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Seeding Empire: American philanthrocapital and the roots of the Green Revolution in Africa

Book cover with title and picture of corn.

In Seeding Empire, Aaron Eddens connects today's efforts to cultivate a "Green Revolution in Africa" to a history of American projects that introduced capitalist agriculture across the Global South. From the offices of Bill and Melinda Gates to the halls of the world’s largest agricultural biotech company, he shows how the Green Revolution fails to address global inequalities and insists eradicating hunger demands thinking beyond this paradigm.

Publisher’s summary

In Seeding Empire, Aaron Eddens rewrites an enduring story about the past-and future-of global agriculture. Eddens connects today's efforts to cultivate a "Green Revolution in Africa" to a history of American projects that introduced capitalist agriculture across the Global South. Expansive in scope, this book draws on archival records of the earliest Green Revolution projects in Mexico in the 1940s and 1950s, as well as interviews at development institutions and agribusinesses working to deliver genetically modified crops to millions of small-scale farmers across Africa. From the offices of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to the halls of the world's largest agricultural biotechnology companies to field trials of hybrid maize in Kenya, Eddens shows how the Green Revolution fails to address global inequalities. Seeding Empire insists that eradicating hunger in a world of climate crisis demands thinking beyond the Green Revolution.

Reference

Eddens, A. (2024) Seeding Empire: American Philanthrocapital and the Roots of the Green Revolution in Africa. 1st edn. University of California Press. 

See more here. Read more about the Green Revolution in this blog about family farming in the US.

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