E.C. Stakman, Richard Bradfield, Paul C. Mangelsdorf, Campaigns Against Hunger (Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1967).

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Notes

• Note militaristic language of the title and infantilizing of chapter titles
• [PREFACE – RAYMOND FOSDICK]
• Vii – “Requested by the political and scientific leadership of Mexico to help improve the production and quality of its basic food crops, which were in distressingly short supply, the foundation decided to invite three eminent agricultural scientists, tempered by experience and distinguished by achievement, but not previously associated with the Foundation, to examine the condition of Mexican agriculture at first-hand and to give the Foundation their best counsel and advice.”
• “This was to be no simple or hurried inspection but a complex and sober search, because their verdict would be the basis for the foundation’s decision either to decide against entering the field of agriculture in a developing country on a cooperating basis, or to commit staff and substantial funds over a long period of time. Implied in the commitment was their judgment whether the Foundation could, in association with Mexican colleagues, reverse unfavorable food production trends in that country.”
• “Experienced Foundation officers, at my request, began the search for a small team of men who might undertake this critical assignment. Through a rare blend of judgment and luck, the Foundation decided upon the combination of Richard Bradfield, professor of agronomy and head of department, New York State College of Agriculture, Cornell University, Paul C. Mangelsdorf, professor of plant genetics and economic botany, Harvard University, and Elvin C. Stakman, professor of plant pathology and head of department, University of Minnesota [author of the present work].”
• Viii – “Now all three have joined forces to record in this book their description of the aims, objectives, and accomplishments of the total program, from its inception at their favorable recommendation to the present time. Friends, colleagues, and former students throughout the world, within and outside The Rockefeller Foundation, salute these men, affectionately known as “The Three Musketeers of Agriculture.”
• Ix – “This book was written because The Rockefeller Foundation invited us to write it. When asked what kind of book they had in mind, President Harrar replied, “The kind the three of you want to write.”
• “Our primary aim has been to tell how the Foundation conceived, organized, and operated its various programs for increasing food production. We hoped, of course, that this story might contribute to a wider realization that science, education, and common sense are essential in producing more food to alleviate hunger and to avert the continual threat of famine among at least half the people in the present world. Although we have tried to stress the fact that there are no easy solutions to the complex problems of human subsistence, experience has strengthened our conviction that the food problems in most of the needy countries can be solved — but only if intelligent and persistent attempts are made to solve them.”
• “We have adopted as our theme ‘campaigns against hunger’ because we wanted to emphasize the importance of coordination and continuity of effort. . . . It has not been our purpose to advertise any institutions or individuals nor to overwork military analogies and terminologies. It does seem appropriate, however, to think in terms of a worldwide war against hunger. However intelligently and vigorously this war is prosecuted, it will take a long time to win it. It may never be won completely, but hunger can be reduced to a minimum if the attacks against it are integrated into wisely conceived and skillfully executed campaigns. Sporadic and disjointed attacks may yield partial and passing successes but will never win the war; the obstacles are too strong and varied to be overcome by separate bands of temporary skirmishers directed by a succession of armchair strategists and field tacticians.”
  • In other word, we need a command-and-control approach — an industrial-managerial approach. Local solutions would be disqualified as “disjointed” solutions
• X – “Objectives were definite and realistic; operations were purposeful, efficient, coordinated, and continuous. The basic objective of increasing food supplies as quickly and directly as possible by means of the genetic and cultural improvement of the most important food and feed crops was always paramount.”

 

• “To help the ‘less developed’ countries to the road of independent progress is feasible but not easy. Given adequate help, many countries should be well on their way within a decade; others will require more help and much more time. Zooming populations, ignorance, poverty, venality, sociologic naivete, and political instability are formidable barriers to rapid progress in some countries. To convert an unsophisticated society into a sophisticated one, to substitute social cooperation for social contention will require more than the services of agricultural sciences. WE not only admit this; we insist on it. Even though we have not expatiated extensively in this book on the complexities of social evolution ,we are aware of them and concerned about them. But we did set limits to our objectives and, in general, have restricted our discussions to subjects that we have studied intensively for many years.”

 

• Xi – “We have tried to tell of the Foundation’s accomplishments as simply and nontechnically as is compatible with scientific accuracy.”
• [CHAPTER 1: THEN AND NOW IN MEXICO: A PREVIEW OF THE AGRICULTURAL REVOLUTION]
• 1 – “The Mexican Constitution of 1917 legalized the redistribution of lands . . . .. Mexico was being transformed largely from a country of latifundia to one of minifundia; whereas a few people had owned much of the land, each of many people now farmed a little land. . . . Land redistribution was satisfying the hunger of the landless for land, but was it satisfying their hunger for food?”
• 1-2 – “It soon became apparent that land redistribution alone did not guarantee freedom from hunger, for well over 50 percent of the new ejidal farmers were unlettered and had neither the experience nor financial means to become immediately successful as independent operators.”
• 2 – “Mexico needed more food; how could she get it? Perhaps the answer is epitomized in a little-known mural by Diego Rivera in the administration building of the National School of Agriculture at Chapingo. “Aqui se ensena a explotar la tierra, no a los hombres.” These words appear on one of the panels of Rivera’s mural; their essential meaning is ‘Here we teach how to husband our lands, not how to exploit our fellow men.”
  • They conveniently choose the translation ‘husband’ to refer to land and “exploit” to refer to man, even though the sentence is structured so as to use one instance of “explotar” to apply to both grammatical objects.
• 3 – [SECTION: THE AGRICULTURAL REVOLUTION: MAKING THE LAND MORE BOUNTIFUL]
• “By 1941 some of the wiser Mexicans realized that a revolution in agriculture was needed to supplement the agrarian revolution if Mexico was to feed her rapidly growing population.”
• 9 – “‘Agricultural revolution’ is no mere figure of speech, for Mexico is indeed ‘on the road of tremendous progress.’ In 1941 agricultural was traditional; now it is progressive. And it will continue to progress because it is continually becoming more scientific, thanks to a new generation of Mexican scientists. The concrete contributions of the revolution can be measured in bushels and pesos — more corn, wheat, beans, and potatoes. And that value is great. But the value of the scientists and the scientific attitude developed in the revolution cannot be measured in bushels and pesos. And yet, in the long run, that is the greatest value of all.”
• [SECTION: THE INTELLECTUAL REVOLUTION: MORE SCIENTISTS AND SCIENCE]
• 10 – “Some 550 young graduates of Mexican agricultural colleges paraticipated as paid apprentices or interns in the work of the Office of Special Studies. This was exactly the kind of education that they and Mexico needed at the time. Previously their education had been largely theoretical; from lectures and books they had learned words about things, but they did not know the things themselves. They had not developed the experimental attitude, nor had they learned how to make experiments. . . . It was not their fault; their education had not emphasized the development of powers of independent learning from the things to be learned and the development of skills by doing the things that needed to be done. But they wanted to learn, and many of them learned fast.”
• 11 – “[Agricultural engineers] were poorly paid, often had to supplement their income with nonprofessional jobs, were often dissatisfied and discouraged, tended to be politically minded, disdained the manual work that is necessary in field experimentation, and, very understandably, could not and did not contribute significantly to the advancement of agriculture. Their preparation had been inadequate to the larger tasks, and they were so preoccupied with personal problems that they seldom came to grips with agricultural problems.”
• [SUBSECTION: LANDMARKS ON THE ROAD TO SCIENTIFIC MATURITY]
• 13 – “It was not necessary to say, ‘Go thou and do likewise’; the farmers wanted to do likewise, and, if they did not understand how to do it, they asked questions and usually received useful answers based on the experience of the respondent. Each farmer had been given a little notebook and a pencil to record specific information. There were indications that some of the older ones were better acquainted with a plow than a pencil, but at least they deserved an A for effort.”
• 19 – CHAPTER 2: THE GENESIS OF THE MEXICAN PROGRAM: THE EVENTS THAT PRODUCED IT AND DETERMINED ITS PATTERN]
• “That the Mexican agricultural revolution was successful is evident in the facts and figures of Chapter 1. Mexico has shown many retarded countries of a road to progress if they have the will to follow it. The reasons for her own success are simple and clear for all to see and follow. The original concepts and plans were sensible and flexible, and they were carried out by intelligent men who adapted them sensibly to special needs and opportunities. Common sense, the application of simple but sound scientific and educational principles, dedication to society rather than to self, and persistent resourcefulness in surmounting difficulties formed the foundation on which success was built.”
• 23 – “All thre had seen the contributions of science, technology, and education to the phenomenal progress of agriculture in the United States during the quarter of a century prior to 1941. They had see the introduction of many kinds of crop plants and the genetic improvement of old kinds. They had seen early-ripening, frost-escaping varieties of corn extend the corn belt 500 miles northward and had seen the spring-wheat area extended even farther northward and westward. They had seen the winter-wheat belt extended half a thousand miles westward in the Great Plains region by the development of hardier varieties. They had seen the sorghums convert 10 million acres of range lands into productive plowlands in the semi-arid Southwest.”
  • Agricultural manifest destiny
• 25 – [SUBSECTION: ON THE MEXICAN HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS — READING AND MISREADING THE LAND AND THE PEOPLE]
• 26 – “Which provoked the reflection that much of nature still defies man’s conquest. And there is much defiant nature in Mexico.”
• 28 – “Clearly, however, zeal for education was still far ahead of skill in educating. In 1941, 93 percent of the rural schools did not teach beyond the fourth grade and only three percent of them gave six years of schooling. They had helped reduce illiteracy from 66 percent in 1921 to 52 percent in 1940, but they were expected to help improve agriculture and rural life as well. Each school was supposed to have a plot of land, simple but modern tools, and a teacher trained in methods of farming. But there were too few teachers who knew agriculture. Because traveling teachers’ institutes and other quick methods for improving teachers had not produced the desired results, rural normal schools had been established ‘to train teachers properly.’”
• 29-30 – “Intelligent Mexicans realized that better farming would have to come largely from the results of experimentation within the country, because the transfer value of foreign prescriptions is limited. It was easy to say, ‘We need better varieties, we need to fertilize the soil, and we must control pests and pathogens better.’ But what were the better varieties, what the best soil management practices, and what were the best pest and disease control measures for the many different conditions that existed? The general principles for improving agriculture were obvious, but it was obvious also that specific recommendations for so diverse a country as Mexico would have to be based on specific knowledge derived from adequate regional and local experimentation. Unfortunately, however, the country had too few scientists to make the needed experiments.”
• 31 – “There was hunger in Mexico in 1941. That ‘the country has many of the aspects of an overpopulated land’ was evident to all who looked below the surface. The level of subsistence was low; dietary standards were bad. The average annual per capita consumption of meat was 25 pounds as compared with 145 pounds in the United States and 290 in Argentina; that of sugar was about 35 pounds as contrasted with more than 100 in the United States.”
• 33 – “the basic philosophy in making the specific proposals was stated thus: ‘The plan presented assumes that most rapid progress can be made by starting at the top and expanding downward. The alternative would be to start at the bottom and work toward the top. A program of improving the vocational schools of agriculture and of extension work directed toward the farmers themselves might be undertaken. But the schools can hardly be improved until the teachers are improved; extension work cannot be improved until extension men are improved; and investigational work cannot be made more productive until investigators acquire greater competence.”
• 34-35 – “Extension alone, and other forms of education ,can make great improvement only when there is a great reservoir of potentially useful but unused information, and there was no such reservoir in the Mexico of 1941. Moreover, reservoirs usually run dry within a short time unless replenished constantly by the results of research, as has been painfully evident in many technical assistance programs in the fields of agriculture and public health, which deal with variable living organisms and changing situations. Of course, research alone does not alleviate conditions either unless the results are made practically effective through education and extension. Naturally, therefore, the Commission envisioned improvement through a combination of research, education, and extension — with research providing opportunities and furnishing materials for education and extension. This concept was neither novel nor profound, but it did have the merit of being sound and sensible. And it is equally sound and sensible today for other poorly developed areas.”
• 36 – [CHAPTER 3: PUTTING THE WHEELS IN MOTION: PIONEERS GO TO WORK]
• “The productivity of agricultural investigations depends on the conceptual wisdom and operational ability of the investigators, on the availability of necessary physical facilities, and on freedom to work without let or hindrance whenever, wherever, and however the work needs to be done. What most urgently needed to be done in 1941 in Mexico was fairly obvious; and it seemed that there would be relative freedom to do it, as both the Mexican Ministry and The Rockefeller Foundation were much more interested in doing useful things than in prescribing exactly how they should be done.”
• 42 – “Dorothy Parker was born in Indiana in 1910. She did her undergraduate work at Butler University, then earned the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees at the University of Cincinnati. Afterwards She taught at Brenau College, the University of Cincinnati, and St. Mary’s College, Indiana, where she was head of the department of biology from 1939 to 1942. After holding research fellowships of the American Association of University Women for two years, she became assistant curator of the herbarium and assistant editor of the American Midland Naturalist at the University of Notre Dame. In 1945 she went to Mexico as bibliographic assistant and subsequently became bibliographer and librarian on the Foundation staff.// By the end of 1945, then, there were seven full-time staff members in Mexico. All but Colwell are still in the Foundation, each with wide international responsibilities in the Foundation’s programs. The record of these pioneers constitutes the best evidence of the wisdom of the Foundation’s policy of scrupulous care in selecting the right kind of pioneers to blaze a trail that others might follow.”
• 42-3 – “As soon as possible, the Mexican Ministry commissioned certain of its younger scientists to the Office, their work with the Foundation staff thus establishing a mutually beneficial internship system. AS there was a shortage of young agricultural scientists in Mexico in 1943, the only one assigned to the Office in that year was Jose Rodriguez Vallejo, a recent graduate of the National School at Chapingo, who was functioning as the first plant pathologists in the Ministry. Rodriguez, 23 years old, became Harrar’s right-hand man and was his only regular helper until Wellhausen came in the fall of 1943. And a great help young Rodriguez was; intellectually keen, very urbane and diplomatic, he knew what to do and what to avoid doing in Mexico. He was a good young scientist and a valued adviser.// In 1944 five additional Mexican recruits joined the Office, followed by 21 the next year. Most of these early recruits were recent graduates of the National School of Agriculture and still in their early twenties. Nearly all performed well when working under supervision, and some performed well when working under any conditions. All of the first six are still contributing to the improvement of Mexican agriculture, and four have attained distinction. Of the 27 in this pioneer group, 25 men and two women, all but four were still engaged professionally in agricultural activities at the latest canvass. Thirteen of the group were granted fellowships to study in the United States and 11 earned degrees, nine the M.S. and two the Ph.D. Some of the earliest fellows paid the penalty of pioneers; although they made brilliant records while obtaining the M.S., their services were so urgently needed in Mexico that they had to forego additional graduate study. Nevertheless, some of them have attained true distinction because of their long and outstanding services to Mexican agriculture. All honor to them, even though they may not have honorary degrees!”
• [CHAPTER 4: CORN: RESHAPING THE DAILY BREAD OF MEXICO]

 

• 58 – “Step three was to inbreed among the better varieties and to  use first generation inbred strains in producing new synthetic varieties and modified hybrids which could be released to farmers while more highly refined double-cross hybrids, similar to those employed in the United States, were in the making. Step four was to continue inbreeding the lines collected from the better varieties and, with these and the inbreds from Taboada’s and Limon’s program, to produce conventional double-cross hybrids well adapted to the major agricultural regions. It was hoped that the first of these hybrids could be ready in five to six years.”

 

• • In response to Karin Matchett
• 59 – Matchett’s history of corn hybridization is taken wholecloth from Campaigns Against Hunger
• 70 – “Hybrid corn, however, which has been available for 18 years, has come to occupy only 14 percent of Mexico’s corn acreage, and this is a real disappointment when compared with progress in the United States.”
• 71 – “Hybrid seed is not yet reaching the small farmer in Mexico in substantial amounts, and it probably never will until private enterprise is allowed a part in its promotion. Whether this will ever happen in Mexico remains to be seen. In the meantime, other countries can learn from Mexico’s experience that government monopoly has not proved to be successful in getting hybrid corn into the hands of small farmers.// Nevertheless, the impact of the improved seed has been greater than might appear on the surface. Improved varieties have reached small farmers in appreciable amounts. An estimated 36 percent of the corn acreage is now planted to selected varieties, synthetics, and modified hybrids that have been distributed or created by the farmers themselves. And this is progress, even though a revolution in corn production has not yet been achieved.”

 

• “There were some disappointments, but they were due less to sceintific than to political causes.”

 

• 177 – [CHAPTER 11 – THE EVOLUTION OF AGRICULTURAL SCIENTISTS AND EDUCATORS]
• “These general sketches and incidental allusions cannot, however, do justice to the tremendous significance of the intellectual revolution that transformed Mexico from a dependent to an independent country scientifically.”
• 177-78 – “Two decades ago, Mexico ‘urgently needed technical assitance in order to initiate a revolution in agriculture properly.’ But twenty years later: ‘Thanks to individual training , including the sending of Mexicans to study at the best agricultural institutions in the United States, we now have a technical corps that can compete at the highest professional level with agricultural technologists anywhere in the world. For us in Mexico this is the meaning of international cooperation, in this case between The Rockefeller Foundation and the Federal Government of Mexico.’ Both statements were made in connection with the film Harvest, a portrayal of some phases of the Mexican agricultural revolution. And both were made by two extraordinary Ministers of Agriculture: the first by Don Marte Gomez, who had the wisdom to initiate the revolution, and the second by Ing. Julian Rodriguez Adame, who had the skill to capitalize its values.”
• 179 – “In 1943 most Mexican agronomos were generalists and few were specialists. Relatively few had the confidence born of personal experience in successfully applying available knowledge to the solution of practical problems, and still fewer had the confidence and technical skills to obtain the new knowledge that was so urgently needed. Some were too timid about doing things and some were too bold. The scientifically timid made few mistakes but did little good; the bold took chances but made many mistakes because they did not know how to calculate the chances. And so between the two of them they left a wide gap. How could it be filled?”
• 180 – “Following the enactment of the Morrill Act in the United States, which became federal law in 1863, the various states established colleges of agriculture and mechanic arts. Then they groped around for almost a quarter century trying to find out how to be useful, because there was no coherent body of scientific knowledge for professors to teach and for students to learn.// After trying this and that without conspicuous success, a few leaders in the United States realized that the colleges had to learn something useful through experimentation and research if their teaching was to be of any help. Therefore they urged the establishment of agricultural experiment stations to serve as living sources of progress in agriculture and agricultural education. The federal Congress responded by enacting the Hatch Act of 1887, providing for the establishment of state experiment stations, and from that time onward the colleges began to evolve into useful institutions of higher learning. Instead of merely retailing old information, they began to produce new information. Being creative, the became progressive and thus contributed largely to scientific and social progress.”
• 182-3 – “‘Subsequently by mutual consent a number of these young scientists will be given Rockefeller Foundation scholarships for advanced study in the United States or elsewhere. The first of these men, Ing. Jose Rodriguez Vallejo, has recently departed for a year of study at the University of Minnesota. . . .’”
• 184 – “What did these young men learn? The first thing they learned was how to work; the second was how to work effectively; the third was how to work independently.”
• 186 – “The Foundation appointed as the first fellow, not surprisingly, Pepe [Jose . . . Vallejo] Rodriguez . . ..The next year it gave fellowships to Leonel Robles Gutierrez, now director of the School of Agriculture of the Technological Institute of Monterrey; Joaquin Loredo Goytortua, the present director general of agriculture in the Ministry of Agriculture and Animal Husbandry; and Benjamin Ortega Cantero, now in charge of an important irrigation district in northern Mexico.”
• “The degrees were obtained in almost all fields of plant science related to agriculture and in a few fields of animal science, from 32 universities and colleges in the United States extending from Maine to Washington State, from California to Florida, and from North Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan to Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas, with numerous intermediate locations. Germany contributed one Ph.D. degree. The fellows, therefore, were certainly not molded into a single pattern, but brought back to Mexico a wide diversity of experience and abilities.”
• 189 – “. . . and those from the State of Nuevo Leon usually are excused from paying even the nominal tuition fees if they present evidence that they cannot afford them. ‘We needed a poor boys’ university in Nuevo Leon’ is the reason usually given for the establishment of the University Faculty of Agronomy after the nearby Instituto Tecnologico was already in operation. The universities of Sonora and Sinaloa also reflect the principle that high education should be within the reach of people of modest means, as upwards of 95 percent of the students have scholarships of some kind.”
• 197 – [CHAPTER 12 – EXTENSION: GETTING FARMERS TO USE THE RESULTS OF RESEARCH]
• 198 – “It costs more, for example, to teach thousands of farmers how to use the results than it does to do the research in the first place, and the efficiency of an extension service is often rated by the length of time elapsing between the announcement of a scientific discover and its use by a high percentage of the farmers whom it can help. In countries with competent and well-integrated teams of research and extension workers, a profitable new practice is frequently adopted by the majority of farmers in from one to three years; in developing countries, on the other hand, many years may be required to achieve widespread adoption of the same practice.”
• 202 – “Besides yielding information regarding the types of fertilizer needed on these diverse soils, many of these trials brought some of the early fruits of research to the attention of hundreds of communities and thousands of farmers in most of the important agricultural regions. As a whole they served their purpose well; they helped people to realize the need and value of experimentation.”
• 203 – [SECTION: DIRECT AID TO MEXICO’S EXTENSION SERVICE]
• “A request for help in developing an effective extension service in Mexico had long been anticipated and discussed by the officers of the Foundation. Although the Ministry of Agriculture included an extension section at the time of the Survey Commission’s visit in 1941, Mexico had not made much progress in this field because there was so little research to extend; now research had produced abundant new information and the more progressive farmers were clamoring for it.”
• “By the early 1950’s the volume of such material made it difficult for the regular staff to put it into popular form, and, in addition, many of the technical publications needed to be reworked into a series of simplified, well-illustrated Spanish editions for widespread distribution. [notice that even though they’re aware of the large indigenous non-spanish-speaking population, they still print their extension materials in Spanish without a thought to the exclusion that would create] These problems called for a specialist who could devote full time to them and to related activities. Dr. Delbert T. Myren, who had earned his Ph.D. in agricultural journalism at the University of Wisconsin, was therefore brought to Mexico in 1955 and given the responsibility for organizing and heading a new information service. Beesides relieving some of the research men of this work, Myren soon found ways to enlarge the use of the available information.”
• “An excellent photographic service had already been created under Neil B. MacLellan, who had a special talent for getting pictures of field experiments that told the story ‘better than ten thousand words.’ This systematic pictorial record has been invaluable for many purposes (including the illustrating of this book). In addition to their use in the publications of the Office, the photographs have been available for exhibits, as illustrations for stories supplied to newspapers and farm journals, and for the preparation of lantern slides to accompany extension talks.”

 

• “In recent years, 16 short, inexpensive motion picture films dealing with various agricultural subjects have also been made and widely distributed, both in Mexico and in other Latin American countries.”

 

• 204 – “Farmers seldom become completely convinced ofj the advisability of changing the practices of a lifetime until they have been exposed to the same idea repeatedly, through different media and in a variety of forms so that it becomes personally meaningful and relevant. Impressions thus accumulate and stimulate farmers to discuss their problems with the extension agent, who often can convince them that they should try the new methods.”
• 204-5 – “The State [State of Mexico] was divided into eight agricultural regions, ranging in size from about 2,000 to 5,000 square kilometers of tillable alnd, according to the crops grown, communications , topography, and climate. An agronomist, supplied iwth a pick-up truck and operating funds, was placed in charge of the extension work in each region. Field trials with improved crop varieties, fertilizers, and new cultural practices were set up, and at appropriate times field days were organized. The governor attended these whenever possible; farmer interest was high; and early reports on the project were optimistic. . . .// Indications are, however, that this project, which started out with so much enthusiasm and promise, instead of gaining in strength and influence is actually losing in both. Why? The answer is not yet clear, but one view is that the project expanded faster than the supply of qualified extension workers. The experienced men became supervisors who spent more and more time in their offices, while the newly recruited workers handled most of the contacts with the farmers in the field. The quality of the demonstrations declined, farmers found them less convincing, and so enthusiasm and influence waned.”
• 205 – “the federal extension service was a problem in 1941. Twenty years later it had changed much, but many problems were still unsolved. In 1961 there were over 220 employees, about 40 percent of whom held the ingeniero agronomo degree.”