Green Revolution (not) for all: wheat and irrigation for the history of technology

The Green Revolution has recently captured serious attention among historians of science and technology. The idea of researching a period where technological change and technical cooperation were crucial indicators for the success of any geopolitical strategy in the Cold War scenario helps us understand its traction. It also helps unwind historical review from its tendency towards national approaches to a more transnational way of looking at technopolitical processes in the twentieth century.

The Globalization of Wheat aims to challenge the dominant narrative of the Green Revolution as a technological triumph over hunger by examining the concept of wide adaptation in wheat breeding. The book draws on archival research, interviews, and fieldwork to show how wide adaptation was a contested and flawed idea that led to the marginalization of smallholder farmers and the concentration of research efforts on favorable agroecosystems.

By doing so, Marci Baranksi offers a critical perspective on the history of science and technology in the Green Revolution and its implications for current and future agricultural development. In general terms, Baranksi takes the notion of wide adaptation – an essential claim in twentieth-century scientific beliefs on agricultural development – and sheds light on a complex legacy of the work of Norman Borlaug, the so-called father of the Green Revolution.

In her work, Baranksi critically examines the principle of transforming wheat into a global crop and initiating the Green Revolution. She delves into the complex legacy of Norman Borlaug's introduction of high-yielding dwarf wheat varieties, colloquially termed “miracle seeds,” which led to a significant increase in global crop yields, effectively doubling or even tripling them, mainly due to their wide adaptability. This adaptability is a critical aspect that Baranski scrutinizes in her analysis.

Baranski contends that the reality was different despite Borlaug assuring policymakers that his innovative crops would flourish in various regions and benefit all farmers. His new technologies ended up favoring affluent farmers. The shift from traditional farming methods to large-scale monocultures institutionalized the Indian wheat research system. This transition inadvertently sidelined traditional practices and marginal environments, thereby narrowing the focus of agricultural research.

Along with providing a fresh lens for understanding the Green Revolution from a perspective of the history of technology, Baranski's work also provides a series of lessons for further historical research on agronomical development. The text calls for a critical re-evaluation of the concept of wide adaptation in agricultural research due to its inadvertent marginalization of smallholder farmers. It also advocates for more inclusive agricultural practices and emphasizes the need for diversifying crop research beyond large-scale monocultures, with a focus on traditional practices and marginal environments. Lastly, it underscores the importance of critically examining the societal impacts of past technologies to inform future advancements for scientists and policymakers.

Baranski first examines the concept of wide adaptation in wheat, showing how it was a contested and flawed idea that ignored the diversity and complexity of wheat environments and farmers’ needs. It also reveals the political and institutional factors that enabled the spread of widely adapted wheat varieties worldwide. Those claims challenge the dominant narrative of the Green Revolution as a technological triumph and call for a more nuanced and critical history of technology.

The book then focuses on the Indian context of the Green Revolution and how Borlaug's wheat varieties were introduced and adopted in the country. It shows how Borlaug and his allies advocated for a new plant breeding ideal of “proper agronomy,” favoring high-input, irrigated, and commercial farming systems. It also shows how this ideal marginalized smallholder farmers and traditional practices and led to the concentration of research efforts on favorable agroecosystems. The author exposes the social and ecological costs of the Green Revolution and questions its claims of equity and sustainability. That allowed an analysis of the Indian wheat research system and how it evolved after the Green Revolution. It shows how the system remained centralized, hierarchical, and focused on plant breeding despite attempts to reform it. It also shows how the system relied on wide adaptation as a guiding principle despite its limitations and criticisms, demonstrating the persistence and path dependency of the Green Revolution paradigm and its impact on agricultural innovation and development.

This work also highlights the need for more inclusive, participatory, and context-specific agricultural research that can benefit all farmers. Finally, the research quality that informs this book is visible when analyzing the research methods section that Baranksi shares. The interviews alone, held with wheat scientists provided the technical apparatus for a critical review of the impact of wheat globalization during the study period. It also focuses on the administration of science in India, which helped the book to grasp often opaque matters in the history of technology such as research networks that revitalized the documentary selection that the author collected from 2013 to 2014. The opportunity to check on Indian archives in a global perspective analysis is a notorious advance in decentralizing the history of technology narratives involving non-US or western Europe parties in technological change.

Because of this, The Globalization of Wheat offers a critical perspective on the history of technology in the Green Revolution and its implications for current and future agricultural development. It also suggests possible ways to regulate, diversify, democratize, and decolonize agricultural research and innovation. It urges historians, scientists, policymakers, and citizens to examine past technologies and their impacts on society critically. As she clearly states in her chapter on the challenges to wide adaptation in international agricultural research:

Scientists, administrators, and donors all realized that the Green Revolution's benefits were limited to irrigated areas farmed by “larger, more commercially-minded, well-established farmers.” CIMMYT researchers recognized that despite large investments in research, “the problem of the small, non-commercial or semi-commercial farmer remains unchanged.” Even in Latin and South American countries where the RF had longstanding research networks, poorer farmers in highland areas were not benefiting from new technologies. Donor organizations pushed agricultural researchers to focus on small and marginal farmers who were bypassed by the Green Revolution. (p. 127)

This claim shows us how for Latin American Science and Technology, readers will find an early and robust critique to the assumption of the support of northern institutions such as the Rockefeller Foundation for the continent's development. Baranski highly contests this narrative by showing how infrastructure, crop varieties, and irrigation changed both the fields and the governments and markets available to extend agriculture in different countries.