The Technologies and Ideologies of Farming in the Cold War

In the Cold War, the competition for agricultural modernisation was often called ‘revolution’, and the race to feed the population met the different approaches of farming technologies. In Red Revolution, Green Revolution: Scientific Farming in Socialist China(University of Chicago Press, 2016), the historian of science Sigrid Schmalzer outlines a cold-war geopolitical context to understand how food production could be the struggle between two ideologies. And, particularly, if you are interested in the rising field of STS, Schmalze’s writing definitely offers you a critical account on science and technology in a historical-material term (plus Maoism).

In the capitalist camp, it is worth considering the U.S.’s ‘green revolution’ program and its influence in Asia. The term ‘green revolution’ was coined by the director of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) William Gaud in 1968:

Record yields, harvests of unprecedented size and crops now in the ground demonstrate that throughout much of the developing world — and particularly in Asia — we are on the verge of an agricultural revolution. It is not a violent Red Revolution like that of Soviet, not it is a White Revolution like that of Shad of Iran. (cited by Schmalzer, 2016:1).

In Schmalzer’s account of technocracy, the geopolitical colour-coding showed the U.S.’s agenda of green revolution: it was about ‘far more than saving lives and improving the standing of living’; instead it was ‘a strategy for preventing the spread of ideology opposed to the United States’ (2016: 2–3). Therefore, the green revolution programs of USAID were more likely about the technological improvement to agriculture not only by supplying tractors, improved seeds and chemical fertiliser but also by extending research that ‘focused on meeting the perceived needs of farmers and turned to local experiment stations for testing and disseminating the new technologies they developed’ (Schmalzer, 2016:3).

In my view, the very problem of feeding people in a large scale was once seen as the agricultural-economic issue called Malthusian crisis in the west that was solved by industrial chemical farming in the U.S. However, after the second world war, the U.S.’s intervention in Asia twisted the issues into a ‘technocratic’ one that attempted to use these technological forces to help circumvent social and political development for the newly established governments like Taiwan, Japan, South Korea and even India. In Schmalzer’s account, these political leaders supported by the U.S. sought to transform ‘what they considered to be traditional and backward farmers into risk-tasking, profit-making individuals’, while socialist China’s policy favoured ‘the development of a nationwide network of peasant technicians supporting social market’ (6).

In contrast to the technological determinism of the green revolution, the transformation of agriculture in China was called ‘scientific farming’(科學種田). As Schmalzer pointed out, for Mao and other radicals in socialist China conceded that scientific farming was a ‘revolutionary movement’ alongside the more familiar political commitments not only to class struggle — the effort to combat the re-emergence of power inequities favouring the formerly elite classes but also to the struggle for production — the effort to increase the material base of the economy through a socialist organization of labour. This approach was epitomised by Mao statement on scientific farming:

Class struggle, the struggle for production, and scientific experiment are the three great revolutionary movements for building a mighty socialist country. These movements are a sure guarantee that Communists will be free from bureaucracy and immune against revisionism and dogmatism and will forever remain invincible. (Mao,1963; cited by Schmalzer, 2016:4)

For example, the rural scientific experiment movement launched in the mid-1960s combined the new and old technologies, since both spoke to the political values of the socialist era (9). Its objective, Schmalzer explained, was to ‘the present rural scientific experiment as humble, earthy and self-reliant — something that ordinary peasants could and should be doing’(16). Interestingly, in the 1960s to 1970s, Chinese government constantly promoted both modern and traditional technologies, Schmalzer argued that the diversity of technologies combining chemical and organic methods might look like ‘a more elusive historical object’, but its ecological sensibility should not be undermined:

So one observer might be impressed by the speed with which chemical fertilizer plants were being built, while another might just as reasonably celebrate the ecological sensibility of the ubiquitous collection of night soil and use of pig manure. (2016: 6)

In this elusive way to modernising Chinese agriculture, the ancient skills of making manure were represented as new technology in socialist production. As Schmalzer concluded, the most familiar methods might be ‘experienced as radically new’ as the state mobilise people ‘to pursue them on unprecedented scales or in unfamiliar ways’(13).

For example, investigating manure was put to be strenuous and efficient for collective farming, like irrigation and land reclamation projects. What’s more, Mao’s ‘scientific farming campaign’ was also launched a year later to mobilise members to increase the production of manure. The expansion of pig keeping — e.g. the propaganda of ‘one household raised one pig’ — encouraged and sponsored members’ pig breeding to increase the availability of natural fertiliser; Mao called it ‘a little home-made fertiliser factory’. Equally, in my study of socialist toilet system were, new infrastructures of public and private toilets were also framed as ‘scientific composting’ (科學堆肥) for improving agricultural production as well as human health — what’s why local cadres, barefoot doctors and peasants back then called it the ‘little green fertiliser factory’.