David Clawson and Don Hoy, “Nealtican, Mexico: A Peasant Community That Rejected the ‘Green Revolution’,” The American Journal of Economics and Sociology 38, no. 4 (October 1979), 371-387.

---

Notes

• 371 – [ABSTRACT] – “The ‘Green Revolution’ designates the applications of Mendelian principles to seed selection and crossing beginning in the 1940s to establish new plant varieties affording higher-yielding crops. Its technology and products failed to win acceptance in some less developed countries. The case of Nealtican, Mexico, helps to explain why. Its rejection is seen, given the specific circumstances of the cultural and physical environment, as a rational response. The policy problem is to overcome site-specific constraints — when scientific investigation has determined what they really are.”
• [INTRODUCTION] – “The term, ‘Green Revolution,’ was apparently first popularized in a 1968 speech by William Gaud, administrator of the Agency for International Development. Gaud’s usage of the term heralded a period of optimism when many observers hoped that many of the world’s food production problems would soon be solved. As these hopes have failed to materialize fully, however, the initial euphoria has given way in the mid-to-late 1970s to a period of caution, and occasionally harsh criticism, in which the results of the Revolution are critically analyzed from environmental, cultural, and social viewpoints.”
• “Both of these definitions differ from ours and from those of many later reserachers who, while including the introduction of new seed varieties, expand the Green Revolution to encompass a broad transformation of the agricultural sector including increased mechanization, irrigation, and greater use of petroleum-based products such as chemical fertilizers, pesticides, and insecticides.”
  • So their definition only encompasses hybrid seeds
• 372 – “This somewhat ethnocentric attitude implies a belief that the farmers who have rejected the Green REvolution have been unable to recognize what is best for them. . . . Peasant adoption of Green Revolution technologies comes only when the true needs of the farmer have been ascertained and programs instituted that fill those needs. This frequently requires, as D. J. Greenladn has noted, not a ‘transfer of technology, but the devising of new technology’.”
  • Wouldn’t borlaug and co. argue that the did devise new technologies for the mexican case, according to the environmental conditions of disparate parts of mexico (not of course for culturally or socially disparate parts of mexico, though
• 373 – “The types of responses of a single village to the Puebla Plan and the Family Garden plan, while differing in the local particulars, are representative of those of numerous other villages and programs worldwide.”
• 379 – “Nealtican’s location at the western margin of the Puebla Valley led to the village’s inclusion in the Puebla Project, or Plan Puebla. The Project was conceived by staff of the Rockefeller Foundation-sponsored International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) in an ‘attempt to . . . obtain a massive increase in yields of a basic food crop among small holders — those who are usually the last to adopt new technology.’ . . . Suddenly, a package of Green Revolution services and products including hybrid seeds, chemical fertilizers, insecticides, herbicides, crop insurance, credit, and extension advice was made available to Nealtican farmers.”
• 379-80 – “It was assumed that the peasants would readily accept the new seed owing to field tests in which it outyielded that local multicolored maize. Yet the seed was rejected for numerous reasons. Among these were the relatively large cob and small kernels of the hybrid maize. To the villagers, this adverse cob-kernel ratio in effect meant that an equal number of hybrid ears would yield less than local maize. In addition, the hybrid plant was purposely developed to produce a short stalk, usually not over two meters in height, in an attempt to reduce blowdowns. The villagers were more concerned about feeding their animals during the dry season, however, than about blowdowns. A further disadvantage of the hybrid maize was the susceptibility of the ears to corn worm infestation, which not only reduced the amount harvested but also necessitated cash outlays for insecticide — funds the peasants did not have. Owing to the absence in hybrid maize of a genotype that maintains itself over an indefinite period, use of the product would have required an increased level of cooperation between the peasant and distrusted urban contributors on whom the peasant annually would have had to depend for a fresh seed supply. Yet another liability of the hybrid maize was its disagreeable taste and texture. Finally, and most importantly, the hybrid seeds offered the villagers required the same length of growing season and had to be sown at the same time. Thus, a single germination failure would have left the peasant without his life-sustaining crop.”
  • The authors may have mistaken blowdowns for the lodging caused by high fertilization
• 380 – “The Plan Puebla personnel continued to advocate the hybrid maize for years, seemingly oblivious to the reaction of the peasants. Furthermore, use of hybrid maize was made a prerequisite to participation in many other facets of the program. Belatedly, the Project personnel recognized their error, and began publicly encouraging the use of the local maize strains.”
• “Owing to the sandy texture and dearth of humus in the soils, the peasants have traditionally replenished soil nutrients through the use of organic manures and of nitrogen-fixing beans. Chemical fertilizer not only failed to increase the level of soil organic matter, but also was rapidly leached out of the soil by heavy, almost daily afternoon summer thundershowers. As with hybrid seed, chemical fertilizers required the expenditure of hard-to-obtain cash and increased reliance on outsiders.”

 

• “By 1975, Project zone directors privately acknowledged the superiority of the locally-produced chicken and green manure, but were unable to publicly recommend its use owing to higher level commitments to representatives of the national fertilizer company and various banks.”
  • [interview with Miguel Sanchez Hernandez]

 

 

• 380-81 – “Yet another reason for Nealtican rejection of the Project was the stipulation that participants purchase crop insurance. Initially each farmer was insured individually, but by 1969 the program had been modified to require that the villagers be organized in groups of 10 or more to qualify. . . . Furthermore, most of the few that did join quickly became resentful when they discovered that they were seriously underinsured. The maximum coverage was for a value equivalent to 1.1 tons/hectare of grain whereas the average Nealtican maize yield in 1974 was 3.9 tons/hectare.”
• 382 – “By 1974, Richardson’s Home Garden Vegetable Production bulletin had evolved under native Mexican direction into three separate booklets, each entitled Huerto Familiar. Their content and recommendations were based on the traditional division of tropical climatic zones: tierra caliente, tierra templada, and tierra fria. . . .// The Nealtican villagers were assigned to the temperate zone, and for 90 pesos could purchase a cultivation calendar and seed packages of green beans, spinach, beets, green onions, broccoli, two varieties of tomatoes, turnips, chili jalapeno, bell peppers, carrots, radishes, cucumber, chili cotaxtla, green peas, zucchini squash, cantaloupe, two varieties of lettuce, cabbage and cauliflower.”
  • Two what extent does the success of this program contribute to the relegating of Mexico to the supplier of American groceries year round with cheap labor. Is this, incidentally or intentionally, American outsourcing of food production?

 

• “The effort to make the concept applicable to all possible Mexican environments by organizing it according to the three general life zones resulted in a program not adapted to any single village.”

 

• 382-3 – “An additional manifestation of the failure to adapt the program to the specific village needs was the requirement that the nineteen seed varieties be sold only as a unit and not separately. This unit requirement mandated a cost, equivalent to about 5 percent of the average family’s annual cash budget, that was prohibitive to most farmers.”
• 384 – “One of the commonly cited reasons for the predominance of large, commercial agriculturalists among adopters of the Green Revolution is the marginal economic position and low risk-taking ability of the peasant. In essence, peasant conservatism and reluctance to innovate is blamed on poverty. Consequently, most proposals for increasing peasant Green Revolution involvement center around alleviating poverty. Those economic services which the peasant presumably cannot afford to provide for himself, such as credit, crop insurance, and improvement of the marketing infrastructure, are provided for him by the government or by some other external funding agency. If, after all these efforts, the peasant still fails to adopt, we blame him or his culture rather than the program. Perhaps what we have failed to realize, or are reluctant to admit, is that in spite of our best efforts, peasant poverty, at least in the short term, is not going to disappear. . . . Then, rather than endeavoring to change the peasant to be compatible with the Green Revolution, we can attempt to modify the Green REvolution products to be compatible with the peasant’s world. This would automatically reduce risk to the peasant and thereby increase his adoption rate and possibly his level of living.”

 

• 385 – “Such a course of action will require an increased emphasis on and recognition of the environmental diversity that characterizes the world of potential Green Revolution adopters. One promising method of achieving this is the ecological systems approach which stresses the integration of physical and social phenomena rather than the study of a problem from the viewpoint of a single discipline. . . . Our challenge now is to . . . adapt the Green Revolution to the location-specific needs of the small farmer. This will be more difficult and slower than the initial gains among large landholders.”