Nealtican, Mexico: A Peasant Community That Rejected the ‘Green Revolution’

Abstract

Abstract. The ‘Green Revolution’ designates the application of Mendelian principles to seed selection and crossing beginning in the 1940s to establish new plant varieties affording higher‐yielding crops. Its technology and products failed to win acceptance in some less developed countries. The case of Nealtican, Mexico, helps to explain why. Its rejection is seen, given the specific circumstances of the cultural and physical environment, as a rational response. The policy problem is to overcome site‐specific constraints—when scientific investigation has determined what they really are.

The Long Green Revolution

“…Recall that farmers who did not adopt these innovations were, by contrast, deemed peasant conservatives, or possessed of a 'peasant psychology' (Yapa and Mayfield 1978). Yet a range of different studies of adoption in India, for instance, corroborate studies elsewhere (Clawson and Don 1979) that political economic considerations also influenced the choice of whether to adopt. Access to factors of production, particularly water, as well as the cost of seed and a lack of education, also constrained the adoption of these varieties.…”

“…There was, of course, resistance. Some peasant communities consciously rejected the Green Revolution (Clawson and Don 1979). These were the Green Counter-Revolutionaries who swiftly earned themselves the label 'peasant conservative' by way of explanation for their lack of enthusiasm for the agricultural program (Ross 2005).…”

Green revolution as a planned intervention strategy for agricultural development: A systems perspective

“…Although the green revolution literature generally refers to 'constraints', the nature of those constraints is structural. Perhaps as a result of the Puebla Project, programme managers are more aware of small farmer problems (Clawson and Hay, 1979;Redclift, 1983). That awareness is leading to further structural changes within the HYV package itself, changes oriented towards smaWsubsistence farmer agriculture.…”

“…A study of a Mexican village in the Puebla Project that rejected the HYV package indicates that the behaviour of the subsistence farmer was in fact oriented towards maximum food production within the local production system. Adoption of HYVs would have led the farmer to expose himself to a range of uncalculable risks, not the least of which would have been the accumulation of indebtedness to outsiders and possible loss of his land (Clawson and Hay, 1979).…”

Religious Allegiance and Economic Development in Rural Latin America

“…The project included a package of agricultural innovations including hybrid seed, chemical fertilizer, soil testing, crop insurance, and nonsubsistence crops (Clawson and Hoy, 1979;CIMMYT, 1974). Examples of cooperative efforts among Protestants in Nealtican include a 1957 effort to form a credit group with the Puebla branch of the Agricultural Credit Bank; the continuing operation for over 15 years of cooperative "welfare" farms by the Mormons; organization and operation of the village's only irrigation cooperative; and, finally, participation in what was initially a Rockefeller Foundation-sponsored regional agricultural development program called the Puebla Project (Plan Puebla) that in 1974 passed into Mexican control.…”