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Troubled Harvest Agronomy and Revolution in Mexico, 1880-2002
Joseph Cotter
Book Code: GM2515
ISBN: 0-313-32515-4
ISBN-13: 978-0-313-32515-1
424 pages
Praeger Publishers
Publication: 9/30/2003
List Price: $110.95 (UK Sterling Price: £65.00)
Availability: In Stock
Media Type: Hardcover
Trim Size: 6 1/8 x 9 1/4
Subjects:
Series Title: Contributions in Latin American Studies
Series Number: 22
Reviews:
  • This is a fascinating and in-depth posthumous critique of the failure of the Mexican and Green Revolutions to significantly improve the daily lives of poor rural farm families, or campesinos, in Mexico....Recommended. Lower-level undergraduates and up.
    —Choice     April 2004
  • [I] hope geographers will use Troubled Harvest as a solid foundation on which to build regional studies of how landscapes change in relation to the actions of agronomos and others involved in the first and second Green Revolutions.
    —Annals of the Association of American Geographers     2005
Description: During the 20th century, two revolutions swept rural Mexico: the Mexican Revolution and the Green Revolution. In both, "revolutionaries" promised to address the problems of rural poverty and underdevelopment. The Mexican Revolution led to a significant agrarian reform and created the State and elite that governed Mexico since the 1920s. The Green Revolution helped increase Mexican agricultural production substantially, and in 1970 it won a Nobel Peace Prize for Norman Borlaug, who bred dwarf hybrid wheat. Mexican agronomists played significant roles in both revolutions, but neither revolution brought prosperity to peasant farmers. This book examines the history of Mexican agronomy and agronomists to shed new light on the role of science in the Mexican Revolution, the origins of the worldwide Green Revolution, and general issues about the nature of the professions, the impact of professionals' ties to politics and the state, and discourses between members of Mexico's urban middle class and peasantry. Cotter also analyzes the impact of foreign models of science in Mexico, the history of U.S.-Mexican cooperation in the agricultural sciences, and the factors that led Mexico to seek scientific assistance from the United States. In a broad way, he reveals new aspects of the ongoing struggle for the right to define "modernity" and "progress" in rural Mexico, and offers new explanations for the failure of many of the State's efforts to assist peasant farmers.
Table of Contents:
  • Preface
  • Introduction: Agronomy and Revolution in Mexico
  • Liberalism and the Origins of Mexican Agronomy
  • Revolution, Agronomy, and the Roots of the Cultural Campaign, 1910-1930
  • Revolutionary Agronomy and the Cultural Campaign, 1930-1937
  • Agronomy under Attack: the Demise of the Cultural Campaign and the Roots of a New Agronomy, 1938-1943
  • Agrónomos Técnicos: the Rockefeller Foundation, the U.S., and the Transformation of Mexican Agronomy, 1944-1950
  • The Mexican Revolution and the Green Revolution, 1950-1970
  • The Aftermath of the First Green Revolution, and the Birth of as Second? 1970-2002
  • Conclusions: Agronomy and Mexico's Revolutions
  • Bibliography
LC Card Number: 2002044952
LCC Class: S451
Dewey Class: 630
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