IsisCB Explore

Article ID: CBB265339233

With and against the Grain: The Asian Vegetable Research and Development Center and Modest Narratives of Green Revolution in Taiwan, 1963–2002 (2023)

Leo Chu (Author)

Agricultural History
Volume: 97
Issue: 3
Pages: 448-477
Publication date: 2023
Language: English

DOI: 10.1215/00021482-10474447

URI: https://doi.org/10.1215/00021482-10474447

Outside Links

WorldCat

Google Scholar

JSTOR

Breeding Agriculture Vegetables Green revolution Research institutes; research stations 21st century 20th century, late Taiwan

This article studies the Asian Vegetable Research and Development Center (AVRDC) in Taiwan. It begins with the Sino-American Joint Commission on Rural Reconstruction (JCRR), a US-funded agency championing plant breeding and land reform. Capitalizing on Japanese colonial legacy, a technocratic Chinese nationalism, and Cold War geopolitics, the JCRR boosted the productivity of rice while diversifying the agricultural economy through vegetable cultivation. The AVRDC, supported by the Rockefeller Foundation and the US government, was created in 1971 to bring this vision to Southeast Asia. The expulsion of Taiwan from the United Nations nonetheless threatened the center's survival. To carve out its sphere of influence, the AVRDC combined vegetable breeding programs with experiments on home gardening and small-scale agriculture, inserting itself into a bourgeoning sustainability discourse in the 1980s. The article argues that the center's ambiguous position within the international agricultural research network prompted it to adopt a “modest narrative” that celebrated not heroic figures but the collaborative endeavor of scientists sympathetic to farmers. However, the marginalization of agriculture and shifting identity politics in Taiwan made the center's achievement increasingly less relevant to its host country, thus complicating the significance of the AVRDC to the agricultural history of Taiwan.

...More

Citation URI

data.isiscb.org/p/isis/citation/CBB265339233

This citation is part of the Isis database.

Citations Indexes

Similar Citations

Book Kingsbury, Noel; (2009)
Hybrid: The History and Science of Plant Breeding (/p/isis/citation/CBB001510343/)

Article Harwood, Jonathan; (2009)
Peasant Friendly Plant Breeding and the Early Years of the Green Revolution in Mexico (/p/isis/citation/CBB001020839/)

Article Lin, James; (2015)
Sowing Seeds and Knowledge: Agricultural Development in Taiwan and the World, 1925--1975 (/p/isis/citation/CBB001551361/)

Book Marci Baranski; (2019)
Globalizing Wheat: Success and Failure of the Green Revolution (/p/isis/citation/CBB650890415/)

Article Lo, Kuei-Mei; Chen, Hsin-Hsing; (2011)
Technological Momentum and the Hegemony of the Green Revolution: A Case Study of an Organic Rice Cooperative in Taiwan (/p/isis/citation/CBB001231681/)

Article Les Levidow; Davis Sansolo; Monica Schiavinatto; (2021)
Agroecological innovation constructing socionatural order for social transformation: Two case studies in Brazil (/p/isis/citation/CBB130494145/)

Article Baroni, Mike; (Fall 2011)
Innovation and Urgency: Toward a New Green Revolution (/p/isis/citation/CBB588811255/)

Book Thomas D. Rogers; (2022)
Agriculture's Energy: The Trouble with Ethanol in Brazil's Green Revolution (/p/isis/citation/CBB172290706/)

Article Helen Anne Curry; (2023)
Diversifying Description: Sweet Potato Science and International Agricultural Research after the Green Revolution (/p/isis/citation/CBB369452091/)

Article Santos, Gonçalo; (2011)
Rethinking the Green Revolution in South China: Technological Materialities and Human-Environment Relations (/p/isis/citation/CBB001231671/)

Article Kaori Iida; (2021)
Postwar Reconstruction of Japanese Genetics: Kihara Hitoshi and the Rockefeller Foundation Rice Project in Cold War Asia (/p/isis/citation/CBB800955448/)

Book Joshua Eisenman; (2018)
Red China's Green Revolution: Technological Innovation, Institutional Change, and Economic Development Under the Commune (/p/isis/citation/CBB393548124/)

Book Marci Baranski; (2022)
The Globalization of Wheat: A Critical History of the Green Revolution (/p/isis/citation/CBB031473898/)

Thesis William San Martin; (2017)
Nitrogen Revolutions: Agricultural Expertise, Technology, and Policy in Cold War Chile (/p/isis/citation/CBB638294249/)

Article Margaret Derry; (2018)
Genetics, Biotechnology, and Breeding: North American Shorthorn Production in the Twenty-First Century (/p/isis/citation/CBB157533174/)

Article Theunissen, Bert; (2012)
Breeding for Nobility or for Production? Cultures of Dairy Cattle Breeding in the Netherlands, 1945--1995 (/p/isis/citation/CBB001250836/)

Chapter Grasseni, Cristina; (2007)
Good Looking: Learning to Be a Cattle Breeder (/p/isis/citation/CBB000953727/)

Article Grasseni, Cristina; (2007)
Managing Cows: An Ethnography of Breeding Practices and Uses of Reproductive Technology in Contemporary Dairy Farming in Lombardy (Italy) (/p/isis/citation/CBB000701057/)

Article García-Sancho, Miguel; (2015)
Animal Breeding in the Age of Biotechnology: The Investigative Pathway behind the Cloning of Dolly the Sheep (/p/isis/citation/CBB001510361/)

Article Yang, Hung-Renn; (2002)
Kanbujian de jishu: Lianwu bian heizhenzhu de jishu fazhanshi (/p/isis/citation/CBB000350227/)