ABSTRACT
Most historical narratives of the Green Revolution exclude Colombia. Although they sometimes discuss the establishment of the International Center for Tropical Agriculture in Cali, they rarely mention the preceding 20-year partnership between the Colombian Ministry of Agriculture and the Rockefeller Foundation to increase Colombia's wheat production. This exclusion stems from the failure of this effort to increase national self-sufficiency in wheat, making Colombia's program a poor fit in the Revolution's celebratory narrative arc, focused on the tale of how mid-twentieth-century agricultural science combatted global hunger. This chapter argues that such “failures” are essential to the narrative of this Revolution, in Colombia and elsewhere, as close examination of them reveals the myriad interests that impact the direction of agricultural development. In Colombia, scientific research focused on improving wheat yields was no match for the pressures from millers who preferred imported wheat, public entities speculating with both imported and domestically grown wheat and competing barley producers connected to the beer industry. Examining these factors shows how Colombia's current wheat insecurity is not the result of a techno-scientific “failure,” but of the power of certain political, social, or economic interests to direct the trajectory of the nation's agricultural development.
