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Article ID: CBB758194610

The socialist origins of the Green Revolution: Pandurang Khankhoje and domestic ‘technical assistance’ (2020)

Laveaga, Gabriela Soto (Author)

History and Technology
Volume: 36
Issue: 3-4
Pages: 337-359
Publication date: 2020
Language: English

URI: https://doi.org/10.1080/07341512.2020.1862989

DOI: 10.1080/07341512.2020.1862989

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Agriculture Hybrid seeds Green revolution Technical assistance Socialism 20th century Mexico Khankhoje, Pandurang Sadhashiv Rockefeller Foundation

Origin narratives of the Green Revolution have been periodized to influence who is seen as an expert and memorialized as such. This article pushes us to reframe technical assistance to include in country agricultural aid activities needed for many foreign assistance initiatives to succeed. Many agricultural-based technical assistance projects of the twentieth century trace their origins to the emergence of a Rockefeller Foundation-led Green Revolution. This essay argues that in Mexico the arrival of so-called foreign technical assistance was not new but rather a continuation of socialist-based agricultural initiatives based on transforming rural life thru science. In addition to missing the influence of pivotal national institutions and scientists, key transnational, pre-exisiting relationships are often overlooked. This essay illustrates the importance of pushing back the time-line by using the case of Pandurang Khankhoje, an Indian agronomist working in Mexico before the arrival of Norman Borlaug and the Rockefeller Foundation.

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Associated with

Article Gisela Mateos; Edna Suárez-Díaz (2020) Development interventions: science, technology and technical assistance. History and Technology (pp. 293-309). unapi

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