It's Not Easy Being Green: Revisiting Catholic Green Revolutions, 1933–1952

Abstract: Three decades before the coining of the "green revolution"—the science-based, high-tech, capital-intensive agriculture on which the world now depends—the term was adopted by American Catholics involved in the agrarianism of the Catholic Worker movement and the National Catholic Rural Life Conference. Not only has that revolution been largely forgotten, its failure has obscured the remarkable visions and undertakings of individual revolutionaries like Peter Maurin, John C. Rawe, S.J., Willis Nutting, Leo R. Ward, C.S.C., and Janet Kalven but also their remarkable collective achievement, which should be seen as an exemplary Catholic experiment in sustainability.