Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gxg78 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-27T19:28:21.097Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The globalization of hybrid maize, 1921–70

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 February 2020

Derek Byerlee
Derek Byerlee*
Affiliation:
School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University, Washington DC 20007, USA
*
Corresponding author. E-mail: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Well before the green revolution in the 1960s, hybrid maize technology that had originally been developed in the USA spread across the world, starting before the Second World War. This article uses a framework that analyses the type of transfer (materials, knowledge, or capacity), the roles of diverse actors, and farmer demand and its market context, to trace the diffusion of hybrid technology to Latin America, Asia, Europe, and Africa up to 1970. The article also highlights the importance of access to diverse germplasm from the Americas provided by indigenous farmers. A handful of US public institutions promoted the spread of hybrid technology, with US private seed companies sometimes playing a secondary role. However, most cases of successful transfer were led by national scientists embedded in local institutions, who were able to link to local seed systems and farmers. By the mid 1970s, the aggregate impacts of these efforts were of the same magnitude as for the well-known and much publicized green revolution wheat varieties. Nonetheless, adoption of hybrid maize across and within countries was very patchy, relating to differences in scientific capacity, type of farmer, agro-ecology, and complementary investments in seed systems and extension. Consequently, impacts were often highly inequitable.

Keywords

agricultural technology transferhybrid seedintellectual networksmaize
Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Global History , Volume 15 , Issue 1 , March 2020 , pp. 101 - 122
Check for updates
Copyright
© Cambridge University Press 2020

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

†

I appreciate valuable comments on an earlier draft by Lee Kass, Helen Ann Curry, Greg Edmeades, Paul Heisey, two referees, and the editors of this journal, as well as the many people, too numerous to list, who helped me to access unpublished sources.

References

1 For example, Perkins, John H., Geopolitics and the green revolution: wheat, genes, and the Cold War, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997, pp. 118–56.Google Scholar

2 Cullather, Nick, The hungry world: America’s Cold War battle against poverty in Asia, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011, ch. 1.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3 For example, Mangelsdorf, Paul C., ‘Hybrid corn’, Scientific American, 185, 2, 1951, pp. 39–47.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

4 Cochrane, Willard W., The development of American agriculture: a historical analysis, Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1993, pp. 13–27.Google Scholar

5 In the same period, heterosis was also discovered independently by George H. Schull at the Carnegie Institution Station at Cold Spring Harbor. See Crabb, Richard A., The hybrid corn-makers, New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1947.Google Scholar

6 For a full discussion of hybrid maize breeding, see Jugenheimer, Robert W., Hybrid maize breeding and seed production, Rome: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, 1976.Google Scholar

7 Jenkins, Merle T., ‘Corn improvement’, in USDA yearbook of agriculture, Washington, DC: USDA, 1936, p. 482.Google Scholar

8 Jugenheimer, Hybrid maize breeding, p. 123.

9 For details, see Morris, Michael L., Maize seed industries in developing countries, Boulder, CO: Lynn Reiner, 1998, pp. 57–76.Google Scholar

10 Kass, Lee B., Bonneuil, Christophe, and Coe, Edward H., ‘Cornfests, cornfabs and cooperation’, Genetics, 169, 4, 2005, pp. 1787–97.Google ScholarPubMed

11 George Beadle in 1958 and Barbara McClintock in 1983.

12 Hayes, Herbert K., ‘Regional coordination of agronomic research from the standpoint of the crop investigator’, Agronomy Journal, 26, 2, 1934, pp. 88–93.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

13 Crabb, Hybrid corn-makers, pp. 190–2.

14 Grilliches, Zvi, ‘Hybrid corn: an exploration in the economics of technological change’, Econometrica, 25, 4, 1957, pp. 501–22.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

15 Fitzgerald, Deborah K., The business of breeding: hybrid corn in Illinois, 1890–1940, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1990.Google Scholar

16 Duvick, Donald N., ‘Biotechnology in the 1930s: the development of hybrid maize’, Nature Reviews Genetics, 2, 1, 2001, pp. 69–74.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed

17 The incidence and yield implications of recycling hybrid maize seed remains a largely unexplored subject. See Morris, M. L., Risopoulos, J., and Beck, D., Genetic change in farmer-recycled maize seed: a review of the evidence, Mexico DF: CIMMYT, 1999.Google Scholar

18 Grilliches, ‘Hybrid corn’. Adoption curves have been smoothed by statistically fitting logistic curves to available adoption points, ln(P/(K−P)) = a + bt, where P is adoption, K is peak adoption, and t is year.

19 Wellhausen, Edwin J., ‘Recent developments in maize breeding in the tropics’, in Walden, D. B., ed., Maize breeding and genetics, Chichester: John Willey & Sons, 1978, p. 74.Google Scholar

20 CIMMYT, Maize facts and trends 1986: the economics of commercial maize seed production in developing countries, Mexico DF: CIMMYT, 1986, pp. 42–6.Google Scholar

21 Estimates for Latin America based on Wellhausen, ‘Recent developments’, p. 74. Estimates for other countries as in figures 3 and 4. European estimates based on Italy and extrapolation from CIMMYT, Maize facts and trends, pp. 42–6. Canada is included but not the Soviet Union, owing to lack of reliable data.

22 Evenson, Robert E. and Gollin, Doug, ‘Assessing the impact of the green revolution, 1960–2000’, Science, 300, 2000, pp. 758–62.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

23 Commonwealth Economic Committee, Grain crops: a review, London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1966, pp. 148.Google Scholar

24 Ruttan, Vernon W. and Hayami, Yujiro, ‘Technology transfer and agricultural development’, Technology and Culture, 14, 2, 1973, pp. 124–5.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

25 I use standard definitions of the tropics as lying between 23 degrees north and south of the equator, with the subtropics in the 23–35 degree bands of latitude, and temperate areas as more than 35 degrees of latitude.

26 Ruttan and Hayam, ‘Technology transfer’, pp. 124–5.

27 Jugenheimer, Hybrid maize breeding, pp. 375–484.

28 Dept of Agronomy and Plant Genetics, Agronomy and plant genetics at the University of Minnesota, 1888–2000, St Paul, MN: Minnesota Agricultural Experiment Station, 2000, pp. 193–230.

29 R. P. Murphy and Lee B. Kass, ‘Evolution of plant breeding at Cornell University: a centennial history, 1907–2006’, 2011, https://ecommons.cornell.edu/handle/1813/23087 (consulted 31 March 2018), pp. 110–33.

30 Pray, Carl E. and Umali-Deininger, Dina. ‘The private sector in agricultural research systems: will it fill the gap?’, World Development, 26, 6, 1998, pp. 1127–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

31 Perkins, Geopolitics, pp. 140–56.

32 US Congress Office of Technology Assessment, New opportunities for U.S. universities in development assistance, OTA-BP-F-71, Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1991, pp. 10–11.Google Scholar

33 Staples, Amy L. S., ‘Norris E. Dodd and the connections between domestic and international agricultural policy’, Agricultural History, 74, 2, 2000, p. 393.Google Scholar

34 Feder, G., Just, R. E., and Zilberman, D., ‘Adoption of agricultural innovations in developing countries: a survey’, Economic Development and Cultural Change, 33, 1985, pp. 255–98.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

35 Myrdal, Gunnar, Asian drama: an inquiry into the poverty of nations, New York: Twentieth Century Fund, 1968, p. 1300.Google Scholar

36 Wellhausen, E. J. and Roberts, L. M., ‘Methods used and results obtained in corn improvement in Mexico’, in Melhus, I. E., ed., Plant research in the tropics, Research Bulletin 371, Iowa State College, IA: Ames, 1949, p. 527.Google Scholar

37 Woytinsky, W. S. and Woytinsky, E. S., World commerce and government: trends and outlook, New York: The Twentieth Century Fund, 1955, p. 141.Google Scholar

38 Xolocotzi, E. Hernández, ‘Maize and man in the greater southwest’, Economic Botany, 39, 4, 1985, pp. 416–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

39 Vessuri, H. M., ‘“El hombre del maíz” de la Argentina: Salomón Horovitz y la tecnología de la investigación en la fitotecnia sudamericana’, Estudios Interdisciplinarios de América Latina y el Caribe, 14, 1, 2014, http://www7.tau.ac.il/ojs/index.php/eial/article/view/931/967 (consulted 31 March 2018).Google Scholar

40 Ibid.

41 Rossi, D., ‘Evolución de los cultivares de maíz utilizados en la Argentina’, Agromensajes de la Facultad, 8, 22, 2007, pp. 3–10.Google Scholar

42 Cargill, ‘Planting the seeds of Cargill’s global business’, 1 January 2015, http://150.cargill.com/150/en/seeds-as-gateway.jsp (consulted 31 March 2018).

43 Juan Carlos Martínez, ‘On the economics of technological change: induced innovation in Argentine agriculture’, PhD thesis, Iowa State University, 1973, pp. 72–4.

44 Krug, Carlos A., Viegas, G. P., and Paolieri, L., ‘Híbridos comerciais de milho (Commercial maize hybrids)’, Bragantia, 3, 11, 1943, pp. 367–552.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

45 Ana C. Castro, ‘Crescimento da firma e diversificação produtiva: o caso Agroceres (Growth of the firm and productive diversification: the case of Agroceres)’, PhD thesis, Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Brazil, 1988, pp. 46–143; Wellhausen, Recent developments’, p. 74.

46 Cobbs, Elizabeth A., The rich neighbor policy: Rockefeller and Kaiser in Brazil, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1992, pp. 41–2, 147.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

47 Langham, D. G., Venezuela-1: una seleccion de maiz recomendable, El Valle, Venezuela: Instituto Experimental de Agricultura y Zootecnia, 1942, p. 2.Google Scholar

48 Vessuri, H. M., ‘Foreign scientists, the Rockefeller Foundation and the origins of agricultural science in Venezuela’, Minerva, 32, 1994, pp. 267–96.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

49 Ibid., pp. 289–90.

50 Wellhausen, ‘Recent developments’, p. 74.

51 Stakman, E. C., Bradfield, Richard, and Mangelsdorf, Paul C., Campaigns against hunger, Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1967Google Scholar; Fitzgerald, Deborah, ‘Exporting American agriculture: the Rockefeller Foundation in Mexico, 1943–53’, Social Studies of Science, 16, 3, 1986, pp. 457–83.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

52 Rockefeller Foundation records, officers’ diaries, RG 12, F-L (FA392), J. George Harrar, Diary 1943–44, pp. 1–5, 26–7.

53 Karen E. Matchett, ‘Untold innovation: scientific practice and corn improvement in Mexico, 1935–1965’, PhD thesis, University of Minnesota, 2002, pp. 92–105.

54 Wellhausen and Roberts, ‘Methods used’, pp. 517–25; Matchett, ‘Untold innovation’, pp. 119–20.

55 Matchett, ‘Untold innovation’, pp 142–52.

56 Ibid., p. 179; Wellhausen, ‘Recent developments’, p. 81.

57 Myren, Delbert T., ‘The Rockefeller Foundation program in corn and wheat in Mexico’, in Wharton, Clifton R., ed., Subsistence agriculture and economic development, Chicago, IL: Aldine Publishing Co, 1969, pp. 438–52Google Scholar; Dana G. Dalrymple, ‘New cereal varieties: wheat and corn in Mexico’, AID Spring Review, USDA and USAID, p. 9.

58 Stakman, Bradfield, and Mangelsdorf, Campaigns against hunger, p. 214.

59 Winkelmann, D. L., The adoption of new maize technology in Plan Puebla, Mexico DF: CIMMYT, 1976, p. 5.Google Scholar

60 J. H. Colmenares, Adoption of hybrid seeds and fertilizers among Colombian corn growers, Mexico DF: CIMMYT, 1975, p. 3.

61 Bellon, M. R., and Brush, S. B., ‘Keepers of maize in Chiapas, Mexico’, Economic Botany, 48, 2, 1994, pp. 196–209.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

62 Curry, H. A., ‘From working collections to the World Germplasm Project: agricultural modernization and genetic conservation at the Rockefeller Foundation’, History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences, 39, 2, 2017, p. 5.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed

63 Roberts, L. M., Grant, U. J., Ricardo Ramírez, E., Hathaway, W. H., and Smith, D. L., with Mangelsdorf, P. C., Races of maize in Colombia, Washington, DC: National Research Council, 1957, pp. 151–3.Google Scholar

64 Walker, Thomas S., ‘Risk and adoption of hybrid maize in El Salvador’, Food Research Institute Studies, 18, 1, 1981, p. 63.Google Scholar

65 Ibid., pp. 59–66.

66 Love, Harry H. and Reisner, John H., The Cornell–Nanking story, Ithaca, NY: New York State College of Agriculture, 1964, pp. 19–20.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

67 For a parallel story on hybrid rice, see Schmalzer, S., Red revolution, green revolution: scientific farming in socialist China, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2016, pp. 79–81.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

68 Chase, S. S., ‘Li Jing Xiong (C. H. Li): functioning in adversity’, Crop Science, 39, 1, 1999, pp. 1–3.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

69 Pingya, T. and Kui, Wu Shao, ‘The initiator of maize breeding, China’, Historical Materials of Science and Technology, 2, 1988, p. 7.Google Scholar

70 Li, Jing Xiong, ‘China’, in Wedderburn, R. N. and de Leon, C., eds., Proceedings of the Second Asian Regional Maize Workshop, Mexico DF: CIMMYT, 1988, pp. 23–34.Google Scholar

71 Ibid.

72 H. K. Hayes, ‘Maize Genetics Cooperation newsletter’, 27, 17 March 1953, p. 72, https://mnl.maizegdb.org/27/72Hayes.pdf (consulted 23 September 2019).

73 Turk, Kenneth L., The Cornell–Los Baños story, Ithaca, NY: College of Agriculture, Cornell University, 1974, p. 295.Google Scholar

74 Melhus, I. E. and Jackson, Robert I., ‘Corn growing in Indonesia and some suggestions for increasing production’, Landbouw, 24, 1952, pp. 7–12.Google Scholar

75 Melhus, I. E. and Salas, E. Garcia, Un nuevo maiz amarillo para Guatemala, Boletin no. 1, Guatemala, Antigua: Instituto de Fomento de la Producción, 1949, pp. 1–12.Google Scholar

76 Arthur A. Goldsmith, Building agricultural institutions: transferring the land-grant model to India and Nigeria, Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1990, pp. 112–20.

77 B. Sen, ‘Trials of USA hybrid corn (maize)’, Current Science, 18, 6, 1949, pp. 213–15.

78 University of Illinois Archives, Jugenheimer Papers (henceforth UIA, JP), box 4, ‘Consultant–hybrid maize, India, 1956’ folder, C. E. Johnson, ‘Hybrid corn and sorghum performance in the Punjab, India, 1956’, 1957, p. 46.

79 UIA, JP, box 4, ‘Consultant–hybrid maize, India, 1956’ folder, Frank Parker, memo to files, ‘The hybrid maize program in India, April 17 1957’, and J. B. Holbert, Funk Bros. Seed, to R. W. Jugenheimer, University of Illinois, 22 January 1957.

80 Goldsmith, Building agricultural institutions, pp. 112–13.

81 Streeter, C. P. and Bernheim, M., A partnership to improve food production in India: a report from the Rockefeller Foundation, New York: Rockefeller Foundation, 1970, p. 46.Google Scholar

82 Mikoshiba, Haruo, Maize in India: a review of literatures, Tokyo: Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, Tropical Agriculture Research Center, 1971, pp. 1–30.Google Scholar

83 Freeman, Wayne H. and Bawale, B. R., Seeds of change: growth of the Indian seed industry, 1961 and beyond, Hyderabad: Bawale Foundation, 2010, p. 85.Google Scholar

84 Ibid., pp. 60–73.

85 Charles A. Breitenbach, ‘The Thai–USOM cooperation in the promotion of corn production in Thailand’, 1961, p. 5, http://pdf.usaid.gov/pdf_docs/Pnadx191.pdf (consulted 1 April 2018).

86 US Agency for International Development, New cereal varieties: corn and rice review in Thailand, Washington, DC, 1969, p. 5.

87 Breitenbach, ‘Thai–USOM cooperation’, p. 22.

88 Sutat Sriwatanapongse, Jinahyon, S., and Vasal, S. K., Suwan-1: maize from Thailand to the world, Mexico DF: CIMMYT, 1993, pp. 1–22.Google Scholar

89 The original spread of maize to Europe and other regions of the Old World is described in Arturo Warman, Corn and capitalism: how a botanical bastard grew to global dominance, Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2003.Google Scholar

90 Phillips, R.W., Cummings, W.H., Passerini, L., and Peebles, T. F., FAO advisory assistance to member countries under the UNRRA-Transfer Fund, Rome: FAO, 1953Google Scholar; Nichols, Andrew J., The introduction and spread of hybrid corn in Italy, Washington, DC: Foreign Agricultural Service, USDA, 1954, p. 4.Google Scholar

91 Ferwerda, F. P., ‘The 10th Hybrid Maize Conference at Madrid’, Euphytica, 8, 1959, pp. 137–40.Google Scholar

92 Jugenheimer, R. W., ‘Hybrid corn development in Europe and Mediterranean countries’, Agronomy Journal, 47, 1, 1955, pp. 5–7.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

93 R. W. Jugenheimer and R. A. Silow, Results of the cooperative hybrid maize tests in European and Mediterranean countries 1952, FAO Development Paper 42, Rome, 1954, pp. 14–16.

94 FAO, Performance records of varieties of hybrid maize tested in Europe and the Near East in 1947 and 1948, Rome: FAO, 1949, p. 9.Google Scholar

95 Jenkins, Merle T., Hybrid maize (corn) in European countries, Paris: Organization for European Economic Co-operation, 1950, pp. 1–68.Google Scholar

96 UIA, JP, box 13, ‘Special programs for foreign visits, 1951–1970, 1971–1972’ folder, series 8/6/23, ‘Agriculture agronomy’.

97 Muller, Edwin, ‘Hybrid Harry’, Prairie Schooner, 24, 2, 1950, pp. 427–30.Google Scholar

98 ‘Iowa’s hybrid seed is credited with saving lives’, Williamsburg Journal Tribune, 17 August 1950, p. 4.

99 Cavanagh, Helen M., Seed, soil, and science: the story of Eugene D. Funk, Chicago, IL: Lakeside Press, 1959.Google Scholar

100 FAO, Rapport de la dixième réunion de la FAO sur les maïs hybrides, Madrid 2–27 Sept, 1958, Rome: FAO, 1958, p. 17.

101 Phillips et al., FAO advisory assistance, p. 52.

102 Konstantinov, K., Pencic, M., Radenovic, C., and Saratlic, G, ‘55 years of contribution to maize genetics and breeding: an appreciation’, Maydica, 52, 2007, pp. 241–4.Google Scholar

103 Aaron Hale-Dorrell, Corn crusade: Khrushchev’s farming revolution in the post-Stalin Soviet Union, New York: Oxford University Press, 2019, pp. 1–9.

104 Lee, Harold, Roswell Garst: a biography, Ames, IA: Iowa State University Press, 1984, pp. 169–229.Google Scholar

105 Lowitt, Richard and Lee, Harold, eds., Letters from an American farmer: the eastern European correspondence of Roswell Garst, DeKalb, IL; Northern Illinois University Press, 1987, pp. 124–5.Google Scholar

106 Hale-Dorrell, Corn crusade, p. 227.

107 Ibid., p. 65.

108 Smale, Melinda and Jayne, Thom, Maize in eastern and southern Africa: ‘seeds’ of success in retrospect, Washington, DC: Environment and Production Technology Division, International Food Policy Research Institute, 2003, pp. 8–17.Google Scholar

109 Warman, Corn and capitalism, pp. 51–65.

110 McCann, James C., Maize and grace: Africa’s encounter with a New World crop, 1500–2000, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009, pp. 140–50.Google Scholar

111 Rusike, Joseph and Donovan, P. A., ‘The maize seed industry in Zimbabwe’, Development Southern Africa, 12, 2, 1995, pp. 189–96.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

112 McCann, Maize and grace, p. 152. Single-cross hybrids with two inbred parents provide higher yields, but the high cost of seed production had deterred their application.

113 Bernard Kupfuma, ‘The payoffs to hybrid maize research and extension in Zimbabwe: an economic and institutional analysis’, MSc thesis, Michigan State University, 1996, p. 127.

114 Gevers, H. O., ‘Highlights of maize breeding in South Africa’, in Department of Agriculture and Water Supply Technical Communication, Proceedings of the Eighth South African Maize Breeding Symposium, 1988, pp. 8–9.Google Scholar

115 National Agricultural Library, Beltsville, MD, Merle T. Jenkins, ‘Hybrid maize in South Africa: report on a survey sponsored by the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations and the Department of Agriculture, Union of South Africa’, mimeo, 1951, pp. 1–15.

116 Gevers, ‘Highlights of maize breeding’, pp. 6–13.

117 Ibid., p. 9.

118 van Eijnatten, C. L. M., Towards the improvement of maize in Nigeria, Wageningen: Wageningen University, 1965, pp. 67–76.Google Scholar

119 Foundation, Rockefeller, Annual report for 1959, New York: Rockefeller Foundation, 1960, p. 242.Google Scholar

120 Harrison, M. N., ‘Maize improvement in East Africa’, in Leakey, C. L. A., ed., Crop improvement in East Africa, Farnham Royal: Commonwealth Agricultural Bureaux, 1970, pp. 21–59.Google Scholar

121 Gerhart, John, The diffusion of hybrid maize in western Kenya, Research report, Mexico DF: CIMMYT, 1975, p. 57.Google Scholar

122 Stanton, W. R., ‘The West African Maize Research Unit, 1952–1962’, International Journal of Pest Management B, 12, 2–3, 1966, pp. 118–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

123 Agble, W. K., ‘Corn growing and facts concerning the new hybrid releases to farmers in southern Ghana’, Ghana Farmer, 4, 53, 1960, pp. 56–57.Google Scholar

124 Sprague, G. F., Fifth annual report of the Major Cereals Project in Africa, Washington, DC: USDA and USAID, 1968, pp. 51–7.Google Scholar

125 Pray, Carl E. and Echeverria, Ruben G., ‘Transferring hybrid maize technology: the role of the private sector’, Food Policy, 13, 4, 1988, pp. 366–74.Google Scholar

126 Wellhausen, E. J., ‘The urgency for accelerating production on small farms’, in Myren, D. T., ed., Strategies for increasing agricultural production on small holdings, Mexico DF: CIMMYT, 1970, pp. 5–10.Google Scholar

127 McCann, J. C., Dalton, T. J., and Mekuria, M., ‘Breeding for Africa’s new smallholder maize paradigm’, International Journal of Agricultural Sustainability, 4, 2, 2006, pp. 99–107.CrossRefGoogle Scholar