Seeding Empire: American Philanthrocapital and the Roots of the Green Revolution in Africa

For agricultural historians, few historical narratives are as ubiquitous and debated as those about the Green Revolution. The Green Revolution is more than a narrative, however. For farmers throughout the Global South and scientists and government officials in the Global North, the Green Revolution was a set of technologies, a political strategy, and a model for development. Today, as philanthropists and a new wave of scientists are calling for and enacting a “new” Green Revolution, historical perspectives on the original Green Revolution are as relevant as ever. The “new narratives of the Green Revolution” roundtable in the summer 2017 issue of this journal serves as a historiographic marker of how and why both new and old Green Revolutions persist.Aaron Eddens's Seeding Empire takes a genealogical approach to the Green Revolution. Eddens weaves together a historical biography of Norman Borlaug, widely considered to be the “father of the Green Revolution,” with empirically rich accounts of the current “new” Green Revolution in Africa. Throughout the introduction, five short chapters, and a conclusion, readers are taken on a journey from World Food Prize events in Des Moines, Iowa, to office complexes in Nairobi, to the Gates Foundation museum in Seattle, Washington.The first chapter offers a comprehensive historical perspective of Norman Borlaug to understand how the “politics of memory” of the Green Revolution's most notable figures can be so polarizing (18). Readers learn what motivated such figures, why they became figureheads for scientific progress, and, in the case of Borlaug, some of his biggest moments and biggest regrets. Among the regrets, Eddens zeros in on his later work when he tried to desperately bring the Green Revolution to Africa. The second chapter picks up where the previous chapter ends. In it, Eddens shows how philanthrocapitalists “invoke Borlaug's last commandment in their calls for a Green Revolution in Africa” (38). The Gates Foundation takes center stage here, but readers soon understand how multinationals, governments, and scientists are also taking up Borlaug's unfinished work. Chapter 3 “retells the origin story of the Green Revolution” in Mexico (64). Here, Seeding Empire offers an empirically rich historical account of twentieth- and twenty-first-century agricultural scientists working to transform Mexicans and maize through modern science. From the Mexican Agricultural Program—often credited as being the origin point of the Green Revolution—to CRISPR, Eddens shows how notions of progress and modernity are imbued with “racial thinking” (77).The next two chapters speak most directly to the idea of “empire” referenced in the book's title. Chapter 4 looks at a specific project, “Water Efficient Maize for Africa” (WEMA), as an example of the “new” Green Revolution. Through WEMA, we see how the private sector, in this case Monsanto, leverages “gene-as-property” as an effective way to make the Green Revolution profitable for at least decades to come (105). In chapter 5, we learn that private industry need not act alone to ensure profits. Here, readers will draw parallels to the Green Revolution of old where Cold War geopolitics are replaced with the US “security state” securing “new frontiers produced through the climate crisis” (126).As historians are uncovering new narratives of the Green Revolution in the long-neglected archives throughout the Global South, Seeding Empire looks squarely at those in power or who have powerful legacies. In doing so, the book questions the consequences of the powerful rather than attributing agency to the powerless. Among the lessons Eddens offers in the conclusion is, “If you care about people suffering around the world due to human-induced climate change, ask first about the workings of your own government” (136). The book's critical gaze looks up; first to imperial ambitions of governments and scientific progress of individuals and then to profit-seeking corporations and modernizing philanthropists.Seeding Empire will appeal to a wide audience but for different reasons. Agricultural historians might be tired of the too-often-told origin stories of the Green Revolution. For them, chapters 4 and 5 offer a refreshing, if terrifying, account of how the “new” twenty-first-century Green Revolution is learning from mistakes made in the twentieth century. For everyone else, Seeding Empire delivers a convincing historical and contemporary account of how different individuals, institutions, and ideas continue to shape Green Revolutions new and old, and why. While Eddens epitomizes Borlaug and Gates as the key shapers, the book calls on all scholars, activists, and citizens in the Global North to “privilege societal progress rather than the profits of global agribusiness and financial corporations” (139).