Europe’s Green Revolution: The Rise and Fall of Peasant-Friendly Plant-Breeding in Central Europe, 1890-1945

Since the 1940s various programmes for agricultural development in the ‘third world’ have been funded by Western governments and foundations. Commonly referred to as the ‘green revolution’, these programmes have generally sought to develop high-yielding cereal varieties in an attempt to alleviate hunger and poverty. Although by the 1970s enormous increases in cereals production had been achieved, however, poverty remained largely unchanged, and critics explained this outcome by arguing that the agricultural technology provided had been eagerly adopted by large commercial farmers but was ill-suited to the needs of the great majority of peasant-farmers. Since the seventies efforts have been made to develop more ‘appropriate’ technologies for the small farmer.

Against the backdrop of the transformation of continental European agriculture from the 19th century (‘Europe’s green revolution’), this history looks rather odd. For around 1900 several Central European states established plant-breeding stations whose express purpose was to raise the productivity of small farms (which constituted the large majority) by making the advantages of breeding available to peasants. Moreover preliminary evidence suggests that some of these stations had a substantial impact upon the regional agricultural economies they served.

In this book, therefore, focusing upon the stations established in three southern German states, I will consider why the stations were created, the nature of the stations’ organization and activities, the extent to which they succeeded in stimulating agricultural productivity, and the subsequent decline in their autonomy and influence under National Socialism. Finally I will return to the present, asking whether early green revolution programmes were aware of the previous European model and if so, why they seem not to have drawn upon it. And in view of recent claims that agricultural biotechnology is paving the way for a ‘second green revolution,’ I will assess how much has been learned from previous experience.