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The Afterlives of Faulty Science

The Global Promise of 'Food for All' and the Impact on Mexico's Environment and People

Monday, April 22, 2024
4:00 PM (Pacific Time)Bunche Hall, Rm 6275

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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

Cost: Free


Sponsor(s): Center for Mexican Studies, Department of History