The U.S. Origins of the South Asian “Green Revolution”
Eric Strahorn
Florida Gulf Coast University
Introduction
This paper will examine the role of various U.S. institutions in the creation of the “Green Revolution” in India. These institutions, such as the Rockefeller and Ford Foundations, American land-grant universities, and the United States Agency for International Development, played an integral part in the development of the agricultural research infrastructure of India after 1947.
These American institutions, however, did not seek to simply impose the American model of agriculture upon India. As India turned to the U.S. for assistance in its program of agricultural development, there was a complex process of negotiation as both sides sought to implement their interpretation of the needs of Indian farmers. While much of the technology of the “Green Revolution” originated in the U.S., Indian institutions and farmers adopted only that technology they wanted and adapted it to Indian conditions. As such, there was an “Indianization” of “Green Revolution” technology.
The purpose and nature of U.S. aid changed dramatically over time, so that in the late 1940s no U.S. institution envisioned playing a role in the creation of the “Green Revolution.” At first such institutions as the Rockefeller Foundation sought to provide aid on a relatively modest scale. But the leadership of the Foundation soon reinterpreted India’s situation in light of both fears of global overpopulation and the Cold War. By the 1950s, the Foundation massively increased the size and scope of its aid to India to the extent that it played a small but significant role in the development of Indian agricultural policy.
Definition of the “Green Revolution”
The “green revolution” in India is conventionally defined as the significant increase in agricultural productivity due to the use of wheat and rice hybrid seeds, chemical pesticides and fertilizers, and advanced agricultural techniques and machinery brought about by the Government of India’s High Yielding Varieties Programme [HYVP].[1] However, the “green revolution” has proven to be a more complicated process. The very term “green revolution” implies that technological innovations such as hybrid seeds and chemical fertilizers were suddenly adopted in the mid-1960s and led to a swift and unprecedented increase in agricultural production. Prem S. Mann aptly represents this interpretation of the “green revolution” in India:
Until the early 1960s the farmers in India were using obsolete and traditional modes of cultivation. There was very little use of modern techniques with inputs like tractors, threshers, combine harvesters, tubewells, pumpsets, fertilizers, pesticides, and insecticides….By the mid-1960s, however, a spectacular change was being witnessed in the use of technology and inputs in Indian agriculture.[2]
In this rhetoric of the “green revolution,” a rhetoric that was common among the government officials, scientists, and academics involved in the early stages of the “green revolution,” India had been mired in “traditional” agriculture until the adoption of High Yielding Varieties [HYV] seeds and other “green revolution” technologies.
Furthermore, scientists at the Rockefeller Foundation, who played an important role in the introduction of “green revolution” technology into India, had argued in the 1950s that India had lost all facility for innovation and change. They further claimed that “[m]ore millions are enslaved by centuries of tradition and are not truly free to try new methods or to exploit their own ingenuity.”[3] In addition, the U.S. government under Lyndon Johnson used foreign aid programs to force India out from what it considered to be economic and agricultural stagnation.[4] Such calumnies failed to recognize that technological innovation in Indian agriculture had occurred long before the 1960s.
In fact, there is little that was revolutionary in the “green revolution” technology adopted throughout South Asia. B.H. Farmer has warned that it is wrong to overemphasize the revolutionary aspects of “the new technology” on South Asian agricultural production as though agriculture in the sub-continent were sunk in a static stupor before the arrival of that technology.[5]
Throughout much of South Asia, agricultural research, experimentation, and technological innovation have a long history. Furthermore, the adaptation and adoption of new technologies must be seen in the context of the simultaneous commercialization of agriculture. As new technologies were introduced into South Asia, agriculture ceased to be primarily subsistence-based. New crops, including cash crops, were introduced into the state, and these often required the importation of new inputs, like fertilizers and hybrid seeds. Significantly, the new technology was expensive to acquire and use. A subsistence farmer who had a two acre holding could not afford to purchase or use tractors, petrochemical fertilizers, or tube wells. Only farmers with access to relatively large amounts of capital could participate in the new commercialized agricultural economy. The effect of this split was a substantial change in the social relations of agricultural production in those areas where commercial agriculture developed even before the 1960s.[6]
While the “green revolution” was the adoption of specific technologies by farmers in the 1960s, it was only one more step in a long process of agricultural innovation in the area which began long before independence in 1947.[7] The Government of India [GOI] increased its support agricultural of research after independence, especially through the facilities of the Indian Council on Agricultural Research and the Indian Agricultural Research Institute. The GOI’s involvement with agriculture changed with the adoption of the first Five-Year Plan in 1951 and a gradual de-emphasis on the Grow More Food program in the 1950s. The first Five-Year Plan was concerned mostly with repairing the damage caused to Indian agriculture by World War II and partition.[8] Furthermore, several of the state governments became active in agricultural research after independence. In 1949, the state of Uttar Pradesh [UP] created the Bureau of Agricultural Information as a way to educate farmers.[9] As part of the state’s first five-year plan, UP in 1951 created an extension service as part of the Department of Agriculture, with the stated purpose of educating farmers.[10] Uttar Pradesh was the first state to create an agricultural university, passing the necessary legislation in 1958. The UP Agricultural University, the first land-grant university in India, supported agricultural research and provided extension services to farmers throughout much of the state of UP.
Historian S.K. Mukherjee argues that there was an increase in the production of food crops in India even before the beginning of the “green revolution.” Mukherjee suggests that this increase was due to improved seeds and agricultural techniques plus the increased use of irrigation and fertilizer.[11] According to the Indian Council on Agricultural Research, some 28,932 field experiments were conducted in India from 1948 to 1959[12] with roughly one-third of them being conducted in the state of Uttar Pradesh.[13] Clearly, Indian agriculture was not static prior the “revolutionary” 1960s, even though the level of technology available to and utilized by farmers varied greatly by class and location in the country.
The “green revolution” in India is best defined as the adoption of certain, specific mid-1960s technologies, not as some unprecedented break with “traditional” agriculture. The most important facets of “green revolution” technology are HYV hybrid seeds and the farm machinery, irrigation facilities, fertilizer, herbicides, and pesticides necessary to utilize them.[14] Hybrid seeds were first developed in the United States in the 1910s and 1920s, and HYV seeds are particularly productive strains of hybrids. HYV seeds were first developed in the 1950s and 1960s through research sponsored, in part, by the Rockefeller Foundation and the Ford Foundation in Mexico, India, and the Philippines.[15] In 1956, the Rockefeller Foundation and the GOI signed an agreement that created the India Agricultural Program which funded research programs throughout the country; and the Rockefeller Foundation played a leading role in the transfer of information about agricultural research methodology to India in the 1950s and 1960s.[16]
The Rockefeller Foundation
The Rockefeller Foundation first became involved in agricultural research in India in the early 1950s with the request for financial assistance from the Allahabad Agricultural Institute in the state of Uttar Pradesh.[17] At about the same time, the GOI determined that the country’s maize research program was inadequate and approached the Rockefeller Foundation for technical assistance.[18] The Rockefeller Foundation and the GOI later agreed to expand their joint efforts to additional crops like rice and wheat.[19] This “mutuality of interest” made it possible for the GOI and the Foundation to work successfully, so that, in short, the Foundation’s efforts in India lacked the know-it-all neo-imperialist approach found in foreign assistance projects funded by other organizations.[20]
The Ford Foundation, the U.S.-based Agricultural Development Council, and the U.S. Technical Cooperation Administration, predecessor to the U.S. Agency for International Development, also funded agricultural research in India during the 1950s and 1960s.[21] Various U.S. universities were also involved in Indian agricultural research by serving as contractors for the U.S. government.
The Indian Agricultural Research Institute, relocated to New Delhi after 1947, was the leading Indian institution for agricultural research at this time and was the site for much of the agricultural research conducted in India until the development of the country’s land-grant agricultural universities in the 1960s. Researchers in the late 1950s and early 1960s focused on developing new hybrids of rice, wheat, and maize, and these HYV seeds became available to farmers beginning in the early 1960s.[22] In 1963 the GOI created the National Seeds Corporation which had the responsibility of producing and distributing improved hybrid seeds.[23]
In response to a Ford Foundation report entitled “India’s Food Crisis and Steps to Meet It,” the GOI created a program to further the development and distribution of the new hybrid seeds. In 1959, the Intensive Agricultural Districts Program [IADP] was established jointly with the Ford Foundation.[24] The IADP selected areas which had an adequate supply of rainfall or irrigation and which promoted the increased use of inputs like fertilizers. The IADP proved to be less than entirely successful and was canceled in the mid 1950s.[25] The GOI and the Rockefeller Foundation determined that the local improved seed varieties were not sufficiently responsive to the higher use of fertilizer to justify the expense.[26]
The New Strategy
In 1965 the GOI announced a “New Strategy” to increase agricultural production, and it included the High Yielding Varieties Program which was a joint effort between the GOI and the Rockefeller Foundation and included the development and testing of new hybrid varieties of wheat and rice.[27] The New Strategy was a larger version of the IADP. Like the IADP, it sought to promote the increased use of fertilizers, but it also offered farmers with new hybrid varieties which were more responsive to the higher amount of fertilizer used. In addition to promoting new hybrid varieties and greater use of fertilizer, the New Strategy also included the investment in fertilizer factories in India, the extension of adequate credit to enable farmers to use the new varieties, the control of grain purchase prices to give farmers the financial incentive to try the new varieties, and the reorganization of agricultural research in India.[28] The National Seeds Corporation was given the primary responsibility of distributing the new hybrid HYV seeds to farmers, but state departments of agriculture also were responsible for the multiplication and distribution of the new hybrids.[29]
Analysis of the New Strategy by policy makers, scholars, and journalists began immediately. In 1968, agronomist V.S. Vyas concluded the New Strategy had proven to be more productive than “traditional agriculture.” Vyas, however, noted that the program faced several difficulties, such as a lack of coordination between the various government agencies involved and the failure of state extension programs and agricultural cooperatives to adequately support the program. Vyas concluded that the program could become a complete success if these bureaucratic questions were addressed.[30] In 1969, The Rockefeller Foundation’s Ralph W. Cummings and S.K. Ray argued that the New Strategy had had a profound effect on grain production. They acknowledged that the New Strategy had problems, such as they unreliable availability of inputs and the instability of grain prices, but they suggested that these problems could be resolved.[31] In 1969, Francine R. Frankel argued that the New Strategy was based on false assumptions. Most importantly, Frankel argued that the new HYV seeds were not any better than the older hybrids already in use and thus the New Strategy would produce, at best, mixed results.[32] In a 1976 study by the GOI’s Programme Evaluation Organization and the Australian National University researchers concluded that, despite problems, the New Strategy and HYVP had “substantially increased production of foodgrains in India.”[33] Other commentators argued that the New Strategy was not as successful as its proponents claimed. They suggested that it was hampered by administrative problems, shortage of agricultural inputs, especially fertilizer, lack of adequate irrigation facilities, social and economic instability, and environmental problems, such as the chemical exhaustion of the soil and the salinization of the soil.[34]
Agricultural universities throughout India were central to the development, distribution, and promotion of new hybrids, fertilizers, pesticides, and agricultural techniques in the 1960s and 1970s. For example, the UP Agricultural University at Pantnagar in Nainital district was the first land-grant or agricultural university in India. The idea of creating agricultural land-grant universities in India originated with the GOI’s University Education Commission as well as the GOI’s Damle Committee on Agricultural Research and Education, which was staffed by Indian and American agricultural experts.[35] Harpal Singh Sandhu, UP Assistant Director of Colonization, invited the Damle Committee to visit the Tarai State Farm, near the Nepal border, and consider it as the site for an agricultural university. The Committee liked the site and recommended that an agricultural university be built there.[36] Sandhu and A.N. Jha, UP Food Production Commissioner, were sent by the Committee to the U.S. to visit several land-grant universities in 1950, and they recommended to UP Chief Minister G.B. Pant that an American-style agricultural university should indeed by built on the grounds of the Tarai State Farm. Pant approved, and the state of UP, in consultation with H.W. Hannah of the University of Illinois, made a proposal to the GOI in 1956 to create an agricultural university.[37] The GOI approved the proposal, and the UP legislature then passed the Uttar Pradesh Agricultural University Act in 1958. With GOI approval, the UP government received funding to begin construction from the Indo-U.S. Technical Cooperation Programme [TCP] through the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, which served as an TCP contractor.[38] In addition, university personnel were actively involved in providing technical assistance to the UP Agricultural University, which included the training of UPAU faculty and assistance in the original construction of the Pantnagar campus, as well as later additions.[39] The UP Agricultural University at Pantnagar was renamed the Govind Ballabh Pant University of Agriculture and Technology in 1970.
Pantnagar University soon became a significant force in the development and transfer of HYV seeds and related technology throughout the state. The University promoted the adoption of HYV technology by farmers in two ways. First, the University sought to educate farmers about HYV technology through degree courses on campus and through an extension system that sent extension agents to visit farmers and demonstrate the new technology.[40] As part of the educational effort, the University created four regular publications: the annual report for the University’s experiment station, the Indian Farmer’s Digest, the Indian Agricultural Index, and the Pantnagar Journal of Research. It is not clear how much influence these publications had on UP farmers, however, because only the Indian Farmer’s Digest had a Hindi language edition. Second, University scientists conducted research in all aspects of agriculture, including agronomy, entomology, horticulture, veterinary medicine, irrigation technology and methodology, and grain storage technology. More specifically, the University developed and tested new seed hybrids, fertilizers, and pesticides specifically for use in the state, and this new technology has also been adopted in other parts of India. The University has produced new maize, wheat, and rice varieties, but, while maize, wheat, and rice have been the core of the “green revolution,” Pantnagar scientists have also experimented with barley, soybean, sugarcane, sugar beet, jute, millet, sorghum, pulses, lentils, oilseeds, and other crops. Furthermore, experimentation with all of these crops involved not only the development of new varieties and hybrids, but their field testing to determine the proper use of irrigation, fertilizers, and pesticides for each.[41]
The U.S. greatly influenced the development of the University through its funding of several University programs. Many of the University’s research activities were funded by the Rockefeller Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the Indo-U.S. Technical Cooperation Programme, and the U.S. Agency of International Development (program Public Law 480). The University also received funding from student tuition, income from the operations of university farm, and various external agencies, including the Indian Council of Agricultural Research, the GOI Planning Commission, the GOI University Grants Commission, the UP State Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (Bombay), and the World Bank.[42] The bulk of the university’s operating budget, however, has come from the profits of the University farm.[43]
In addition, Pantnagar University served as a valuable resource for those farmers who wished to adopt HYV technology, but the availability of the necessary information and inputs was only one of several factors that affected the spread of the new methods in UP. There were several other important factors, including the availability of irrigation facilities and electricity, the availability and price of inputs such as seed, fertilizer, and pesticides, the availability of credit, and grain purchase prices. In short, farmers had to be convinced that the new technologies would be profitable before they would use it. Uncertainty about the profitability of HYV technology led many farmers, especially those with small holdings, to cautiously experiment with it. They would often devote part of their land to the new seeds while planting the remaining land with native or deshi varieties. Furthermore, many farmers continued to cultivate deshi varieties because of periodic shortages of inputs like HYV seeds and fertilizer. [44]
The “green revolution” in South Asia was the adoption of certain technologies by farmers beginning in the late 1950s. Most of these technologies originated in the U.S. with private companies and land-grant universities. The participation of U.S. government agencies and private organizations in the transfer of “green revolution” technology to India began at the behest of the GOI so that important decisions governing this transfer were made by Indian politicians, bureaucrats, and scientists in cooperation with their American counterparts. The land-grant universities of India have played an important role in this process through research and education, and by developing, producing and distributing HYV seeds and related technology.
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[1] Norman Borlaug 1983 “Contributions of Conventional Plant Breeding to Food Production” Science. 219:692 and Peter B.R. Hazell 1994 “Rice in India” National Geographic Research & Exploration. 19(2):173.
[2] Prem S. Mann 1989 “Green Revolution Revisited: The Adaption of High Yielding Variety Wheat Seeds in India” Journal of Development Studies. 26:131.
[3] Quoted in John H. Perkins 1990 “The Rockefeller Foundation and the Green Revolution, 1941–1956” Agriculture and Human Values. 7(2):12. See also J.G. Harrar, Paul C. Mangesldorf and Warren Weaver “Notes on Indian Agriculture,” April 11, 1952. Rockefeller Archive Center, Rockefeller Foundation Archives, Record Group 6.7, Series II, Box 26, Folder 147.
[4] Arthur A. Goldsmith 1988 “Policy Dialogue, Conditionality, and Agricultural Development: Implications of India’s Green Revolution” The Journal of Developing Areas. 22:390.
[5] B.H. Farmer 1986 “Perspectives on the ‘Green Revolution’ in South Asia” Modern Asian Studies. 20:180.
[6] Miriam Sharma 1985 “Caste, Class, and Gender: Production and Reproduction in North India” Journal of Peasant Studies. 12(4):58.
[7] S.K. Mukherjee 1992 “Progress of Indian Agriculture: 1900–1980” Indian Journal of History of Science. 27(4):445, Elizabeth Whitcombe 1972 Agrarian Conditions in Northern India, Volume 1: The United Provinces Under British Rule, 1860–1900. Berkeley: University of California Press, pp.64–109, and Carl E. Pray 1984 “The Impact of Agricultural Research in British India” The Journal of Economic History. 44(2):430.
[8] D.G. Karve 1961 “Plans of Agricultural Development in India” Journal of Farm Economics. 43:1081.
[9] Government of Uttar Pradesh State Archive (Lucknow), Agriculture Department (B) file number 145/1951, volume 4, p. 272.
[10] Government of Uttar Pradesh State Archive (Lucknow), Agriculture Department (B) file number 145/1951, volume 4, p. 262.
[11] Mukherjee 1992:447.
[12] Quoted in D. Singh, B.N. Tyagi, O.P. Kathuria and M.L. Sahni 1971 “A Survey of Agricultural Experimentation in India” Indian Journal of Agricultural Sciences. 41(11):901.
[13] Singh, Tyagi, Kathuria and Sahni 1971:902.
[14] Vandana Shiva 1993 Monocultures of the Mind: Perspectives on Biodiversity and Biotechnology. Dehra Dun: Natraj Publishers. p.39.
[15] Perkins 1990:10 and Uma Lele and Arthur A. Goldsmith 1989 “The Development of National Agricultural Research Capacity: India’s Experience With the Rockefeller Foundation and Its Significance for Africa” Economic Development and Cultural Change. 37:306.
[16] Lele and Goldsmith 1989:308.
[17] Warren Weaver, “Notes on Indian Agriculture,” November 15, 1951. Rockefeller Archive Center, Rockefeller Foundation Archives, Record Group 1.2, Series 464, Box 28, Folder 218.
[18] U.J. Grant and E.J. Wellhausen, “A Study of Corn Breeding and Production in India—General Comments,” March, 1955. Rockefeller Archive Center, Rockefeller Foundation Archives, Record Group 1.2, Series 464, Box 17, Folder 142 and F.W. Parker “The Hybrid Maize Program in India,” April 17, 1957. Rockefeller Archive Center, Rockefeller Foundation Archives, Record Group 1.2, Series 464, Box 1, Folder 5.
[19] Guy B. Baird, “Cooperative Indo–American Projects,” Rockefeller Archive Center, Rockefeller Foundation Archives, Record Group 1.2, Series 464, Box 3, Folder 15 and A.S. Carter, Walter Scott and Clare Porter, “Seed Improvement in India; Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow,” 1969. Rockefeller Archive Center, Rockefeller Foundation Archives, Record Group 6.7, Series IV, Sub-series 4, Box 69, Folder 453.
[20] Lele and Goldsmith 1989:310.
[21] Ashok Rudra 1978 “Organisation of Agriculture for Rural Development: The Indian Case” Cambridge Journal of Economics. 2:390, Eugene S. Staples 1992 Forty Years: A Learning Curve; The Ford Foundation Programs in India, 1952–1992. New Delhi: The Ford Foundation. p.15–16 and Douglas Ensminger 1962 “Overcoming the Obstacles to Farm Economic Development in the Less-Developed Countries” Journal of Farm Economics. 44:1374–1377.
[22] Perkins 1990:13.
[23] M.S. Randhawa 1986 A History of Agriculture in India, Volume 4, p.246.
[24] Rudra 1978:390, Sharma 1985:58 and Staples 1992:16–18.
[25] Brian Lockwood, P.K. Mukherjee and R.T. Shand 1971 The High Yielding Varieties Programme in India, Part 1. New Delhi: Government of India, Planning Commission, Programme Evaluation Organization/Australian National University, Research School of Pacific Studies, p.1–2.
[26] Lockwood, Mukherjee and Shand 1971:1–4.
[27] Lockwood, Mukherjee and Shand 1971:2.
[28] Lockwood, Mukherjee and Shand 1971:4–5 and Rudra 1978:382.
[29] Lockwood, Mukherjee and Shand 1971:7.
[30] V.S. Vyas 1968 “The New Strategy: Lessons of First Three Years” Economic and Political Weekly. 3(43):A13–A14.
[31] Ralph W. Cummings, Jr. and S.K. Ray 1969 “The New Agricultural Strategy: Its Contribution to 1967–68 Production” Economic and Political Weekly. 4(13):A7–A9.
[32] Francine R. Frankel 1969 “India’s New Strategy of Agricultural Development: Poltical Costs of Agrarian Modernization” Journal of Asian Studies. 28(4):693–696.
[33] Lockwood, Mukherjee and Shand 1976:vii.
[34] See Shiva 1993 and Farmer 1986.
[35] Uttar Pradesh Agricultural University 1963 A New System of Education in India. Pantnagar: UPAU, p. 5.
[36] Rudra 1978:390.
[37] UP Agricultural University 1963:6.
[38] GOI Ministry of Finance, Department of Economic Affairs 1959 Report on the Indo-U.S. Technical Co-operation Programme. New Delhi: GOI, p.157.
[39] University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Department of Architecture 1975 Campus Development Planning Study; G.B. Pant University of Agriculture and Technology. Urbana: University of Illinois, p.4 and Uttar Pradesh Agricultural University 1963:27.
[40] Uttar Pradesh Agricultural University 1963:14–19 and Charanjit Ahuja “One University That Actually Works” Indian Express, March 9, 1994, p.3.
[41] UP Agricultural University, Experiment Station, Annual Report for 1971–72, p. 1, B.K. Tyagi and N.K. Das 1970 “Reactions of Added Phosphorus to Submontanous Soils of Uttar Pradesh” Indian Journal of Agricultural Sciences. 40(3):235, and Ambika Singh, I.J. Singh and V.K. Berry 1971 “Economic Studies on Productivity of Irrigated Crops and Sources of Irrigation in Uttar Pradesh” Indian Journal of Agricultural Sciences. 41(5):427.
[42] Staples 1992:18.
[43] University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Department of Architecture 1975:11.
[44] K. Chandra Mouli 1980 Agricultural Development and Disparities; A Study of Eighteen Western Districts of Uttar Pradesh. Delhi: University of Delhi, p.36–48, K. Subbarao 1980 “Institutional Credit, Uncertainty and Adoption of HYV Technology: A Comparison of East U.P. With West U.P.” Indian Journal of Agricultural Economics. 35(1):69, and Vyas 1968:A13–A14.