ABSTRACT

Political labelling of an agricultural strategy and early debates As early as December 1969, the Green Revolution was discussed before the US House of Representatives at the Subcommittee on National Security Policy and Scientific Development of the Committee on Foreign Affairs. The title given to the publication of the proceedings was Symposium on science and foreign policy: the Green Revolution.l

During the discussions, the Green Revolution was presented as a major tool of United States foreign policy, even its most important element according to Charles S.Dennison, Vice-President of International Minerals and Chemicals Corporation, who was enthusiastic about the prospects of the growth of the fertilizer industry. Representative D.H.Fraser (from Minnesota, the ‘Wheat State’) stated that the term ‘Green Revolution’ was used for the first time by William S.Gaud, the US AID administrator, in a speech before the Society for International Development in March 1968. Whoever coined the phrase has made a tremendous job of public relations. It is still in use in the 1980s-a remarkable achievement, considering the rapid erosion to which the vocabulary of development policies is usually subjected. ‘Green’, of course, was implicitly opposed to ‘red’, and was signalling, like a flag, that social reform was not necessary, since technical means in agriculture (evoked by ‘green’) alone were supposed to solve the problem of hunger. The advocates of social reform reacted very quickly. The FAO review, Ceres, provided them with a platform to voice their warnings about the social impact of the Green Revolution: Edmundo Flores (Ceres, May-June 1969) and Solon Barraclough (Ceres, November-December 1969) wrote forcefully on this subject.