ABSTRACT
Nineteen sixty-eight is known first and foremost as a year in which youth protests shook the world and produced a crisis in authority. Far less attention has been devoted to official American efforts to reach agrarian youth within the United States and abroad. This chapter explores some of these efforts, focusing on Asia. The chapter argues that the International Farm Youth Exchange (IFYE's) activities in Asia were part of a larger social project implemented by Asian and American development experts and social leaders during the late 1960s. This project sought to mold youth into a force that could contribute to the modernization of Asia through international cooperation while steering them away from forms of dissent that could destabilize their societies. The Americans that participated in the IFYE also tended to come from small farming households in the Midwest and Great Plains that tended to embrace the notion of an egalitarian society rooted in independent landholders.
