plans. Yet unequal distribution of increased agricultural productivity may be a major contributory factor to India's continued high population growth rate. Development that does not result in a more egalitarian society may create an underclass of people for whom more children are the only source of economic security, however meager. Given the Malthusian pall that hung over the Foundation's planning in the 1940s and 1950s, it would be ironic indeed that the Foundation's responses to overpopulation might have created the very situation its officers most dreaded. Understanding how the Foundation constructed a conceptual basis for development assistance also provides insights into the two issues that have framed the debate about the Green Revolution: sustainability and equity. Briefly, questions of sustainability in their modern form did not enter the discussion about how to design either the Mexican or Indian agricultural programs. Notions of disappearing genetic diversity, exhaustion of fertilizers and petrochemicals, soil salinization from irrigation, and the dangers of monocroping simply were not in the scientific mind in the 1940s and early 1950s. In large part, the argument that the Green Revolution is not sustainable originated because of the technical success of the science underlying it. Similarly, virtually no one raised questions about equity in the modernization of agriculture at the time the Foundation began its agricultural programs.~3 Both natural and social scientists believed that increased productivity of the soil and human labor was essential to a beneficial transformation of society from primitive ruralism to modern industrialism. American experts advocated the transformation whether the country was the United States,

Mexico, India, or any other place. Most scientific and political leaders in developing countries concurred and were as adamant in pushing modernization as their counterparts in the United States. Distress among marginal farmers during the process of transformation, they believed, would disappear as the displaced people built new and more prosperous lives in urban industrial and service work. Even if a substantial body of empirical and theoretical work had existed on the issues of sustainability and equity, it is not clear that the Rockefeller Foundation would have considered them. Foundation officers and trustees were deeply committed to geopolitical concerns of political and military significance. Keeping Mexico friendly to the United States and preventing the possible "loss" of India to communism were the frameworks within which the Foundation laid the groundwork for development assistance. Their theories of the means and purposes of development probably would have made it impossible for them to foresee any problems with sustainability and equity. Efforts to reform development assistance programs must recognize the historical involvement of geopolitical concerns in the theory about how to modernize third world agriculture. The Rockefeller Foundation programs in agriculture had a substantial influence on subsequent American foreign aid programs, and strategic thinking continues to dominate the design of these packages. Improving the well being of people everywhere is not likely to flow easily from such efforts.

Acknowledgements I thank the following people for reading this paper in manuscript form and/or making many helpful suggestions: Desh Bandhu, D. K. Banerjee, J e r r y Berberet, Peter Bohmer, Jeanne Hahn, A. Rahman, B. P. Singh, Denny Wilkins, and Gary Worthington. Michael Kent and Linda R.P. Knight provided invaluable research assistance. I am indebted to the kind assistance of the archivists of the Rockefeller Archive Center, especially Tom Rosenbaum. At the National Archives, I am indebted to Richard Crawford, Don Jackanicz, Sally Marks, and Charlie Roberts. This paper relies very little on Ford Foundation records, but Ann Newhall, Paul Kaiser, and Neenah Payne were most helpful. Paula Butchko, Bonita Evans, and Jane Lorenzo assisted in many ways. Despite the good efforts of these many people, I must remain accountable for any deficiencies in the paper. Financial assistance to prepare this paper came from the National Science Foundation (SES-8608372 and DIR-8911346),

15

AGRICULTURE AND HUMAN VALUES--SUMMER-FALL

t h e S p e c i a l F o r e i g n C u r r e n c y P r o g r a m of t h e Smithsonian Institution, and the Sponsored Research Program of The Evergreen State College. None of these agencies are responsible for my analysis or conclusions. Notes

1. Kenneth A. Dahlberg, Beyond the Green Revolution (New York: Plenum Press, 1979), pp.79-88. 2. A number of recent studies take different positions on the question of equity and the Green Revolution. The following are examples of this large literature. Some argue that no important inequalities were created or worsened. See, for example, M.S. Randhawa, ed., Green Revolution: A Case Study of Punjab (Delhi: Vikas, 1974), pp. 183-195, and John R. Westley, Agriculture and Equitable Growth, The Case of Punjab-Haryana (Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1986), 369 pp. Others, who have had a more sensitive eye for important changes, have argued that a variety of important inequalities stemmed from the Green Revolution. D. N. Dhanagare argued that intra-village inequalities were increased by the changes in agricultural production practices (The green revolution and social inequalities in rural India, Bull. of Concerned Asian Scholars 20(No. 2, 1988):2-13). Maria Mies does not deal specifically with the changes in cereals production but argues that the Small Farmers Development Agency and the Integrated Rural Development Programme ignored the role and status of Indian women in agriculture, to the detriment of improved productivities and the welfare of poor women (Indian Women in Subsistence and Agricultural Labour (Geneva: International Labour Office, 1986) pp. 158). D. P. Gupta believes that all classes of farmers in Haryana benefitted from the Green Revolution, but large farmers received disproportionately large benefits compared to small acreage holders (Agricultural Developments in Haryana, 1952-53 to 1974-75 (Delhi: University of Delhi, Agricultural Economics Research Centre, Research Study No. 76/5, 1976), pp. 73-75. In a new argument, Gail Omvedt develops the thesis that current unrest in rural India stems not from intra-village inequalities fostered by the Green Revolution but from the position of cultivators in general compared to controllers of capital in India (The "New Peasant Movement" in India, Bull. of Concerned Asian Scholars 20(No. 2, 1988):14-23. Pranab Bardhan takes a more complex view and argues that economic and political decision making in India is controlled by a three-part governing class: industrial capitalists, rich farmers, and the civil service. In his view, the rich farmers have been able to thwart state activities, such as land reform, but his focus is on why the Green Revolution technology has remained partially unutilized (The Political Economy of Development in India (Oxford: Basil Blackwell Publisher Ltd, 1984), 109 pp. Deborah Fitzgerald argued that the Rockefeller Foundation program in Mexico was successful only in reaching those farmers who were most like American farmers. She believed that the restriction of the Foundation's developmental models to the American land grant university system underlay the inability of the Foundation's scientists to move beyond those farmers and crops already familiar to them. See "Exporting American agriculture: the Rockefeller Foundation in Mexico, 1943-1953," SocialStudies of Science 16(3, August 1986):457-483. 3. See, for example, George Axinn, International technical interventions in agriculture and rural development: some basic trends, issues, and questions, Agriculture and Human Values 5(1 & 2; Winter-Spring, 1988): 6-15; and Cornelia Butler Flora, Farming systems approaches in international technical cooperation in agriculture and rural life, Agriculture and Human Values 5(1 & 2; Winter-Spring, 1988): 24-34.

16

4. M.S. Randhawa, A History of Agriculture in India, Volume IV (New Delhi: Indian Council of Agricultural Research, 1986), p. 139. 5. M.S. Randhawa, A History of Agriculture in India, Volume III (New Delhi: Indian Council of Agricultural Research, 1983), pp. 342-354; B. P. Pal, Personal Interview, April, 1987. 6. Deepak Kumar, Science in agriculture: a study in Victorian India, in A. Rahman, ed., Science and Technology inIndian Culture (New Delhi: National Institute of Science, Technology and Development Studies, 1984), pp. 189-216. 7. Analyses of the Foundation's agricultural work in China are in James C. Thomson, Jr., While China Faced West, American Reformers in Nationalist China, 1928-1937 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1969), chapter 6; and Randall E. Stross, The Stubborn Earth, American Agriculturalists on Chinese Soil, 1898-1937 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986), pp. 143-187. A brief summary of the General Education Board's work to support American agricultural extension is in John Ensor Harr and Peter J. Johnson, The Rockefeller Century (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1988) pp.70-71. 8. E.C. Stakman, Richard Bradfield, and Paul C. Mangelsdorf, Campaign against Hunger (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1967), pp. 6-9. 9. J. A. Ferrell to Mr. Fosdick, October 16, 1936, Rockefeller Foundation Archives, RG 1.2, Series 323, Box 10, Folder 63, Rockefeller Archive Center. William C. Cobb, The historical backgrounds of the Mexican agricultural program (annotated edition), March, 1956, Rockefeller Foundation Archives, RG 1.2, Series 323, Box 10, Folder 62. 10. Lazaro Cardenas was an idealist dedicated to the egalitarian spirit of the Mexican Revolution (Leonel Duran, ed., Lazaro Cardenas, Ideario Politico (Mexico: Ediciones Era, 1972) p.9). When he took office in 1933, he quickly moved on agrarian reform by redistributing land and breaking up large estates. Some lands owned by Americans were confiscated. In 1938, he seized oil properties belonging to American, British, and Dutch concerns, including lands held by Standard Oil, which was the basis of the Rockefeller family's fortune (Government of Mexico, The True Facts about the Expropriation of the Oil Companies' Properties in Mexico (Mexico: Government of Mexico, 1940), 271 pp.). During his entire tenure as President, much of the correspondence between the American embassy and the State Department in Washington concerned claims of Americans who demanded compensation for property seized (Purport files, M 973, Roll 371, RG 59, National Archives). Secretary of State Cordell Hull asked for daily reports from Ambassador Daniels on the situation surrounding the seized oil properties (Hull to Daniels, April 12, 1938, 812.6363/3440A, RG 59, National Archives). 11. President-elect Avila Camacho indicated in August, 1940, that he was interested in reaching a settlement on the seized Standard Oil properties (812.00/31299 1/2, 6 August 1940, RG 59, National Archives). In addition, Roosevelt's decision to send Wallace was also a strong signal that the United States accepted Avila Camacho's election and would not support a coup by General Juan Andreu Almazan, who was suspected of being like another Franco and pro-German. President Cardenas had supplied the Republican forces in Spain, accepted Spanish Republican refugees into Mexico, and issued a strong anti-German statement immediately after the collapse of British and French forces in Europe (E. David Cronon, Josephus Daniels in Mexico (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1960), pp. 254-257; Josephus Daniels, Shirt-Sleeve Diplomat (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1947, pp. 327-328). 12. Stakman, Bradfield, and Mangelsdorf, Campaign, pp. 19-22; The Reminiscences of Elvin C. Stakman, pp. 933-935. Rockefeller Foundation Archives, RG 13, Rockefeller Archive Center. 13. Memorandum of JAF of conference: Vice President Wallace, RBF and JAF, regarding Mexico--its problems and reme-


dies, February 3, 1941, Folder 2, Box 1, Series 323, RG 1.1, Rockefeller Foundation Archives; Cobb, "Background"; Harr and Johnson, The Rockefeller Century, pp.440-441. 14. Raymond B. Fosdick, The Story of the Rockefeller Foundation (London: Odhams Press Limited, 1952), pp. 184-185; Cobb, "Background." 15. Warren Weaver, Scene of Cha~ge (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1970), pp. 94-95. 16. Stakman, Bradfield, and Mangelsdorf, Campaign, pp. 22-23; Reminiscences of Stakman, pp. 941-943. 17. "Agricultural conditions and problems in Mexico," Report of the Survey Commission of the Rockefeller Foundation, 1941, Rockefeller Foundation Archives, RG 1.1, Series 323, Box 5, Folder 37, Rockefeller Archive Center. 18. Weaver, Scene, pp. 96-97; Oral History, Rockefeller Foundation Program in Agriculture, Interview with J. George Harrar, Rockefeller Foundation Archives, Series 923/0ral History/Volume XIII, Rockefeller Archive Center. 19. Fosdick, The Story, p. 185. 20. Some Promising Fields for Foundation Activity, compiled by the officers of the Rockefeller Foundation, October 21, 1938. Rockefeller Foundation Archives, RG 3, Series 906, Box 1, Folder 8, Rockefeller Archive Center. 21. Natural Science Program, General Summary, by Warren Weaver, December 3, 1948. Rockefeller Foundation Archives, RG 3, Series 915, Box 2, Folder 14. 22. Fosdick, The Story, p. 185. 23. Many dispatches in 812.00, RG 59, National Archives, between 1936 and 1939 speak of threats to United States' interests from the left and the right in Mexico. 24. John Ferrell noted that Vice President Wallace, in urging the Rockefeller Foundation to get involved in Mexico, " . . . emphasized the importance of our southern neighbor from the standpoint of our national defense" (Memorandum of JAF of conference, February 3, 1941). 25. Harry M. Miller, Jr., was the Rockefeller staffofficer responsible for the negotiations with the Mexican government on the establishment of the Rockefeller Foundation program. In his extensive diaries, he noted that he received substantial assistance from the American embassy through Leslie Mallory, the agricultural attache (HMM Mexican Log, Rockefeller Foundation Archives, RG 1.1, Series 323, Box 1, Folder 2). At the same time, Miller did not want to be seen as working entirely through Mallory's office. Miller noted on correspondence with the Mexico office of the Foundation's International Health Division that he "purposely did not write M[allory] and probably will not," in response to a request from Mallory through IHD that Miller keep the embassy better informed (Geo. C. Payne to H. M. Miller Jr., May 24, 1941, Rockefeller Foundation Archives, RG 1.1, Series 323, Box 1, Folder 2, quote is Miller's handwritten marginal notation). 26. Population Studies Supported by the Rockefeller Foundation and Related Rockefeller Boards, November 17, 1948, prepared for CIB by FMR. Rockefeller Foundation Archives, RG 3.2, Series 900, Box 57, Folder 310; Daniel J. Kevles, In the Name of Eugenics (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books Ltd., 1985), pp. 200, 202,208-209, 210. The interest of John D. Rockefeller III in population is detailed in Harr and Johnson, The Rockefeller Century, pp. 452-467. 27. Raymond B. Fosdick to Thomas Perran, October 3, 1946, Rockefeller Foundation Archives, RG 3.2, Series 900, Box 57, Folder 310. 28. Ibid. 29. GKS to RBF, November 25, 1946. Rockefeller Foundation Archives, RG 3.2, Series 900, Box 57, Folder 310. 30. Harr and Johnson, The Rockefeller Century, p. 462. 31. GKS Diary, December 2-3, 1947, Rockefeller Foundation Archives, RG3.2, Series 900, Box 57, Folder 310; Rockefeller Foundation Trustees Meeting, December 2-3, 1947, Rockefeller Foundation Archives, RG 3.2, Series 900, Box 57. Folder 310. 32. Minutes, Scientific Directorate, IHD, 14 June 1948, Rockefeller Foundation Archives, RG 3.2, Series 900, Box 57, Folder 310.

33. Excerpt from Dr. Strode's Diary, October 26,1948, Rockefeller Foundation Archives, RG 3.2, Series 900, Box 57, Folder 310; Marston Bates, The Prevalence of People (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1962), p. 1. 34. William Vogt, Road to Survival (New York: William Sloane Associates, Inc., 1948) 334 pp. 35. CIB to WW, August 31, 1948. Rockefeller Foundation Archives, RG 3:2, Series 900, Box 57, Folder 310. 36. Special Report to the Board of Scientific Directors of the International Health Division of the Rockefeller Foundation, November 4, 1949. Rockefeller Foundation Archives, RG 3.1, Series 915, Pro-Agr-3, Box 3, Folder 23. 37. Ibid., pp. 18-36. 38. WW to GKS, November 7, 1949. Rockefeller Foundation Archives, RG 3.2, Series 900, Box 57, Folder 310. 39. Henry Allen Moe to Chester I. Barnard, November 30, 1949. Rockefeller Foundation Archives, RG 3.2, Series 900, Box 57, Folder 310. 40. Chester I. Barnard to Henry Allen Moe, December 2, 1949. Rockefeller Foundation Archives, RG 3.2, Series 900, Box 57, Folder 310. 41. See various documents, especially WW to CIB, November 28, 1949, in Rockefeller Foundation Archives, RG 3.2, Series 900, Box 57, Folder 310. 42. Report of the Rockefeller Foundation Commission on Review of the International Health Division, November, 1951. Rockefeller Foundation Archives, RG 3, Series 908, P&P, Pro-CR-9, IHD, Box 14, Folder 147. 43. For a complete summary of all Rockefeller Foundation grants on population through June, 1962, see Population Research Supported by the Rockefeller Foundation to June 1962, Rockefeller Foundation Archives, RG 3.2, Series 900, Box 57, Folder 312. For the purposes of this paper, the most important were a series of grants to Harvard University, directed by Dr. John E. Gordon. Critics believe these grants were designed to limit population growth in India, although the announced objectives stated that they were intended (a) to study variables affecting fertility, (b) to test a particular mode of fertility control, and (c) to train physicians and health aids. See Note on grants to Dr. John E. Gordon for research on population in India, P 56006, EC1/27/56, Rockefeller Foundation Archives, RG 1.2, Series 200, Harvard University, Box 45, Folder 369. For the criticism of Gordon's study, see Mahmood Mamdani, The Myth of Population Control (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1972), 173 pp. 44. Ibid., note 15. 45. NS Program by Warren Weaver, September 27, 1951, originally written July 19, 1951. Rockefeller Foundation Archives, RG 3, Series 915, Box 2, Folder 14. 46. Fosdick, The Story, pp. 22-23. 47. The World Food Problem, Agriculture, and the Rockefeller Foundation, by Advisory Committee for Agricultural Ac* tivities, June 21, 1951. Rockefeller Foundation Archives, RG 3, Series 915, Box 3, Folder 23. The committee consisted of Warren Weaver, Elvin Stakman (Chair), Richard Bradfield, and Paul Mangelsdorf, i.e. the same people who had originally planned the Mexican agricultural program. Also involved with the Committee's work were J. George Harrar and Harry Miller. 48. Ibid., pp. 3-7; Warren Weaver to Richard Bradfield, Paul C. Mangelsdorf, E. C. Stakman, J. G. Harrar, Harry M. Miller, Jr., June 14, 1951, Rockefeller Foundation Archives, RG 3, Series 915, Box 3, Folder 20. 49. Karl T. Compton to Chester I. Barnard, June 25 1951. Rockefeller Foundation Archives, RG 3, Series 915, Box 3, Folder 20. 50. CIB to Trustees, October 22, 1951. Rockefeller Foundation Archives, RG 3, Series 915, Box 3, Folder 20. 51. Warren Weaver to All Staff Members in Agricultural Operating Programs, December 11, 1951. Rockefeller Foundation Archives, RG 3, Series 915, Box 3, Folder 20. 52. J. G. Harrar, Paul C. Mangelsdorf, and Warren Weaver, Notes on Indian Agriculture, April 11, 1952, Rockefeller Foundation Archives, RG 6.7, Box 10cl8a, Folder: I.A.P., Admn. Org & Policy, II, 1959-60.

17

AGRICULTURE AND HUMAN VALUES--SUMMER-FALL

53. Ibid., p. 11. 54. Ibid., p. 3. 55. Ibid., p. 6. 56. Ibid., p. 11. 57. Ibid., pp. 6-7. 58. Ibid., pp. 25-29. 59. Details of these visits may be found in Rockefeller Foundation Archives, RG 1.2, Series 464, Box R962, Folder:Agriculture 19534955. 60. Memorandum of conversation between Drs. Uppal and Pal and Drs. Weaver & Harrar: Delhi, Saturday, October 10, 1953. Rockefeller Foundation Archives, RG 1.2, Series 464, Box R962, File:Agriculture 1953-1955. 61. Douglas Ensminger, Oral History Transcript, Part A.1, Ford Foundation Archives. 62. Items included: construct tubewells, improve the supply of fertilizer, provide iron and steel for agricultural implements, conduct locust and malaria control, construct large-scale dams, perform soil surveys and forestry research, train village level workers, and develop fisheries (New Delhi to Department of State, January 21, 1953. RG 59, 891.20/1-2153, National Archives). 63. C. B. Mamoria, Agricultural Problems of India (AllahabadDelhi: Kitab Mahal, 1979, 9th ed.), pp. 833-837. Randhawa, A History, Vol. IV, pp. 61-68. 64. Notes on Discussion, India Conference, Including Pakistan and Ceylon, March 26, 1952, pp. 11-12. Rockefeller Foundation Archives, Arch 2,460, Program and Policy, unprocessed material. 65. Stakman, Bradfield, and Mangelsdorf, Campaign, p. 34. 66. P. N. Thapar to Warren Weaver, October 5, 1955. Rockefeller Foundation Archives, RG 1.2, Series 464, Box R962, File: Agriculture 1953-1955. 67. J. G. Harrar to Richard Bradfield, November 1, 1955, Rockefeller Foundation Archives, RG 1.2, Series 464, Box R962, File: Agriculture 1953-1955. J. G. Harrar to P. N. Thapar, January 5, 1956, Rockefeller Foundation Archives, RG 1.2, Series 464, Box R962, File: Agriculture 1956. 68. FMR to JGH, RFC, KW, AHM, JA, April 5, 1956. Rockefeller Foundation Archives, RG 1.2, Series 464, Box R962, File: Agriculture 1956. 69. Joseph H. Willits to George K. Strode, Alan Gregg, C. B. Fahs, and Warren Weaver, January 30, 1951. Rockefeller Foundation Archives, Arch 2, 460, Program and Policy, unprocessed material.

18

70. Mamdani, The Myth, and the references in note 1 provide much of the detail to substantiate this argument. See also Sipra Dasgupta, Class Relations & Technical Change in Indian Agriculture (New Delhi: Institute of Economic Growth, 1980), 146 pp., and Robert Bohm, Notes on India (Boston: South End Press, 1982), 244 pp. 71. Lloyd I. Rudolph and Susanne Hoeber Rudolph, In Pursuit of Laksmhi, The Political Economy of the Indian State (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1987). pp. 314319. 72. Sheldon K. Tsu, High-yielding varieties of wheat in developing countries, U.S. Department of Agriculture Economic Research Service, Report ERS-Foreign 322, SePtember 1971, p. 13; figures are approximate averages of yield differences between local varieties of wheat and high-yielding varieties, 1966-1970. Yields before the new high-yielding varieties were developed in India depended greatly on whether the crop was irrigated or not. In the 1920s in the Punjab, for example, the village of Gijhi reported wheat yields of about 16 maunds per acre (1479 kg/ha), but unirrigated wheat yielded about 8 maunds per acre (740 kg/ha) (Raj Narain, An Economic History of Gijhi, a Village in the Rohtak Distt. of the Punjab, Lahore: Civil and Military Gazette Press, 1932, p. 179). Blyn calculates the average yield of wheat in British India in 1946/47 to be 578 pounds per acre (649 kg/ha) (George Blyn, Agricultural Trends in India, 1891-1947: Output, Availability, and Productivity, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1966, p. 258). 73. Geographer Carl O. Sauer raised severe objections to the Foundation starting an agricultural program in Mexico based on the American land grant university model of science: "A good aggressive bunch of American agronomists and plant breeders could ruin the native resources for good and all by pushing their American commercial stocks . . . . The example of Iowa is about the most dangerous of all for Mexico. Unless the Americans understand that, they'd better keep out of this country entirely. This thing must be approached from an appreciation of the native economies as being basically sound." Saner's letter was to Joseph Willits, director of social sciences at the Foundation. It was sent before the survey team left for Mexico, but Sauer's doubts appear to have had no effect of any sort on subsequent Foundation activities in Mexican agriculture. (COS to [J. H. Willits], n.d. [Feb (?), 1941], Rockefeller Foundation Archives, RG 1.2, Series 323, Box 10, Folder 63.)