What can the aftermath of scientific innovation reveal about a country like Mexico? In this talk we return to the Yaqui Valley in northern Mexico, the place from which the Green Revolution was launched in the mid-twentieth century. Celebrated as the agro-tech innovation that would end global hunger, the Green Revolution — a package composed of hybrid seed technology, fertilizer use, irrigation, and mechanization— transformed farming and in some areas quadrupled grain yields. These innovations also ushered in a series of unanticipated ecological disasters in farming communities. Today drought, land-tenure problems, polluted water, ongoing violence, and funding cuts are impacting communities in both novel and expected ways. Most surprising, perhaps, is how this has impacted on-going experiments in the research station in the Yaqui Valley.
Speaker:
Gabriela Soto-Laveaga
The Huntington Library/ Harvard University