A. T. Mosher, “A Review and Criticism of United States Participation in Agricultural Programs of Technical Cooperation, Journal of Farm Economics 38, no. 5 (Dec. 1956), 1197-1211.

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Fixated on the idea of traditional stasis and rigidity, progress as the expansion of choice.

Arthur T. Mosher was president of the Agricultural Development Council, A Rockefeller Initiative, from 1957 (one year after this is published) to 1967.

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Notes

• 1197 – “But world conditions and the present position of the United States in world affairs are such that technical cooperation is a process that must be mastered. The world has taken too much to heart America’s professed belief in equality of opportunity, and has become too determined on substantial economic progress, for it to be politically feasible for the United States to withdraw its participation in these programs. We have been believed; now we must produce.”
• “Agricultural development, in this paper, mean the processes by which an agriculture becomes more efficient or by which the total agricultural product of a country is increased, with or without a change in efficiency. This latter case is important in many underdeveloped countries that have substantial land resources not now transferable to nonagricultural forms of production.”

 

• 1197-8 – “In the United States, we are accustomed ot the fact that agricultural development depends on simultaneous progress along a number of different lines: constant research; elementary and advanced agricultural education; extension education; the development of transportation; availability of implements, fertilizers, seeds, insecticides and motive power; control of pests and diseases; agricultural credit; and appropriate public policies with respect to prices, taxation, land tenure, etc.”

 

• 1198 – “A second important characteristic of the cultures of most underdeveloped regions is the fact that their agricultural economies are traditional rather than choice-making. The prevailing pattern is for each new generation to be initiated ot the care of traditional crops, in traditional ways, with traditional tools and implements. People are not encouraged to weigh alternatives and making choices that are central to agricultural development.”

 

• “My point here is not so much that traditions must be changed as it is that such changes involve what amounts to a cultural and psychological revolution. Even the motives for change are different, since, in economic parlance, most farm units in underdeveloped regions are households; they are not firms. Millions of farmers do not decide how much of what crops to raise on the basis of relative profitability, but on the basis of usefulness in family consumption.”

 

• • On the assumption that this subsistence attitude is inferior to a surplus attitude
• 1198-9 – “Considerable confusion exists at this point as to the role of technical cooperation. On the part of many people in the United States, there has been an assumption that all that poor countries need to increase agricultural production is to master the techniques and adopt the implements, fertilizers, etc., the more advance agricultural economies have learned to use. This assumption ignores the degree to which economic productivity is a function of the whole way of life of a people. Meanwhile, a widespread attitude in agriculturally underdeveloped regions has been that ‘we want modern techniques of agriculture but we insist that our traditional culture must be kept intact.’ This attitude is equally untenable. Important noneconomic aspects of each regional culture must change, both as a result of the specific new techniques introduced an as a precondition of more rapid agricultural development.”
• 1199 – “there is another type of resource, however, of which this is not true. We may term these self-generating resources, since they are not consumed but tend to be augmented by use and need not be economized. The awareness of farmers that they need not be bound by traditional practices but can make new choices is contagious. The confidence of a few political leaders that the long neglected masses include thousands of persons with powers of creativity, innovation, and good judgment can spread to others until it can become a crusade that changes the values of the traditional culture in ways that support and encourage agricultural development.”
• “In the Office of Special Studies in Mexico and in the bilateral servicios of several Latin American countries local technicians have found a new vocation in public programs for agricultural development in which their initiative is encouraged and their opinions are honored. Tens of thousands of farmers scattered throughout many lands have a new attitude of learning the ways of nature, of taking responsibility for choosing among alternatives, and of participating in public decisions affecting agricultural development.”
• “In recognizing these two types of resources for agricultural development, we realize that the resources of a region are less rigidly limited than we might have thought. Resources must still be economized, but there are other resources, of the spirit, if you will, that are of enormous influence on the rate of agricultural development and these increase in amount in direct proportion to the degree to which they are used.”
• 1199-20 – “This review of the requirements for agricultural development adds up to a realization, first, that there are many of them; second, that importnat requirements for agricultural development are noneconomic, being matters of public administration, cultural values, and qualities (attitudes) of people; third, that agricultural development does not depend on farms and agricultural technicians and institutions alone but on the culture — the whole way of life — of a people.”
• 1120 – “Since the objective of technical cooperation in agriculture is agricultural development, its emphases may properly be placed on any combination of the above factors that satisfies three criteria: (1) a program the country needs,// (2) a program the country wants,// (3) a program that utilizes the distinctive advantages of the process of technical cooperation.”
• 1201 – “The over-all size of the agricultural projects of religious agencies is difficult to state since both the personnel and the budgets for these are often intermingled with other programs and budgets. In the past, these projects preceded, by many years, other programs of technical assistance. Today, they have two major points of significance: (1) they have a tendency to work with the poorer people in each country, being under no compulsion to show results on aggregate national agricultural output; (2) they are part of integrated programs which recognize the interdependence of economic, cultural, and spiritual factors in agricultural development.”
• 1202 – “When technical cooperation comes to a country, it ought either to strengthen or to supplement domestic programs already in operation. There are no universal criteria to determine which choice is the right one.”
• “The other is a closely associated program of apprentice training and/or early integration of local technicians into the staffs of these programs. Such training can provide an immediate supplement to inadequate college training in agriculture, and can build a cadre of technicians who can carry on in wholly domestic programs. The ‘model’ research program in technical cooperation is that of the Rockefeller Foundation in Mexico.”
• “2. Extension education. Extension education in agriculture and home eocnomics was practically nonexistent outside of the United States, Canada, and a few European countries up to 1940. This explains why extension education is the most nearly universal activity of programs of technical cooperation in all countries and by all agencies.”
• 1202-3 – “In addition to its early effect on agricultural production, extension education has special importance in increasing the self-generating resources for agricultural development. Where traditional agriculture predominates, farm families need ot be confronted by alternatives and supported during the first difficult period of making decisions and accepting the consequences. Only so can farmers develop a contagious confidence in the application of knowledge to farm problems. Extension education can also change the attitudes of the elite in a country by demonstrating the initiative and good judgment of which the farming population is capable.”
  • Patronizing — extension agency the avante garde of the change of values — the colonization of the mind
• 1204 – “6. Home economics. Much too little recognition has been given to farm family welfare as a caustative (sic) factor in agricultural development. We have tended to look on welfare as a result of production which, to a degree, it is. In doing so, we have largely ignored the effect on agricultural development of rising family aspirations for better living. Particularly in the least developed regions, people need strong incentives to change, and family aspiration for better living, accompanied by increasing competence in the techniques of achieving it, are extremely important.”
• 1205 – “The introduction of individual techniques is likely to have only ephemeral value unless there is sound organization to assure its continued utilization. This issue was well summarized by one technician in the field: ‘When we came here, we thought we should stay until we had trained men in the necessary research techniques to carry on this program. Now we realize that we must stay until the government and public . . . are ready to continue to support this research program and to assure it appropriate administration.’”
  • Reminiscent
• 1206 – “1. Technical cooperation has helped to raise agricultural production and increase agricultural efficiency by introducing and developing improved agricultural techniques. Examples of this are the development of hybrid and synthetic varieties of corn in Mexico . . ..”
• 1207 – “5. Technical cooperation has injected ‘detached participants’ from outside of traditional cultures into programs for agricultural development. This is one of the special contributions which foreign technicians make to a country in programs of technical cooperation. They see problems from a fresh angle because they come from outside the culture. Being foreign to local conditions can lead to foolish proposals, but it can also lead to a creative consideration of contrasts. It stretches the innovative imagination of both foreign and domestic technicians.”
• “6. Technical cooperation has appreciably increased the self-generative resources for agricultural development. No small injection of specific new techniques can, simply because of those techniques, have any major effect. But when relatively small projects within programs of technical cooperation have a pronounced effect on the attitudes both of farmers and of a political elite toward agricultural development, the new attitudes so engendered, and the consequent greater activity and concentration of effort which these attitudes, in turn, bring about, can speed agricultural development out of all proportion to the amount of the foreign financial contribution in technical cooperation.”
• 1207-8 – “It is probably that the endowed foundations and similar organizations [the Rockefeller/Ford Foundations], have, within the limits of their resources, the most advantages of all agencies of technical cooperation. They are not suspected of ulterior motives, whether political, commercial, or evangelistic. With assured sources of income, they need court neither current contributors nor governmental appropriations. Being nongovernmental they may cooperate, at their pleasure, with private organizations in host countries, or with state, local, or national governments. They can make long term commitments.”
• 1210 – “Technical cooperation in agriculture needs to be seen in perspective. It is an important new activity in international relations and in the process of agricultural development. Along with a recognition of what it can achieve we need to keep in mind its limits and its complementarity with other activities affecting agricultural development. We also need to recognize the noneconomic considerations contributing to its validity.”
• 1211 – “Finally, technical cooperation in agriculture can only rightfully be viewed as an activity springing from motives and world necessities much broader than that for agricultural production alone. The interest of the United states in technical cooperation and appropriations for public programs have fluctuated with the intensity of concern about World War II and, later, about the cold war. But public programs of technical cooperation were bound to arise, quite apart from the recent tensions between the Free World and the Communist bloc. Anticipated by the religious and humanitarian concerns that supported the programs of agricultural missions, they were sure to come as public programs because of the social and political philosophies of democratic countries and because of the awakening of men everywhere to a determination to achieve more adequate levels of living.”

 

• “Today, United States participation in technical cooperation is at est of our national integrity with respect to our own professed way of life. It behooves us to understand these programs, using our technical knowledge and our tools of economic analysis to the extent that these are valid to the task, but realizing always that the subject we examine here is part of the indivisible web of human aspirations, political evolution, and total world culture within which we live.”