Agricultural Technologies: Angus Wright

5/20/22, 5:00 PM Agricultural Technologies - Latin American Studies - Oxford Bibliographies
Agricultural Technologies
Angus Wright
LAST REVIEWED: 13 JANUARY 2021

LAST MODIFIED: 25 FEBRUARY 2014
DOI: 10.1093/OBO/9780199766581-0148
Introduction
The size and diversity of Latin America make it impossible to identify a characteristic “Latin American agricultural technology.” There are
few types of agricultural technologies that are not used somewhere in the region. The exceptions are almost entirely traditional
technologies that were developed within specific cultural contexts in other regions of the world or that are clearly inappropriate in the
geographic circumstances of soil and climate found in Latin America. Many Latin American public research institutes, universities,
corporate research facilities, and individual farmers are capable of locating and adopting technologies from anywhere in the world and
adapting them to local conditions, although the institutions and farmers of some nations and regions in Latin America are far better
equipped to do so than others. Liberalized trade, Internet resources, international organizations, and the expanding influence of
transnational corporations have in general greatly facilitated diffusion of technological innovations. Agricultural technology as discussed
here consists of all applications of human knowledge, methods, and tools, as well as plant and animal varieties used for production of
agricultural goods. Chemicals, mechanical tools, and biological organisms must be employed in particular ways, and it is both the tools and
the ways they are used that make up the technologies of production. It is also important to note that many technologies that are not
particularly agricultural in nature have had enormous influence on the development of agriculture. Improvements in transportation,
refrigeration, communication, and information processing often overshadow the influence of more specifically “agricultural” technologies.
These will be considered here only as they established the context for specifically agricultural technologies. The purpose here is to provide
an overview of the history of agricultural technologies in Latin America and an elucidation of current major perspectives and controversies
about the best future paths for agricultural research and development.
Geography
Geographers and economic historians provide a good starting point for considering the diversity of agricultural technologies in context.
Many Mexican, Guatemalan, and Andean farmers still rely heavily on technologies developed millennia ago in the same regions where
those technologies originated. In contrast, an Argentine farmer is more likely to be working in a region where settled agriculture has been
established for only one or two centuries, and to be using technologies, including genetically engineered seeds, nearly identical to those
currently in use in Europe and the United States. A Brazilian farmer in the recently cleared thorn forests of the cerrado is using synthetic
pesticides and new combinations of soil amendments to grow mechanically harvested soybeans, while Brazilian small-scale farms may be
using techniques passed down from German, Italian, Japanese, or African ancestors. Clawson 2012 includes a chapter on agriculture in
Latin America that surveys this diversity while necessarily being less than comprehensive. For a beginning at thinking of this diversity in a
systematic way, Robinson 2003 updates the rather old-fashioned field of agricultural geography, by using a broad range of social-science
literature and studies of current issues, including but not focusing on Latin America. Geographer Christian Brannstrom’s anthology
(Brannstrom 2004) is distinguished by excellent articles by mostly younger scholars offering provocative viewpoints that span history and
geography. Rumney 2005 offers a systematic look at the literature in agricultural geography, with a well-chosen annotated bibliography.
Gallup, et al. 2003 considers the question of the degree to which Latin America’s development has been determined by its physical
geography, which provides an interesting way to begin to think about how cultural factors, especially technology, have shaped the life of the
region. A much-deeper and more sophisticated look at this question can be found in Engerman and Sokoloff 2011, working from the
disciplines of history and economics. Fernandes, et al. 2007 provides a neo-Marxist Brazilian view of agricultural geography, of a sort very
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influential in Latin America, with an emphasis on popular rural movements in Latin America. Economic Commission on Latin America and
the Caribbean, et al. 2011 gives an overview of current prospects for the agricultural economy of the region as a whole.
Brannstrom, Christian, ed. Territories, Commodities, and Knowledges: Latin American Environmental Histories in the Nineteenth
and Twentieth Centuries. Papers presented at the Workshop on Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Latin American Environmental
History held at the Institute of Latin American Studies, University of London, on 2–3 November 2001. London: Institute for the
Study of the Americas, 2004.
An anthology that serves as an excellent introduction to controversies both over content and method in environmental history and historical
geography, with a strong emphasis on agriculture and agricultural knowledge.
Clawson, David L. Latin America and the Caribbean: Lands and Peoples. 5th ed. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2012.
An excellent standard geography text with a chapter on agriculture that gives an overview of many of the issues considered here.
Economic Commission on Latin America and the Caribbean, Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture, and Food
and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. The Outlook for Agriculture and Rural Development in the Americas: A
Perspective on Latin America and the Caribbean 2011–2012. San Jose, Costa Rica, IICA, 2011.
Highlights rapidly changing prices for food crops and livestock related to Asian demand and biofuel competition for land and resources.
Emphasizes the growing divergence of capabilities of the larger economies (e.g., Brazil, Argentina, Mexico) compared to smaller and
poorer ones, and the need to address stark inequalities among and within nations in the ability to take advantage of information and
computer technologies. Useful bibliography.
Engerman, Stanley L., and Kenneth L. Sokoloff. Economic Development in the Americas since 1500: Endowments and
Institutions. NBER Series on Long-Term Factors in Economic Development. Cambridge, UK, and New York: Cambridge University
Press, 2011.
A meticulously argued case that while institutions ultimately shape the nature of society and in the long run determine their success,
institutions in the Americas were shaped by basic features of the environment such as climate and soils. Highly useful for rethinking the
nature and consequences of technological choices, whether or not one agrees with the argument.
Fernandes, Bernardo Mançano, Marta Inez Medeiros Marques, and Julio Cesar Suzuki. Geografia agrária: Teoria e poder.
Geografia em Movimento. São Paulo, Brazil: Expressão Popular, 2007.
Brazilian scholars with substantial experience with social movements consider the development of agriculture from a left-wing perspective
of a sort that is very influential in Latin America. A critique of agricultural geography as a field as well as a new theoretical formulation of it.
Gallup, John Luke, Alejandro Gaviria, and Eduardo Lora. Is Geography Destiny? Lessons from Latin America. Latin American
Development Forum. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2003.
A starting point for thinking about patterns of development in Latin America, carefully considered but deliberately provocative as well. The
emphasis on physical characteristics of the region highlights the key role of agriculture and technological possibilities.
Robinson, Guy. Geographies of Agriculture: Globalisation, Restructuring, and Sustainability. Boston: Addison-Wesley, 2003.
A much-needed effort to put new life into the somewhat musty subdiscipline of agricultural geography, by reaching beyond the discipline of
geography into social science and historical literature.
Rumney, Thomas A. The Study of Agricultural Geography: A Scholarly Guide and Bibliography. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow, 2005.
Rumney’s book provides a way to think systematically about the diversity of agriculture, as well as containing a highly useful bibliography.
21st-Century Perspectives
The landscape and societies of Latin America have been shaped by a dynamic process of agricultural innovation for thousands of years.
From the origins of agriculture onward, the region has been a laboratory and proving ground for technological change. Since European
contact, Latin American technologies have been and continue to be exported to the rest of the world, just as countless technologies have
been and continue to be imported. Before considering the historical development of agricultural technology in Latin America, it is helpful to
define the major perspectives regarding the future of Latin American agriculture, perspectives to which we will refer throughout the article.
Though looking toward the future, these perspectives, sometimes described as paradigms or discourses, may be said to begin with
contrasting ideas about pre-Columbian and traditional technologies and to continue with divergent analyses of the entire history and current
state of agricultural technology.
The Conventional Agriculture Perspective
Those arguing for more capital-intensive, chemical-intensive, large-scale agriculture on the North American model—a model that already
prevails in many regions of Latin America—tend to minimize the significance of a tradition of agricultural innovation and adaptation in Latin
America’s past. They are inclined to see “traditional technologies” either as irrelevant or prejudicial to the adoption of more-“modern”
techniques best suited to the requirements of international markets and rapid economic growth. This view is often called the “conventional
perspective,” a term we will use here. The conventional perspective is reflected in the work of such pioneers of the Green Revolution
program in Mexico as E. C. Stakman, Richard Bradfield, and Paul Mangelsdorf, whose work, Stakman, et al. 1967, while recognizing the
genius of many traditional technologies, insists that the future of Mexican (and later, global) agriculture was to be determined almost
exclusively by agricultural researchers working from the “scientific” perspectives centered in Europe and the United States. Vietmeyer 2011,
a biography of Nobel Prize winner Norman Borlaug (b. 1914–d. 2009), whose plant-breeding research in Mexico underlay the Green
Revolution program, shows how this point of view originated. The “Green Revolution package” (as Borlaug termed it) of new plant varieties,
abundant fertilizers and pesticides, and reliable water delivery, which led to the development and deployment of the package, became
globally influential in agricultural development. Noel Vietmeyer argues that Borlaug’s perspective is still essential. While Borlaug and
Vietmeyer recognize problems with excessive chemical dependence, soil degradation, high capital requirements, and social equity, the
problems are to be largely addressed by a combination of improvements in the Green Revolution technologies while adding the benefits of
new innovations such as transgenic crops and information technologies. Economic equity and environmental effects of agriculture are
understood as less important than improved output because, in this perspective, only generalized economic growth driven by high yields
will provide the ability to address questions of equity and environmental degradation. Wright 2005 provides a critical historical analysis of
the development of the conventional perspective in Mexico, and the wider worldview from which it derives and evaluates the broader
consequences. Cotter 2003, a history of Mexican agronomy, rejects the argument of Angus Wright and others that there were competing
worldviews in the development of Mexican agricultural research, arguing that the story demonstrates greater intellectual unity and continuity
both within Mexican and international agricultural research.
Cotter, Joseph. Troubled Harvest: Agronomy and Revolution in Mexico, 1880–2002. Contributions in Latin American Studies 22.
Westport, CT: Praeger, 2003.
A history of agronomy and agronomic education in Mexico. Argues for the consistency of a progressive and technocratic worldview shared
by the agronomic profession persisting through dramatic political changes, and in doing so tends to uphold the conventional perspective’s
view of itself as the naturally progressive force in agriculture.
Stakman, E. C., Richard Bradfield, and Paul C. Mangelsdorf. Campaigns against Hunger. Cambridge, MA: Belknap, 1967.
This influential book, written by the scientific study commission set up to make recommendations for the program in Mexico that would
become the Green Revolution, is very helpful in understanding the spoken and unspoken assumptions that underlay the program and
inspired its missionary zeal. The book was important in promoting “the Green Revolution package” of synthetic pesticides and fertilizers,
reliable irrigation, and high-yield seeds as the solution to the problems of global hunger.
Vietmeyer, Noel. Our Daily Bread: The Essential Norman Borlaug. Lorton, VA: Bracing, 2011.
The most recent hagiographic work on Borlaug. Endorses Borlaug’s view that Green Revolution technologies and genetic engineering are
essential to feed humanity.
Wright, Angus. The Death of Ramón González: The Modern Agricultural Dilemma. 2d ed. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2005.
A critical history of the Green Revolution as it began in Mexico, and an examination of the assumptions in economic development theory
that underlay it. Contains a case study that shows the implications of pesticide-dependent agriculture for farmworkers and rural residents.
Traces the roots of current issues in the longer history of agriculture, especially in Mexico, from crop domestication to the 21st century.
Current Developments
United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization 2012 The State of Food Insecurity in the World, represents the conventional view,
although unlike some older, less sophisticated treatments, the report does emphasize the importance of the participation of the poor in
improving nutrition and food security. Notable in the report is the view that the rural poor are likely to possess nothing but their labor, largely
ignoring the possibility that they also carry important kinds of knowledge. In Latin America, the institutions born of the Green Revolution that
are now part of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CCGIAR) have long carried the message and research
agenda of the conventional perspective. These institutions have closely collaborated with other international researchers, especially those
associated with the land-grant universities of the United States. In the early 21st century, the research of these institutions has gradually
come to reflect a viewpoint that is more environmentally aware and more attuned to issues of social equity, bringing them somewhat closer
to the agroecological view discussed below. This is particularly true of the work of the CGIAR center called the International Food Policy
Research Institute (IFPRI). The respective national institutions of agricultural research of each country have in general represented the
conventional view, with occasional exceptions. A strident ongoing defense of the conventional viewpoint is put forward by the Center for
Global Food Issues, which features many articles by economist Dennis Avery, who writes on a variety of economic and environmental
topics. Writing for IFPRI, Pomerada and Hartwich 2006 argues that the private sector’s growing role in “agricultural innovation in Latin
America” has arisen partly from the failure of public research to meet agriculture’s needs. It argues for reinforcing private-sector research
and outreach. A later IFPRI report, Stads and Beintema 2009, provides an analysis of the public institutional capacity for agricultural
research in Latin America, which employs an estimated 19,000 researchers, within the terms of a conventional notion of the nature of
technological progress. The report shows that most agricultural research and development in the region is funded by national governments,
although they recognize that it is very hard to measure private-sector involvement. This source, along with Trigo 1995, is less eager than
Pomerada and Hartwich 2006 to have private-sector research increasingly take over the role played by public institutions.
Center for Global Food Issues.

An organization with a website featuring the work of Dennis Avery, among others, that puts forward a consistent and aggressively argued
defense, much like Borlaug’s, of the conventional view in agriculture.
Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research.

CGIAR centers can be accessed through this site. All offer useful reference tools and bibliographies. For Latin America, the most-important
CGIAR centers are International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT, in Colombia), International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center
(CIMMYT, in Mexico), International Potato Center (CIP, in Peru), IFPRI (in Washington, DC), and Biodiversity International (the only
nongovernmental organization in the CGIAR network, in Rome, Italy).
Pomerada, Carlos, and Frank Hartwich. Agricultural Innovation in Latin America: Understanding the Private Sector’s Role.
Washington, DC: International Food Policy Research Institute, 2006.
Accepts as inevitable the declining role of public agricultural research and highlights the need for better integration of private-sector
research into networks that provide public benefits. Should be read along with Stads and Beintema 2009.
Stads, Gert-Jan, and Nienke M. Beintema. Public Agricultural Research in Latin America and the Caribbean: Investment and
Capacity Trends. ASTI Synthesis Report. Washington, DC: International Food Policy Research Institute, 2009.
Evaluates the institutional setting for formal agricultural research in Latin America. Points out that 70 percent of the expenditures on
agricultural research and development is spent by Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico, and emphasizes the growing gap between nations with
well-developed research capacity and others with weak capacity. Nations with the best research capacity include those in temperate zones
sharing research findings with richer temperate-zone nations.
Trigo, Eduardo J. Agriculture, Technological Change, and the Environment in Latin America: A 2020 Perspective. Food,
Agriculture, and the Environment Discussion Paper 9. Washington, DC: International Food Policy Research Institute, 1995.
Addressing the crisis in funding and mission of the CGIAR centers, Trigo argues for renewed support for public-sector research necessary
to address concerns that are essentially those of “public goods” (e.g., the environment).
United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization. The State of Food Insecurity in the World 2012: Economic Growth Is
Necessary but Not Sufficient to Accelerate Reduction of Hunger and Malnutrition. Rome: UN Food and Agriculture Organization,
2012.
Technologies developed in recent decades are capable of meeting food needs. Technological lag is a serious problem but results from
negative incentives coming from bad policy decisions. Agriculture needs to rely on family farms and to address the needs of the poor more
directly, and this can be done only through widespread policy reform.
The Agroecological Perspective
Opposing the conventional perspective are the agroecologists who see far more practical value in traditional technologies and who value
the lessons traditional methods and the science of ecology teach about adaptation to social and environmental circumstances. In the Latin
American context, the explicit language and theory of agroecology may be said to have begun as a scholarly matter in Mexico in the early
1970s, with Hernández Xolocotzi (Hernández Xolocotzi 1981, first published in 1977). These scholars argue for agricultural technologies
that are modeled on ecological principles. Many examples of highly evolved traditional production systems can be seen to incorporate
ecological principles, but agroecologists also favor innovation both within and beyond traditional systems. Their view is influenced by the
environmental problems arising from agricultural production and is proposed as a solution to them. The agroecology perspective is
explored in three texts, widely known in Latin America, all written by scientists whose primary field experience has been in Latin America.
All come with extensive bibliographies. In Altieri 1995, Gliessman 2007, and Vandermeer 2011 we see a consistent vision: the agriculture
needed for the future will be based on crop diversity and will be geared toward local and national markets more than export, will require
less reliance on purchased inputs and machinery, and therefore will rely less on financial capital. It will be best suited to smaller-scale
operations and will be designed for long-term security and environmental sustainability. High yields are often subordinated to other
objectives. Strong dependence on synthetic pesticides, fertilizers, and genetically modified crops and the expansion or creation of new,
large-scale irrigation schemes are viewed with strong skepticism. Biocontrol of pests; on-farm nutrition cycling; organic soil-building
techniques; and careful use of fallow, rotation, and interplanting are prized. Like the conventional viewpoint, this perspective goes under
many names, but particularly in Latin America it is increasingly known as the “agroecology” perspective and will be referred to as such in
this essay. For a time, the word “agroecology” was used by many researchers more or less synonymously with the term “sustainable
agriculture.” This is less the case today because many are inclined to view the term “sustainable” as drained of meaning by appropriation
for not-so-sustainable purposes and as lacking a convincing theoretical foundation. Works described as treating “sustainable agriculture”
may reflect either the “conventional” or the “agro-ecology” approaches or a blend. GRAIN, International Federation of Organic Agriculture
Movements (IFOAM), the Institute for Food and Development Policy (Food First), and Sociedad Científica Latinoamericana de
Agroecología (SOCLA) all are organizations consistently putting forward an agro-ecological vision. The vast literature critiquing the
conventional perspective on economic grounds is harder to encapsulate. For a start, see Gallagher 2004 for a critical discussion of the
Kuznets curve, which supposedly demonstrates that economic growth driven by liberalizing trade and increased productivity eventually will
lead to improved social equity and environmental performance, in spite of current trends to the contrary. The Global Development and
Environment Institute, with which Gallagher is associated, does consistently valuable work along these lines.
Altieri, Miguel A. Agroecology: The Science of Sustainable Agriculture. 2d ed. Boulder, CO: Westview, 1995.
Written primarily by Altieri, the volume also features articles by other experts from various disciplines. Lays out ecological principles as they
apply to agriculture, but it is especially rich in detailed examples from existing agricultural practice in Latin America. Probably the most
influential work on agroecology in Latin America, available in Spanish and Portuguese and suitable for graduate and undergraduate
classes.
Gallagher, Kevin P. Free Trade and the Environment: Mexico, NAFTA, and Beyond. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2004.
A carefully done study examining the North American Free Trade Agreement. Particularly strong on agriculture and environmental themes,
exploring the link among law, regulatory performance, and technological change.
Gliessman, Stephen R. Agroecology: The Ecology of Sustainable Food Systems. 2d ed. Boca Raton, FL: CRC, 2007.
Handsomely produced and illustrated textbook, with emphasis on the scientific principles of agroecology. Gliessman draws on his own
extensive experience in Latin America in research, teaching, and private enterprise. Includes important insights on the social context.
Appropriate for undergraduates and graduate students.
Global Development and Environment Institute.

A research institute with excellent publications on agricultural research and policy, which, while not specifically associated with an
agroecological perspective, generally supports a critique of conventional perspectives on agricultural technology. At Tufts University in
Boston.
GRAIN.
GRAIN is a small research and advocacy organization that provides an ongoing critique of agricultural development trends, including
transgenic crops and “land grabbing.” Does a mix of meticulous scholarly and more-popular treatments of the issues, from an essentially
agroecological perspective. Its publications are passionately argued but are usually carefully researched and well presented, providing links
to various sister organizations.
Hernández Xolocotzi, Efraím, ed. Agroecosistemas de México: Contribuciones a la enseñanza, investigación, y divulgación
agrícola. 2d ed. Chapingo, Mexico: Colegio de Postgraduados, 1981.
A pioneering early work on agroecology (first published in 1977), with a major influence in Latin America. From one of Latin America’s most
important agricultural universities. Demonstrates that a school of agricultural-scientific thought in Latin America anticipated many ideas
elaborated elsewhere at a later date.
Institute for Food and Development Policy (Food First).

A research and advocacy organization that maintains particularly strong relationships with Latin American groups and scholars.
Publications range from the very accessible and popular to serious scholarly work. It works with Via Campesina, Brazil’s MST (Movimento
dos Trabalhadore Rurais Sem Terra), and other grassroots organizations of peasants, smallholders, and their allies. Many of the major
scholarly figures in the agroecology movement have had an association with Food First.
International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements.

IFOAM has long had strong Latin American individual and organizational participation. Website includes publications, information on
conferences, and bibliographies. The concept of organic agriculture is based more on avoiding certain practices than on the more
theoretically comprehensive agroecology concept, although the two ideas have increasingly moved toward conceptual unity.
Sociedad Científica Latinoamericana de Agroecología.

Holds conferences throughout Latin America and promotes courses, including a PhD program in Colombia. It also publishes online articles.
Vandermeer, John H. The Ecology of Agroecosystems. Sudbury, MA: Jones and Bartlett, 2011.
The most recent textbook in agroecology, emphasizing ecological theory and a sharply defined historical and political perspective.
Vandermeer is an evolutionary biologist with lifelong experience in Latin America. Well illustrated, appropriate for graduate and
undergraduate classes.
Contrasting Perspectives in Confrontation and Compromise
Recent documents produced by international study groups and multilateral agencies and banks reflect the division between conventional
and agroecological perspectives, though certainly with varying degrees of divergence and sometimes nuanced distinctions. Notable in this
context are the International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD) reports (McIntyre,
et al. 2009a; McIntyre, et al. 2009b), sponsored by the United Nations and its relevant agencies and the World Bank and with official
participation by sixty-one national governments. The study was authorized in late 2004, leading to the publication of a massive report in
2009 with separate global and regional volumes, including one for Latin America. (The author of this article, Angus Wright, was a
“coordinating lead author” for the concluding “options for action” chapter for Europe and North America.) The director of the project, Robert
T. Watson, is a climatologist who was a key organizer of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (cited under Climate Change),
and concern with reducing the rate of climate change and preparing for its impact is reflected throughout the IAASTD study. The roughly
four hundred authors and more than eight hundred reviewers of these reports represented among them both conventional and
agroecological perspectives, and all the chapters reflect some compromises on major issues. The Latin American International Assessment
of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development regional report in particular (McIntyre, et al. 2009b) shows the
influence of agroecological approaches and comes down strongly—although with exceptions and reservations—on the side of the
importance of traditional and local knowledge and local adaptation. It puts forward critical views of the role of genetically modified
organisms and pesticide dependence and emphasizes the need for economic and social reform as a requisite for needed technological
progress. In contrast, the European and North American regional report (McIntyre, et al. 2009a) demonstrates the greater influence of a
conventional view of technologies and a less ambitious role for social and economic reform.
McIntyre, Barbara D., Hans R. Herren, Judi Wakhungu, and Robert T. Watson, eds. International Assessment of Agricultural
Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development: Agriculture at a Crossroads; Global Report. Washington, DC: Island,
2009a.
Concludes that there must be an end to “business as usual,” with the focus of previous work on yield improvement replaced by research
addressing multiple functions of agriculture, including social and environmental goals. Agriculture must reduce its contribution to climate
change and adapt to it. Many conventional research agendas and ideas persist. Comments from the conventional agricultural perspective
of the agricultural ministries of the US, Australian, and Canadian governments are in annex G of this report. Very extensive bibliography
and excellent graphics.
McIntyre, Barbara D., Hans R. Herren, Judi Wakhungu, and Robert T. Watson, eds. International Assessment of Agricultural
Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development: Agriculture at a Crossroads; Latin America and the Caribbean Report.
Washington, DC: Island, 2009b.
Stops short of being a straightforward advocate of agroecology as the preferred approach but consistently demonstrates a serious break
with the conventional perspective and argues for many specific technologies and reforms favorable to agroecology. As with the global
report (McIntyre, et al. 2009a), there is a very extensive bibliography, especially rich in periodical literature, technical reports, and
government and commission publications, but with relatively few book-length studies. Excellent graphics.
The All-Inclusive Approach
Some argue for the necessity of an all-inclusive approach that incorporates the best of both positions (conventional agriculture versus
agroecological perspectives). The global report of International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for
Development (McIntyre, et al. 2009a, cited under Contrasting Perspectives in Confrontation and Compromise) represents a series of
compromises that can be taken as all-inclusive, but the tensions between contrasting positions are evident. Gordon Conway, a trenchant
critic of the Green Revolution, writes as the most prominent champion of the ecumenical perspective that holds that all major paths of
technological development are necessary. Conway 2012 both recognizes failures of the conventional technologies and identifies what the
author sees as the limits of agroecological approaches. The all-inclusive perspective has lately become more popular in the literature
produced by international institutions such as the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and CGIAR, perhaps in
recognizing that no single approach is likely to do all that is needed, and perhaps because it allows for apparently diplomatic solutions to
policy impasse. One sees it increasingly reflected in documents produced by the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank, the
FAO, CGIAR, and the Economic Commission for Latin America (ECLA). Conway, in agreement with most observers, emphasizes that
favorable technological development is strongly dependent on extensive policy reforms in a variety of areas, from taxation to trade to
education and research. Questions of priorities in policy and funding within a highly competitive environment are underplayed. The
opportunity costs of favoring one technology over another go unexamined. The possibility that adoption of one technology may undermine
another, such as agroecological disruptions deriving from pesticide dependence or genetically engineered organisms, is not explored. The
Latin American and Caribbean report of International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development
(McIntyre, et al. 2009b, cited under Contrasting Perspectives in Confrontation and Compromise) reflects these concerns and more, as do
Altieri 1995, Gliessman 2007, and Vandermeer 2011 (all cited under the Agroecological Perspective). From the conventional perspective,
supporting traditional technologies within an ecumenical approach often represents a waste of time and resources and reduces prospects
for rapid productivity gains. Support for agroecological work also is often allied with constituencies of indigenous, peasant, and land reform
groups, seen to stand in the way of adoption of more-modern technologies. Those with the conventional perspective, as reflected in the
more ecumenical North American and European report (McIntyre, et al. 2009a), tend to be more sanguine about the all-inclusive view,
perhaps because they think the agroecologists are correct in assuming that within the current socioeconomic context the conventional
perspective will prevail.
Conway, Gordon. One Billion Hungry: Can We Feed the World? Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2012.
Not focused on Latin America, though the author has often worked in the region; offers perhaps the most sophisticated version of an all-
inclusive approach to agriculture. Conway attempts to make the agroecological perspective and conventional approaches compatible,
including a strong role for bio-engineering. Useful for the quick analysis of virtually every new technological promise in agriculture. Very
useful annotated bibliography.
History
For centuries, peasants, farmers, ranchers, entrepreneurs, inventors, scientists, and engineers working with Latin American agricultural
production have been among the most important innovators in the world agricultural economy. The region gave rise to a large share of the
crops on which humanity depends. Not counting the relatively small trade in Indian spices, it might be said that the sugar, bananas,
tobacco, coffee, and cacao of Latin America and some other tropical regions were the first important items in the shopping bags of global
consumers. Latin American grapes, tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, mangoes, and papayas are simply new items in the global market
basket. Mexico was the birthplace of Green Revolution research. Brazil has adapted soy production to tropical soils and in the process has
become one of the world’s two top producers. Brazil was the pioneer in serious biofuel production and is now the first or second most
important grower of biofuel crops, and other Latin American countries are quickly gearing up. For better or worse, as a world region Latin
America has never been a backwater in the development of agricultural technology, and it will certainly not be one in the future. The history
of agricultural technology in Latin America reveals a high degree of social and biological complexity.
Pre-Columbian Technologies
The heritage of agricultural technologies developed by pre-Columbian peoples—many of which are still in use in various forms modified
over time—is richly complex and varied and of continuing global significance. A rapidly growing literature seeks to answer many continuing
questions about the nature of the technologies, their relationship to the societies that developed and depended on them, their influence on
landscapes, and their potential value within the context of modern economies. Maize, cassava, potatoes, tomatoes, peppers, cacao,
peanuts, and many varieties of beans and squash are among the most important crops domesticated by pre-Columbian peoples, along with
a much more limited number of domesticated animals. Domestication of maize in Meso-America and potatoes in southwestern Peru began
between seven to ten thousand years ago, key pieces in a florescence of domestication and associated technologies. In some regions the
crops and the technologies by which they were cultivated succeeded in supporting dense human populations with elaborate social systems
and exuberant artistic and architectural creations. In other regions, the technologies of pre-Columbian Latin America allowed smaller
groups to survive for long periods of time. Technologies failed as well as succeeded—as David Lentz is at pains to emphasize, there is
evidence that at some times and places there were major failures of agriculture to sustain pre-Columbian populations, due to environmental
damage caused by the technologies in use. Miller 2007 provides a highly readable, brief, and judicious entry point for thinking about pre-
Columbian technologies, as well as excellent summaries of much of the historical literature on agricultural systems and technologies in
Latin America. Mann 2005 offers a very accessible, attractive, and longer popular treatment of this and related topics. Richards 2003 is well
written and thoughtful and comes in the context of the author’s wider global considerations. Denevan 2001 (for South America) and
Whitmore and Turner 2001 (for Mesoamerica) give regional analyses in detailed and authoritative scholarly works. Lentz 2000 is an
anthology that provides scholarly articles, mostly regionally focused, that together constitute a complex overview. Rojas Rabiela 1994
contains a series of mostly short but very useful articles by various, largely Mexican, researchers. Agroecology texts such as Altieri 1995,
Gliessman 2007, Vandermeer 2011, and Hernández Xolocotzi 1981 (cited under the The Agroecological Perspective) provide many
insights into the questions raised, with very detailed, specific examples of pre-Columbian technologies in current use.
Denevan, William M. Cultivated Landscapes of Native Amazonia and the Andes: Triumph over the Soil. Oxford Geographical and
Environmental Studies. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001.
Often polemical and provocative of new directions in thinking about the history and geography of the Latin American landscape, Denevan is
especially attuned to the many disputes in the research and their implications. More suitable for graduate seminars than for
undergraduates, and essential for anyone undertaking research in the area.
Lentz, David L., ed. Imperfect Balance: Landscape Transformations in the Pre-Columbian Americas. Historical Ecology. New York:
Columbia University Press, 2000.
A series of provocative articles, many of which aim at debunking the idea of “the ecological Indian.”
Mann, Charles C. 1491: New Revelations of the Americas before Columbus. New York: Knopf, 2005.
Provides a popularly written survey of scholarly literature that could be useful in undergraduate classes.
Miller, Shawn William. An Environmental History of Latin America. New Approaches to the Americas. Cambridge, UK, and New
York: Cambridge University Press, 2007.
While the book is brief, considering its scope, it is judicious in considering a vast literature. Excellent short bibliographies for each chapter.
A pleasure to read, and widely used now for undergraduate courses, it is also a graceful entrance to the field for graduate students.
Richards, John F. The Unending Frontier: An Environmental History of the Early Modern World. California World History Library 1.
Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003.
Chapters 9 and 10 have a strong command of a large literature, as well as being provocative. A great help in seeing the issues in global
context.
Rojas Rabiela, Teresa, ed. Agricultura indígena: Pasado y presente. Mexico City: La Casa Chata, 1994.
Identifies and investigates a large number of indigenous techniques, in short articles mostly by Mexican researchers. Demonstrates in
detail the awakening of interest in the theme and a variety of its concerns, scholarly and practical.
Whitmore, Thomas M., and B. L. Turner II. Cultivated Landscapes of Middle America on the Eve of Conquest. Oxford Geographical
and Environmental Studies. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001.
Like Denevan’s companion volume (Denevan 2001), a thorough and authoritative assessment of a large body of research over an
extended period.
Management and Expertise in Pre-Columbian Technologies
Pre-Columbian farmers used technologies that are still in use today both by traditional and conventional modern farmers. We also know
from surviving pre-Columbian documents that agricultural knowledge was the subject of specialists as well as farmers themselves. Earls
(Earls 1998), for example, is convinced that the Incas maintained a sizable agricultural college with appropriate experimental fields. One of
the most productive indigenous agricultural systems reached its apex of ambition and productivity in the chinampas constructed in the
shallow lake beds of the high mountain basin that was home to the Toltecs and Aztecs and is now Mexico City, as Rojas Rabiela 1983
documents. Chinampas provided the foundation for the dense human populations of central highland Mexico. As Denevan 2001 (for South
America) and Whitmore and Turner 2001 (for Middle America), both cited under Pre-Columbian Technologies, demonstrate, closely related
to chinampas are a variety of other raised-bed techniques in marshy environments that provided rich agricultural plots for Mayan, Incan,
pre-Incan, and Amazon farmers. The continuing discovery of the remnants of the specialized raised-bed techniques for taking advantage of
marsh environments over a vast geographical area suggests that it may have been one of the main foundations of pre-Columbian
civilization. Rojas Rabiela 1983, Palerm 1973, and other sources have shown that the chinampas of Tenochtitlan represented extremely
diverse and complex labor-intensive agronomic systems that were partially governed by state planning as well as by the knowledge of
individual farm families. It would appear that part of the decline of these systems was due to the inability or unwillingness of European
colonial administrators and landowners to apply the necessary knowledge through preexisting hierarchical authority structures adapted to
the purpose. Murra 1980 deals with this question with regard to the Inca Empire. Gibson 1964, though not delving deeply into agricultural
technologies, is deeply concerned with the implications of changing authority in New Spain and, like Murra 1980, deals extensively on how
harvests and surpluses were managed. Tortolero 2000 explores the implications of draining the chinampas for late-19th-century Mexico.
Radding 1997 shows the sophisticated management of desert water and soil by indigenous and later peasant farmers of northern Mexico,
including detailed examination of the practices of Spanish missions and their use and abuse of indigenous technologies. Posey and Balick
2006 demonstrates the finely tuned complexities of indigenous Amazon agriculture before and after conquest. Wilken 1987 gives a superb
accounting of traditional technologies used in modern Mexico.
Earls, John. “The Character of Inca and Andean Agriculture.” 1998.

Paper given in Israel in 1998, available online as a separate publication from the Pontifica Universidad Católica del Perú (PCUP).
Gibson, Charles. The Aztecs under Spanish Rule: A History of the Indians of the Valley of Mexico, 1519–1810. Stanford, CA:
Stanford University Press, 1964.
https://www-oxfordbibliographies-com.proxy.library.cornell.edu/view/document/obo-9780199766581/obo-9780199766581-0148.xml?rskey=4J5s7r&r… 10/37
A magisterial work not focused on but dealing with agriculture within the context of the survival of Aztec society and culture under the
Spanish. Shows how complex systems such as chinampas relied on continuing social hierarchies while suffering from their change and
erosion. Reprinted as recently as 1991.
Murra, John V. The Economic Organization of the Inka State. Research in Economic Anthropology, Supplement 1. Greenwich, CT:
JAI, 1980.
Provides a solid scholarly look at a much-mythologized topic, including the agricultural systems adapted to highly diverse and often-severe
Andean conditions.
Palerm, Ángel. Obras hidráulicas prehispánicas en el sistema lacustre del Valle de México. Mexico City: Instituto Nacional de
Antropología e Historia, 1973.
One of Mexico’s anthropological pioneers provided an early assessment of the character and importance of chinampa agriculture and the
complex systems on which it depended.
Posey, Darrell Addison, and Michael J. Balick, eds. Human Impacts on Amazonia: The Role of Traditional Ecological Knowledge
in Conservation and Development. Biology and Resource Management in the Tropics. New York: Columbia University Press,
2006.
An edited volume that as a whole traces the history of human occupation and agricultural systems from pre-Columbian times to the present
day.
Radding, Cynthia. Wandering Peoples: Colonialism, Ethnic Spaces, and Ecological Frontiers in Northwestern Mexico, 1700–1850.
Latin America Otherwise. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1997.
Radding has shown how a region that was once thought of as the realm of “primitive” hunter-gatherers was in fact characterized by
ingenious agricultural systems adapted to desert conditions, systems that sometimes persevered but that also were appropriated by,
modified, and sometimes destroyed by Spanish missions and later farmers and ranchers.
Rojas Rabiela, Teresa, ed. La agricultura chinampera: Compilación histórica. Mexico City: Universidad Autónoma de Mexico,
1983.
Rojas Rabiela has long led a group of scholars interested in chinampas and other traditional technologies, and she continues to organize
panels, conferences, and volumes.
Tortolero, Alejandro. El agua y su historia. Mexico City: Siglo XXI, 2000.

Tortolero’s work provides an excellent and detailed consideration of water’s importance in the history of Mexico, including an unusually
astute assessment of the significance of chinampas and their destruction.
Wilken, Gene C. Good Farmers: Traditional Agricultural Resource Management in Mexico and Central America. Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1987.
Examining traditional practices in the context of present-day farming, Wilken uses both ethnographic and geographic methods. The writing
is unusually clear, making it easy to understand the practices in their context. Excellent supplementary text for undergraduates and as a
reading for graduate seminar discussions.
The Colonial Period
The colonial period was long thought of as a period in which Iberian technologies largely replaced indigenous ones and in which the
survivals of indigenous technologies represented simply remnant traces due to lack of social incorporation of relatively remote conditions.
Though this view survives among historically uninformed people, scholars now almost uniformly reject it in favor of a much more complex
picture that accounts for complicated interactions between European and indigenous societies and technologies.
The Columbian Exchange
Scholars for centuries have investigated the interchange between the Americas and Europe, including its influence on agricultural
technologies. This literature was well summarized and interpreted by Alfred Crosby in his two most influential works: The Columbian
Exchange (Crosby 1972) and Ecological Imperialism (Crosby 1986). Miller 2007 provides a fine summary of these changes, relying on
Crosby 1972 and Crosby 1986 and other more recent literature. Solbrig, et al. 2001 brings together an excellent set of articles that includes
but goes beyond the “Columbian exchange,” including articles on various controversial topics in the current “globalization” discourse. Some
general and uncontroversial observations about these changes are necessary to set the context for the rest of the section. Certainly, from
the first decades of European presence, the landscape of Latin America began to be reshaped by distinctly Old World technologies that
included tools such as the wheel and the plow. Domesticated grazing animals were mostly novel to Latin America outside the Andes, where
llamas and alpacas had long been bred. Llamas served as beasts of burden, but only in the Andes, and there were no animals that were
used for traction in cultivation tasks. Wheeled transport, draft animals, and relatively large ocean-going vessels and advanced navigational
techniques created innumerable new opportunities and initiated sweeping change, both negative and positive, from the first decades of the
16th century onward. A revolution in transport and traction quickly and dramatically reshaped the agricultural landscape and society of the
New World and would continue to do so. The pace of change accelerated through the 19th century, as draft animals and sails were
successfully replaced by steam and internal-combustion engines, electrical power, and jet transport. In many respects, these more general
technological innovations in energy, transport, and storage, and in food processing, overshadowed changes in technologies that were
specifically agricultural. Such changes converted entire regions into banana plantations and cattle ranches in the 19th century. For detailed
information, go to histories of the individual crops and regional histories. Old World crops ranging from wheat to sugar, with their associated
technologies for processing and shipping, also transformed Latin America. Spanish and Portuguese dietary and cultural preferences drove
out whole crop complexes, such as amaranth and quinoa, as New World crops were revolutionizing Old World cuisines. Mandates that
taxes or rents be paid only in European crops such as wheat sometimes forced these cultural preferences on farmers who did not
necessarily share them.
Crosby, Alfred W. The Columbian Exchange: Biological and Cultural Consequences of 1492. Contributions in American Studies 2.
Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1972.
Crosby skillfully brought together a large literature in an innovative way that has had a large influence on a variety of disciplines and
established a new set of terms for talking about the subject. Reprinted as recently as 2003.
Crosby, Alfred W. Ecological Imperialism: The Biological Expansion of Europe, 900–1900. Studies in Environment and History.
Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1986.
In this volume, Crosby focused more narrowly on plants, animals, and crops, rather than on more strictly cultural items, and expanded his
focus in time and space to discuss the overwhelming European influence on world biology, with multiple consequences, especially strong in
agriculture.
Miller, Shawn William. An Environmental History of Latin America. New Approaches to the Americas. Cambridge, UK, and New
York: Cambridge University Press, 2007.
A superb, judicious synthesis rich in bibliography. Strong on agriculture and its transformation.
Solbrig, Otto T., Robert Paarlberg, and Francesco Di Castri. Globalization and the Rural Environment. Articles based on a
conference workshop titled “The Impact of Globalization and the Information Society on the Rural Environment,” held in
Cambridge, MA, on 19–21 January 2000. David Rockefeller Center Series on Latin American Studies, Harvard University 6.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001.
A collection of articles prepared for a conference at Harvard. The quality and depth of the articles are distinctly variable, but the book offers
ten articles specifically focused on Latin America. Excellent for the perspective on the long history of Latin America’s participation in the
global economy, with multiple implications for understanding the trajectory of technological development.
Synthesis
While in some places European technologies and crops simply displaced New World agricultural methods and crops, in other places a
synthesis occurred. The most obvious example is the widespread use of maize to support livestock production. The availability of draft
animals brought into widespread use a variety of planting, cultivation, and harvesting tools and encouraged continual innovation in the
adaptation of these European and North American implements to local needs. Industrial milling of grains was quickly adopted in some
regions, although in others, notably Mexico, consumers often continued for centuries to insist on hand milling. Foster 1960 and Foster 1962
are works by the anthropologist George Foster, who, along with his followers, detailed many of the complex combinations of Old and New
World technologies that evolved. Foster’s work and that of geographers, biogeographers, economic botanists, and historians formed the
basis for identifying and investigating what Alfred Crosby would come to call “the Columbian exchange.” Notably, the systematic
investigation of technological innovation to improve farming practices that began in England in the 18th century under the term “scientific
farming” certainly had its parallels in Latin America during the same if not earlier periods. For example, the mid-18th-century revival of
sugar grown on soils previously depleted by sugar cane in the West Indies was due to the “trenching” technique of soil restoration
developed by West Indian plantation owners working in same spirit as English “scientific farmers”—an example also of technologies that
were novel and effective but were strongly reliant on the availability of abundant slave labor. Innovation in agriculture often produced
significantly different results in the Americas than in Europe, due to different patterns of land ownership (e.g., the hacienda and plantation in
Latin America), social relations (e.g., the widespread use of slaves both in Latin and Anglo-America), culture, climate, and soils. Elinor
Melville, in her classic Melville 1994, emphasized how European economic organization and Old World diseases, crops, animals,
dispossession, and specific agricultural technologies transformed the social and physical environment of the New World in catastrophic
ways. Melville pointed out that where Crosby saw the construction of more or less idyllic “neo-European” agricultural landscapes as the
result of the Columbian exchange, it was more accurate to see the creation of severely degraded agricultural landscapes as a result of the
disastrous imposition of European authority over native landscapes. Topik, et al. 2006 aims most of all to show that the phenomenon now
called “globalization,” often treated as something new, is in fact at the core of Latin America’s experience over five hundred years,
dramatically shaping the physical and human landscape.
Foster, George M. Culture and Conquest: America’s Spanish Heritage. New York: Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological
Research, 1960.
Foster was interested in processes of cultural change more than agriculture per se, but his work laid a foundation for much that followed in
the history of agricultural technology.
Foster, George M. Traditional Cultures and the Impact of Technological Change. New York: Harper & Row, 1962.
Very useful in considering how traditional cultures adapted to massive new changes in technology, especially in agriculture, fishing, and
other productive activities. Helped set the terms of the debates that would follow concerning the impacts of technologies in the promotion of
economic development plans.
Melville, Elinor G. K. A Plague of Sheep: Environmental Consequences of the Conquest of Mexico. Studies in Environment and
History. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1994.
A highly influential work that has inspired many other monographs and helped shape a new understanding.
Topik, Steven, Carlos Marichal, and Zephyr Frank, eds. From Silver to Cocaine: Latin American Commodity Chains and the
Building of the World Economy, 1500–2000. American Encounters / Global Interactions. Durham, NC: Duke University Press,
2006.
The articles in this volume take up the significance of major commodities, mostly agricultural, produced in Latin America over its entire
history, and the way the production changed land and people in Latin America, as in importing nations. Authoritative and recent treatments
of venerable topics, emphasizing the long history of what is now called “globalization.”
Plantations
For much of Latin America through the colonial period and into the present, entrepreneurial interest was focused strongly on large-scale
plantations growing tropical and subtropical crops for export to Europe and the United States. Mines and plantations became the central
interest of colonial governments and independent nations, and early-21st-century commodity booms due to Asian demand and biofuels
have led to new interest in plantations. The plantation systems established in the Americas were made up of a set of technologies, some
borrowed from elsewhere and previous eras, and some invented within the American context. There was a very active give and take of
technologies between the factory-like plantation system and the burgeoning of industrialization in Europe. Many plantation export crops and
their associated technologies, including sugar cane, cotton, bananas, and coffee, came from other tropical regions and civilizations, as
Deerr 1921 shows for sugar. Some others were New World crops adapted to plantation production—notably, cacao, tobacco, and, later,
henequen. There is a vast literature on plantations in the Americas. Among excellent works that examine in depth the full meaning of the
plantation’s impact, especially in the colonial period, are Prado 1967 and Schwartz 1985 on Bahia, Brazil, both showing in detail the way
the plantation system shaped society. Sheridan 2007 (first published in 1973) is an economic history of the British West Indies that
highlights the role of sugar technologies. Mintz 1985 represents a very effective popularization, by a rigorous scholar, of the vast literature
on sugar plantations that also explores the implications in importing countries. Moreno Fraginals 1964 is a pioneering work on the sugar
cane complex in Cuba, by one of Cuba’s most eminent scholars. Kiple 1984 regards slaves themselves as a kind of technology and
explores their relationship to the history of disease and to the labor and technological regimes designed to exploit their availability.
Deerr, Noël. Cane Sugar: A Textbook on the Agriculture of the Sugar Cane, the Manufacture of Cane Sugar, and the Analysis of
Sugar-House Products. 2d ed. London: Norman Rodger, 1921.
This classic work is now available as a facsimile volume from BiblioLife, headquartered in Charleston, SC. Deerr’s work has long been
valued by technicians and historians for its thoroughness and its rich historical accounts of the development of many of the technologies of
cane and their implications. Illustrated throughout with drawings and photographs.
Kiple, Kenneth F. The Caribbean Slave: A Biological History. Studies in Environment and History. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge
University Press, 1984.
Without losing track of the essential humanity of slaves, Kiple considers them as plantation owners did, as a technological innovation suited
to plantation production. Kiple draws on the history of disease as a major shaping factor that made slaves attractive while setting limits on
their use.
Mintz, Sidney W. Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History. New York: Penguin, 1985.
A renowned anthropologist turns historian to consider the extraordinary influence of sugar production, primarily in the American products, in
shaping the modern world. He is concerned with the way “sweetness,” considered from an anthropological perspective, came to have such
power over people and landscapes.
Moreno Fraginals, Manuel. El ingenio: El complejo económico social cubano del azúcar. Havana, Cuba: Comisión Nacional
Cubana de la UNESCO, 1964.
A classic work by one of Cuba’s most eminent scholars that ties together social and technological change in a detailed and compelling way.
Republished as recently as 2001 (Barcelona: Crítica).
Prado, Caio, Jr. The Colonial Background of Modern Brazil. Translated by Suzette Macedo. Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1967.
One of the most influential works in Brazil on the nation’s economic history. Caio Prado Jr. emphasized the economic diversity of the
Brazilian economy while showing the key role of plantations.
Schwartz, Stuart B. Sugar Plantations in the Formation of Brazilian Society: Bahia, 1550–1835. Cambridge Latin American Studies
52. Cambridge, UK, and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1985.
One of the best books available to see the deep penetration of the plantation as an economic institution and a set of particular technologies
on the society as a whole. Superbly researched and beautifully written. Reprinted as recently as 2004.
Sheridan, Richard B. Sugar and Slavery: An Economic History of the British West Indies, 1623–1775. Kingston, Jamaica: Canoe,
2007.
First published in 1973 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press). Sheridan’s interest in the technologies of sugar was stimulated by
Deerr. A careful and thoughtful examination of the relationship between plantation technologies and the institution of slavery.
Plantations, Forests, and Slavery
In the Americas, the sheer scale of the plantation economy and the availability of land and forests seized from indigenous people
influenced the direction of technological development. For example, the vast forests of the Americas, especially in Brazil, delayed the
search for more fuel-efficient methods in the use of boilers in sugar refining. Dean 1995 explores the association between plantations and
deforestation in detail. Miller 2000 looks at it at from a somewhat different angle that tells a more nuanced story. Funes Monzote 2008 is the
work of a young Cuban scholar who traces the destruction of Cuban forests and the consequences related to the rise of sugar plantations
as the major engine of the Cuban economy. The use of slave labor was also a disincentive to the invention or adoption of some labor-
saving technologies. The development of slavery as the primary source of labor, first using indigenous people of the conquered territories
and then using African captives, sustained a rapid expansion of plantations and a technological complex designed to take advantage of the
availability of captive workers. As Pádua 2002 shows, in the 18th century, Portuguese and Brazilian observers began to argue that slavery
as an institution accounted for technological backwardness, rapacious deforestation, abusive use of soils, and regressive cultural and
political institutions.
Dean, Warren. With Broadax and Firebrand: The Destruction of the Brazilian Atlantic Forest. Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1995.
A major work that has become the definitive work on this and related topics, showing how agricultural policy, technology, and capitalist
economic expansion largely destroyed one of the largest and most diverse rainforests outside the Amazon.
Funes Monzote, Reinaldo. From Rainforest to Cane Field in Cuba: An Environmental History since 1492. Translated by Alex
Martin. Envisioning Cuba. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2008.
An excellent national history of processes that can be found in many Latin American regions characterized by plantation export agriculture.
Exceptional demonstration of a modernized Marxist perspective on processes of technological and environmental change.
Miller, Shawn William. Fruitless Trees: Portuguese Conservation and Brazil’s Colonial Timber. Stanford, CA: Stanford University
Press, 2000.
A careful and detailed analysis that shows how colonial officials attempted to control the depredations of the expansion of agriculture in
Brazil’s Atlantic forest, attempting to shape the course of agricultural development without destroying the timber resource that had been so
highly prized in Brazil’s export economy.
Pádua, José Augusto. Um sopro de destruição: Pensamento político e crítica ambiental no Brasil escravista, 1786–1888. Rio de
Janeiro, Brazil: Jorge Zahar Editor, 2002.
A brilliant analysis that shows how political thought in late colonial and early national Brazilian history attempted to identify and meet the
challenges of plantation slave-based economies, linking labor systems to technology and economic change.
Haciendas and Other Technologies of Security
The export-dependent economies of New Spain and the Portuguese Empire, with small effective demand in domestic cash economies,
were subject to severe periods of deflation and depression. Entire production systems, as Chevalier 1963 argues, most notably the
haciendas of Mexico and the Andean countries and similar forms of rural enterprises in Brazil, were designed to weather long periods of
economic decline or generalized violence through a high degree of self-sufficiency as well as to produce profits when the opportunities
arose. Imperial governments and landlords adapted both the institutional forms of land ownership and characteristic technologies to the
demand for security during bad years and decades. Landowners became what might be called skilled innovators in dealing with the
problems of security in the face of periodic economic stagnation and adverse natural conditions. The technologies developed took
advantage of locally available materials and energy to create relatively high degrees of independence from more-distant markets. Butzer
and Butzer 1995 also notes that the apparently isolated and somewhat self-sufficient haciendas participated in the creation and
maintenance of routines for moving livestock across vast regions, in ways that were both profitable and relatively protective of grazing-land
quality. This required formal and informal arrangements made among distant enterprises. Tutino 1986, along with many other works, shows
that the sleepy hacienda was subject to rapid technological change and mobilization in pursuit of opportunities. A set of articles in Boyer
2012, a new volume on Mexican environmental history, demonstrate this point in a variety of ways, all involving technological innovation on
a large scale. The essential concern for security reinforced the existence of very large landholdings that made it possible for landlords to
persist while using extensive cultivation and grazing and other methods and tools that were not always effective in maximizing returns from
the factors of production during times of high commodity prices. This partially accounts for the appearance of chronic technological
backwardness found in farms, ranches, and plantations that were meant also to be able to take advantage of good times and high prices
when they occurred. The degree of “backwardness” was often a measure of the strength of pressures created by periodic economic
depression, as opposed to a measure of lack of knowledge or resistance to adopting new technologies.
Boyer, Christopher R., ed. A Land between Waters: Environmental Histories of Modern Mexico. Latin American Landscapes.
Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2012.
In this volume, see especially, by Martín Sánchez Rodríguez, “Mexico’s Breadbasket: Agriculture and the Environment in the Bajío” (pp.
50–72). Boyer’s anthology represents much of the best new work on the environmental history of Mexico, with a strong but not exclusive
focus on irrigation and water issues.
Butzer, Karl W., and Elisabeth K. Butzer. “Transfer of the Mediterranean Livestock Economy to New Spain: Adaptation and
Ecological Consequences.” In Global Land Use Change: A Perspective from the Columbian Encounter. Edited by B. L. Turner II,
Antonio Gómez Sal, Fernando González Bernáldez, and Francesco di Castri, 151–193. Madrid: Consejo Superior de
Investigaciones Científicas, 1995.
The establishment of regulated grazing routes helped to avoid some of the otherwise disastrous consequences of livestock introduction into
New Spain—excellent in showing the way social organization can aid in adaptation of technologies.
Chevalier, François. Land and Society in Colonial Mexico: The Great Hacienda. Edited by Lesley Byrd Simpson. Translated by
Alvin Eustis. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1963.
Chevalier’s classic work has become the reference point for many subsequent studies that both enlarge and challenge his point of view
about the reasons for the rise of the hacienda and its particular ensembles of techniques and technologies. Reprinted in English as recently
as 1982.
Tutino, John. From Insurrection to Revolution in Mexico: Social Bases of Agrarian Violence, 1750–1940. Princeton, NJ: Princeton
Tutino demonstrates the ways in which the expansion of commercial agriculture led to change and instability in Mexico over two centuries,
with many examples of the way particular technological choices contributed to social conflict.
The Industrial Age, 19th and 20th Centuries
Industrial technologies reached Latin America early, and indeed, some such technologies had their origins in the large-scale agro-industrial
complex of the plantations of the region. Technological changes shaped many events, but the patterns of change were heavily influenced
by the rise of independent nations, their high levels of dependence on the international economy, the rising problems of fertility encountered
in European economies, and particular concepts guiding the nearly universal drive for economic development adopted by nation-states
from the late 19th century onward.
Political Independence and Economic Dependence
In the early 19th century, Latin American nations, with some exceptions (e.g., Cuba and some other Caribbean islands), won their political
independence from the European colonial powers. However, strong dependence on European and, later, North American markets and
credit characterized Latin American economies, which remained predominantly agricultural until well into the 20th century, as some still are.
Plantations of tropical luxury crops continued to dominate in much of the region, with, as noted below, transportation and refrigeration
technologies bringing new plantation crops such as bananas to the fore in some nations and promoting explosive growth in livestock
production for export in Argentina and Uruguay. The British influence was very strong in Brazil, Argentina, and Uruguay, while the United
States quickly came to dominate the production and marketing of bananas and began to exert its influence into Mexico and Central
America. British “preeminence” went into decline after World War I and gave way definitively to the influence of the United States after
World War II. Toward the end of the 20th century and into the 21st, trade, finance, and political influence became more diffuse with a
striking entrance of China and other Asian nations as major players in Latin American economic affairs, especially regarding primary
commodities, including agricultural products. During much of the 19th century, many national economies suffered severely from the effects
of the independence wars and then from prolonged struggles to establish viable national governments. Outside well-established and
guarded plantation regions, political violence and banditry encouraged the strengthening of relatively self-sufficient forms of rural enterprise
such as haciendas and extensive ranch operations. Subsistence and local market producers were also driven toward the search for
security rather than entrepreneurial operations. The abolition of slavery in most of Latin America as a consequence of independence (with
the largest slave economy—Brazil—maintaining slavery until 1888) encouraged some attention to technological alternatives to slave labor
at a time when steam power began to make many alternatives available. For the most part, however, the transition to “free labor” did not
create dramatic technological change if for no other reason than that plentiful wage labor could be had under conditions that resembled
slave labor all too closely. The use of debt peonage, sharecropping, and other forms of labor control were effective enough to avoid any
great movement of plantation and estate owners toward labor-saving technologies. Extremely scarce and expensive credit continued to
work as a strong force to discourage independent farmers and to maintain labor control. Bulmer-Thomas, et al. 2006 provides a good
introduction to this period that is particularly suited to understanding technological changes.
Bulmer-Thomas, Victor, John H. Coatsworth, and Roberto Cortés Conde, eds. The Cambridge Economic History of Latin America.
Vol. 2, The Long Twentieth Century. Cambridge, UK, and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006.
An essential and authoritative interpretation of Latin American history that helps to identify and explain major shifts in technological
development, within the larger economic context. Offers fundamental insights that frequently challenge older assumptions, sorting out
economic trends that often did not parallel political changes as closely as thought.
Plantations in the National Period
In much of Latin America, the large-scale, export-producing plantation remained the dominant economic institution. With the rise in demand
for such crops as coffee, cacao, bananas, and henequen, the plantation flourished as never before in many countries. Improved transport
and processing often played a key role in the rise of the modern plantation, especially for such perishable crops as bananas and those that
did not store well in the tropics without refrigeration, such as cacao. Moreno Fraginals 1985 exploits a lifetime of scholarly work to show
how sugar shaped the economies and cultures of the Caribbean in the 19th century. Evans 2007 is a history of henequen in Yucatan, and
Soluri 2006 is a work on banana plantations that focuses on environment and technological change. Stein 1957 is a classic and superb
account of environmental and technological change on coffee plantations in Brazil. Rogers 2010 summarizes much of the literature on
sugar plantations in Brazil, focused on Pernambuco, while adding new analysis of technological change in the sugar economy in the late
20th century. Tucker 2000 demonstrates the deep impact of the plantation in various locales.
Evans, Sterling. Bound in Twine: The History and Ecology of the Henequen-Wheat Complex for Mexico and the American and
Canadian Plains, 1880–1950. Environmental History 21. College Station: Texas A&M Press, 2007.
Demonstrates the complicated relationship between technological change along production chains and among them. Shows the corporate
role in the diffusion of technologies and in their management, including their demise.
Moreno Fraginals, Manuel. “Plantations in the Caribbean: Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Dominican Republic in the Late 19th
Century.” Paper presented at the Conference on Problems of Transition from Slavery to Free Labor in the Caribbean, held at the
Museo del Hombre Dominicano in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, on 11–13 June 1981. In Between Slavery and Free Labor:
The Spanish-Speaking Caribbean in the 19th Century. Edited by Manuel Moreno Fraginals, Frank Moya Pons, and Stanley L.
Engerman, 3–23. Johns Hopkins Studies in Atlantic History and Culture. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1985.
Focusing on the 19th century, Moreno Fraginals shows how Caribbean colonies of Spain and their modern heirs were shaped politically,
culturally, and socially by sugar production and its chronic boom-and-bust cycles. Traces the various technologies used to attempt to meet
the challenges, as well as reasons that new technologies were sometimes rejected.
Rogers, Thomas D. The Deepest Wounds: A Labor and Environmental History of Sugar in Northeast Brazil. Chapel Hill: University
of North Carolina Press, 2010.
An excellent review of the vast literature on cane in northeastern Brazil, with a strong focus on the implications of technological change,
including original research on recent innovations. Good literature review and update to begin an examination of the enormous scholarly
production on this subject.
Soluri, John. Banana Cultures: Agriculture, Consumption, and Environmental Change in Honduras and the United States. Austin:
University of Texas Press, 2006.
If one believes in technological determination, this book could be the antidote, showing how advertising and corporate strategies create
demand, determine the supply chain, and run afoul of ecological and social realities.
Stein, Stanley J. Vassouras: A Brazilian Coffee County, 1850–1900. Harvard Historical Studies 69. Cambridge, MA: Harvard
Long a fundamental source for understanding the development and spread of coffee plantations over a progressively degraded landscape.
Meticulous research and trenchant writing. Republished as recently as 1985 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press).
Tucker, Richard. Insatiable Appetite: The United States and the Ecological Degradation of the Tropical World. Berkeley: University
of California Press, 2000.
A passionately argued and carefully documented history that includes the development of various plantation export complexes, including
several in Latin America, and their effects. Rich and well-selected bibliography.
The Nationalization of Nature
In the 18th century, Spanish colonial officials launched nearly sixty botanical expeditions throughout Spanish America to assess the
potential practical value of plant resources. When the Portuguese king was forced to accept passage to Brazil on British ships to escape
Napoleon’s armies, arriving in Brazil in 1808, he soon established a botanical garden to collect, study, and display the plants of his New
World realm, and foreign scientists and artists would continue to be invited to participate in this effort. This was an early impulse toward
what McCook 2002 calls the late 19th century’s “nationalization of nature,” the systematic investigation of plant resources and agriculture,
seeking to identify, imagine, and promote a path of agricultural development appropriate to Latin American nations—an impulse that
remains a part of Latin American thought and research. López 2012 elucidates a similar process in Mexico. Bleichmar 2012 provides a
striking example of the way scientific illustration and artistic trends influenced a particular sense of Latin American identity and possibility.
Bleichmar, Daniela. Visible Empire: Botanical Expeditions and Visual Culture in the Hispanic Enlightenment. Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 2012.
Demonstrates the way that visual representation used by botanists influenced the view Latin Americans held of themselves and the
biological world they inhabited, with consequences for ideas of national development.
López, Rick A. “Nature as Subject and Citizen in the Mexican Botanical Garden, 1787–1829.” In A Land between Waters:
Environmental Histories of Modern Mexico. Edited by Christopher A. Boyer, 73–99. Latin American Landscapes. Tucson:
University of Arizona Press, 2012.
Demonstrates the way that imperial European notions of the biota of the New World were challenged by specifically indigenous
conceptions as expressed in rigorously systematic ways by Mexican botanists, helping to shape an ongoing debate about the significance
of indigenous knowledge in medicine and agriculture.
McCook, Stuart. States of Nature: Science, Agriculture, and Environment in the Spanish Caribbean, 1760–1940. Austin: University
of Texas Press, 2002.
An influential work that shows how the way science was conceived, promoted, and pursued was influenced by nationalism, economic
imperialism, and larger scientific trends, all of which led to particular kinds of developmental and technological choices.
Mines, Guano, and Modern Chemistry
From at least the mid-18th century onward, declining fertility of land in Europe and North America and rising demand for agricultural
commodities led to a global search for fertilizers. Among the most significant sources were the guano islands off the west coast of South
America and the nitrate and phosphate mines of Chile. Though the fertilizers derived from these sources were used in Latin America, for
the most part the exported fertility and its associated technologies were procured by European and North American buyers who exercised
control over markets and, in any case, were prepared to pay top prices. The invention of the Haber-Bosch process in 1909, which made it
possible to use large amounts of newly available energy (primarily from natural gas) to extract nitrogen from the atmosphere, led to a sharp
decline in the use of guano and mined nitrates and phosphates. The cheap nitrogen from the Haber-Bosch process was a major impetus
toward the Green Revolution. Cushman 2013 will become the definitive work on the topic.
Cushman, Gregory T. Guano and the Opening of the Pacific World: A Global Ecological History. Studies in Environment and
History. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2013.
Cushman’s uniquely thorough and sophisticated work shows how significant guano was to the development of agriculture globally and how
dramatic the consequences of synthetic chemical substitutes for it were. Particularly strong in emphasizing the linkages in technological
development across national boundaries.
Agriculture and Industrialization in the 20th Century
The increasing salience of industrial technologies in Europe and the United States changed agriculture in profound ways. For the theme of
technologies in agriculture in Latin America, this is complicated, as noted before, by the similarities between colonial and later export-
oriented Latin American plantations and the industrial enterprises of northern nations. There is no question, however, that the rise of
industrial economies presented special opportunities and challenges in Latin America. The intervention of the state and the deliberate
fashioning of agricultural policies and technologies in the pursuit of industrialization become major elements shaping the character of
agricultural technologies.
State Policy and Agricultural Development
Political parties and movements were dominated in the 20th century by the desire to emulate the industrial success of Europe and the
United States. Agriculture was squeezed by government to produce revenues to finance industrialization. Farmers and peasants
experienced more or less permanent financial stress that discouraged investment in new technology. Import substitution seeking to develop
domestic industries often kept prices high for machinery and other industrial inputs. Policies meant to incentivize industrialization through
cheap labor sought to keep food prices low, penalizing agricultural producers. Protectionist tariffs in the United States and Europe
discouraged development of those export crops, such as Argentine beef and grains, that were competitive with northern products. The new
mass markets of industrialized nations, along with modern transport, refrigeration, and processing, also occasioned commercial
development of remote regions and massive deforestation in tropical areas suited to cultivation of bananas, coffee, and cacao, along with
new technologies. While putting the squeeze on agriculture for revenue, governments and corporations looked to agriculture as a market
for industrial goods and accordingly sought to encourage mechanization and chemical dependence. They also sought to maximize export
earnings to finance national budgets and reinvestment. Consistent with those goals, the Mexican government used its nationalized
petroleum industry to provide exceptionally cheap fertilizers and pesticides to farmers (see Wright 2005, cited under the Conventional
Agriculture Perspective). Other nations used these and other mechanisms to subsidize machine and chemical inputs. Those with large
landholdings and political influence tended to favor these policies. Internally contradictory policies shifted dramatically with unpredictable
regime changes. The dominant market forces were generated internationally by the large industrial economies and were relatively little
influenced by the needs of rural Latin America, with the corruption and authoritarian character of many governments aiding in imposing
investment schemes. The overall result was a very complicated and uncertain environment for innovation and investment, whether for
large, well-financed agriculturalists or peasants and small farmers, as explored in the modern context by articles in Anderson and Valdés
2008. Peasants, small farmers, and farm laborers felt squeezed on every hand and mounted protests, armed rebellions, and land reform
movements, whose objectives were largely contained or suppressed. Most of all, the rural poor abandoned the countryside for the city.
There, they constituted a cheap labor force as an incentive for industrialization, and those who stayed in the countryside became more
easily available as landless farm workers. Wright 2005, cited under the Conventional Agriculture Perspective, summarizes these trends in
Latin America. Scott 1999 analyzes the modernization of capitalist agriculture in these terms, emphasizing the key role of the state.
Twomey and Helwege 1991 is a varied collection of articles that give individual country perspectives.
Anderson, Kym, and Alberto Valdés, eds. Distortions to Agricultural Incentives in Latin America. Washington, DC: World Bank,
2008.
Articles from neoclassical perspective, analyzing problems in the agricultural economy as a result of policy mistakes and market failure.
Scott, James C. Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed. Yale Agrarian Studies.
New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1999.
A trenchant and provocative analysis of how agricultural modernization failed, dissenting both from neoclassical and Marxist analyses that
are more commonly applied to the same issue.
Twomey, Michael J., and Ann Helwege, eds. Modernization and Stagnation: Latin American Agriculture into the 1990s.
Contributions in Latin American Studies 1. New York: Greenwood, 1991.
Available in Spanish from Fondo de Cultura Económica, Mexico. A series of scholarly articles that reveal major policy and economic trends
affecting agricultural development, largely from a conventional and dualistic perspective.
Latin America and the Green Revolution
What was to become known as “the Green Revolution”—an agriculture characterized by newly bred varieties of high-yielding grains with a
high degree of dependency on synthetic fertilizers, pesticides, and irrigation—was first developed in Mexico under a research program
supported by the US government, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the Mexican government under an agreement signed in 1941. The fruits
of this research were later to be exported around the world, as, from its inception, its sponsors had hoped it would be. The so-called “Green
Revolution package,” all of whose elements were held to be essential for success, included “improved” seed varieties, abundant fertilizers
and pesticides, reliable irrigation, and the credit to finance them. The Green Revolution technologies developed in Mexico had an especially
strong influence in India, Pakistan, and some other areas of Asia. Research policies, methods, and institutions pioneered as an overall
approach to the newly named problem of “agricultural development” in Mexico also became the nucleus for what would become the
international network of agricultural-research establishments now grouped in the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research
(CGIAR). In this sense, Latin America can be considered the birthplace of a large share of the agricultural technologies that produce most
of the world’s food today. Wright 2005, cited under the Conventional Agriculture Perspective, demonstrates the key role of Mexico and
research undertaken there in the origins and character of the Green Revolution. Karim 1986, a bibliography, is now badly outdated but
remains very useful nonetheless because much of the history and analysis of the Green Revolution that has influenced current views was
done before 1986. See also Scott 1999, cited under State Policy and Agricultural Development, for highly critical views of the Green
Revolution, and Conway 2012, cited under the All-Inclusive Approach, for a view more friendly to the Green Revolution, from a writer
formally much more critical of it.
Karim, M. Bazlul, comp. The Green Revolution: An International Bibliography. Bibliographies and Indexes in Economics and
Economic History 2. New York: Greenwood, 1986.
A very large though certainly not complete bibliography on the topic, up to 1986. A certain tendency to ignore sources critical of the Green
Revolution.
Alternative Visions
Attempts by peasant movements such as the Zapatistas during the Mexican Revolution to offer an alternative model of rural development
were largely unsuccessful, though they certainly had a significant influence in Mexico and some other nations. Land reform movements in
many countries involved ideas about alternative styles of technological development along with land redistribution. None of these
alternative visions were broadly successful, but most exerted some lingering influence toward technologies favorable to small-scale
agriculture. The Nicaraguan land reform under the Sandinistas in the 1980s was heavily influenced by nascent agroecological thinking. The
most prominent Brazilian land reform movement has officially adopted what they specifically call an agroecological model, which they work
to implement in land reform settlements with markedly varying success. The governments of Bolivia and Venezuela are currently engaged
in land reforms that involve such ideas. Deere and Royce 2009 is a collection of articles that represent these ideas as currently in motion
within rural social movements. A good entry point into the larger literature can be found at the University of Wisconsin’s Land Tenure
Center.
Deere, Carmen Diana, and Frederick S. Royce, eds. Rural Social Movements in Latin America: Organizing for Sustainable
Livelihoods. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2009.
A look at the key late-20th- to early-21st-century Latin American social movements and their visions for agriculture, written by prominent
scholars. Shows how political and economic goals are increasingly entwined with concerns for long-term sustainability.
Land Tenure Center. Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies, University of Wisconsin.
Publications, archives, and links from an organization that has been promoting scholarship on land reform for decades.
Theoretical Debates on Dualism
For much of the 20th century and especially after the World War II era, the persistence of “the advanced versus the backward,” or “the
modern versus the traditional,” led to the view that Latin American agriculture was, above all, “dualistic,” composed of two sectors operating
largely independently of each other and according to very different principles with very different results. The “dualism” perspective tends to
focus attention on the task of promoting production methods that are seen as more modern or advanced and eliminating those that are
seen as less efficient and less supportive of economic growth and generalized social welfare. Social scientists and economists holding this
view attempt to identify the barriers that stand in the way of thorough modernization. The dualism view has been associated with varieties
of what is called modernization theory, which is rejected by most varieties of the competing dependency theory. More-recent analytical
approaches that do not rely on any of these theories are developing. Other views, such as those put forward in Fernandes, et al. 2007
(cited under Geography), by agroecologists in general, and in early-21st-century work in economic history and economics, see both the
“advanced” and the “backward” sectors of economies as less discretely separate phenomena, better understood as part of a single reality.
Ranis 2004 provides a quick and very useful summary of dualism in economic development theory and explores its implications for issues
of concern for technological development in Latin America and elsewhere. The author sums up a growing consensus that the persistence
of analysis based on dualistic models is no longer the best way to look at the issues. Coatsworth and Taylor 1999, an anthology on
economic history, offers a fully developed and complex view, using quantitative neoclassical methods of analysis as an alternative to the
well-defended theoretical oppositions of dependency and modernization theory of past decades. What can be said fairly clearly is that a
simple dichotomy between “advanced” or “modern” on the one hand and the “backward” or “traditional” on the other as functionally distinct
parts of agricultural economies is not favored by any major analytical school in the social sciences. It is important to recognize this because
of the frequent tendency of practitioners in technological fields to continue to operate within such concepts. A serious exploration of these
theoretical positions is outside the scope of this article.
Coatsworth, John H., and Alan M. Taylor, eds. Latin America and the World Economy since 1800. David Rockefeller Series on
Latin American Studies. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University, David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies, 1999.
Persuasively combines neoclassical economic theory with thorough and careful social and economic history. A definitive work that replaces
many earlier less able ones.
Ranis, Gustav. “The Evolution of Development Thinking: Theory and Policy.” Paper presented at the Annual World Bank
Conference on Development Economics, Washington, DC, 3–4 May 2004. Yale University Economic Growth Center Discussion
Paper 886. New Haven, CT: Economic Growth Center, Yale University, 2004.
This paper is unusually useful in the judicious and insightful way it summarizes a very contentious literature.
Resistance to Change
In the 1950s and 1960s, a large and influential literature developed that informed foreign-assistance agencies and government regarding
what was seen as culturally determined and self-defeating “resistance to change” and that advised on how such resistance might best be
overcome. This literature has been severely discredited by scholarship, including Wolf 1966, Kearney 1980, and Nagengast 1991, which
have identified the natural and social parameters that make such resistance appear at least sometimes to be founded in a deep kind of
rationality, whether culturally evolved or personally calculated. The influential Kearney 1996 provides a much-deeper analysis of rural
livelihoods that sets much of the literature on its ear in ways that have not yet been thoroughly assimilated in the wider literature. Wilken
1987, cited under Management and Expertise in Pre-Columbian Technologies, and Altieri 1995, cited under the Agroecological Perspective,
have been particularly convincing in demonstrating that what are now often identified as backward features of small-scale indigenous and
later mestizo and settler peasant agriculture have been shown to be capable of providing relative economic security during times of
economic difficulties and natural events such as droughts, floods, and pest outbreaks. Some such technologies can be seen as a
consequence of deliberate or inadvertent adaptations that sacrifice maximization of yield in order to facilitate survival in times of scarcity.
The agroecology texts point out that, in contrast, “modern technologies” typically do relatively well under specifically constructed ideal
conditions but can fail radically due to adverse conditions. For example, capital- and chemical-intensive technologies can be made into
burdens rather than advantages when credit is unavailable and prices are low. High-yielding seed stocks are sometimes more vulnerable
than traditional seed varieties to a wide variety of pest and disease conditions that they cannot survive without capital expenditures on
chemicals. Sometimes such high-yielding seeds have been developed specifically to do well in one of these adverse circumstances—such
as seeds resistant to drought or to a particular disease—but they do not produce well across a broad spectrum of possible adversities.
Kearney, Michael. “Agribusiness and the Demise or the Rise of the Peasantry.” In Special Issue: Peasants: Capital Penetration
and Class Structure in Rural Latin America, Part III. Latin American Perspectives 7.4 (1980): 115–124.
In this early work, Kearney began to dismantle the simple view of rural livelihoods that at one and the same time ignored the pressure of
agribusiness developments and the multiple strategies used by peasants to survive in hostile economic environments.
Kearney, Michael. Reconceptualizing the Peasantry: Anthropology in Global Perspective. Critical Essays in Anthropology.
Boulder, CO: Westview, 1996.
Kearney was concerned to show that the category of “peasant” was frozen in a block of preconceptions that had little to do with the lived
experience of peasants and other rural people, who were engaged in much more complex strategies of survival than imagined. The false
preconceptions led to ineffective or damaging interventions in rural life and among the peasantry, including misguided technological
recommendations.
Nagengast, Carole. Reluctant Socialists, Rural Entrepreneurs: Class, Culture, and the Polish State. Studies in the Ethnographic
Imagination. Boulder, CO: Westview, 1991.
In this work on Poland, Nagengast, who had done extensive fieldwork in Mexico as well, shows that rural people are open to change, but
on the basis of their own rationales for improved lives rather than that of outsiders. Contains an extensive literature review on the issue of
the supposed “resistance to change” among the peasantry.
Wolf, Eric R. Peasants. Foundations of Modern Anthropology. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1966.
One of the preeminent anthropologists working in rural Latin America summed up much of his life’s work in this volume, which seriously
discredited the long literature on peasant resistance to change.
Current Topics
Following are brief treatments of selected topics in the modern development of agricultural technology in Latin America. All these topics are
important in agriculture globally. Each is the subject of a vast literature, and most generate significant controversy beyond the scope of the
current article. What we have emphasized here are those concerns that arouse special interest or controversy specifically within Latin
American contexts.
Transgenic Crops
Much of Latin America’s soy, cotton, and maize production is now dependent on “GMOs” (genetically modified organisms) or “transgenic
crops,” with supporting technologies, such as the lavish use of glyphosate (e.g., Roundup) herbicides for GMO soybean production. James
2011 provides an annual estimate of GMO crops by regions. New technologies developed in any country can be and often are very quickly
transferred to any other country in which a market exists or can be created. The very large literature on advantages and disadvantages of
GMO crops is beyond the scope of this article. Transgenic crops are giving rise to some particularly Latin American responses. For
example, the Argentine courts have found that transgenics may not be protected by intellectual-property claims, which, paradoxically for
those concerned with other aspects of transgenics, has helped to support their adoption. Brazil, after long banning transgenics, now
permits and promotes their use along with intellectual-property protections. In Mexico, debates concentrate with special intensity on the
issue of whether transgenics have or will contaminate the nation’s rich heritage of native crop varieties, arousing a host of venerable issues
in Mexican rural development. While the use of transgenics continues to expand, the controversy surrounding their use remains very
heated throughout Latin America. Newell 2009 and Otero 2012 exemplify the social-science critique of biotechnologies in Latin America.
Blanco 2008 and Conway 2012 view GMOs as favorable tools in the future development of agriculture. Anthropologist Elizabeth Fitting
(Fitting 2011) gives a rich account of the nature of controversy over GMOs where they are considered by many to be a threat to national
identity as well as production systems, unlike controversies in the United States, where national identity is not at stake in the debate.
Altieri, Miguel A. Genetic Engineering in Agriculture: The Myths, Environmental Risks, and Alternatives. 2d ed. Oakland, CA:
Food First, 2004.
A very useful, quick summary of arguments critical of transgenic crops, lucid and not sensationalized. Maintains its value because of its
emphasis on basic principles. Not useful for the latest information.
Blanco, Carlos A., ed. Cultivos transgénicos para la agricultura latinoamericana. Colección “Ciencia para Todos” 219. Mexico
City: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2008.
An enthusiastic view of the potential for transgenic crops in the Latin American context.
Conway, Gordon. “Designer Crops.” In One Billion Hungry: Can We Feed the World? By Gordon Conway, 167–187. Ithaca, NY:
Cornell University Press, 2012.
Offers a favorable though not entirely uncritical view of the prospects, not focused on Latin America but with a useful bibliography.
Fitting, Elizabeth. The Struggle for Maize: Campesinos, Workers, and Corn in the Mexican Countryside. Durham, NC: Duke
Fitting shows how complicated and controversial the introduction of GMO maize has been in Mexico, where maize is strongly associated
with national identity as well as with successful traditional methods of farming.
James, Clive. Global Status of Commercialized Biotech / GM Crops, 2011. ISAAA Brief 43-2011. Ithaca, NY: ISAAA, 2011.
The ISAAA (International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-Biotech Applications, ISAAA.org) publishes this annual estimate along with a
variety of other largely pro-biotech publications.
Newell, Peter. “Bio-hegemony: The Political Economy of Agricultural Biotechnology in Argentina.” Journal of Latin American
Studies 41.1 (2009): 27–57.
Demonstrates the way biotechnologies are used to establish corporate control of the agricultural economy. Contrasts Argentine law and
policy with that of other Latin American nations.
Otero, Gerardo. “The Neoliberal Food Regime in Latin America: State, Agribusiness Transnational Corporations and
Biotechnology.” Canadian Journal of Development Studies 33.3 (2012): 282–294.
Like in Newell 2009, argues that biotechnology is an entry point for corporate control, with doleful social and environmental consequences.
Germplasm Conservation
People agree that the thousands of plant varieties that were developed over millennia in Latin America are an invaluable resource for plant
breeding in the future, and that it is essential to establish “seed banks” that seek to preserve the germplasm of ancient and modern crop
plants. Vavilov 2009, a pre–World War II work on the origins of domesticated crops, laid the basis for this idea and for its later
implementation. Diverse germplasm is important to corporations engaged in plant breeding and developing GMO crops, as it is for those
interested in the use of the germplasm by traditional farmers and plant breeders seeking to preserve the biological capital needed to breed
better plants by using both ancient and modern methods. Biodiversity International is a fundamental source for information on seed banks
and germplasm conservation. Since the early 1980s or so, the realization that seeds deteriorate and do not continue to evolve to new
circumstances when preserved only in seed banks has led to support for “in situ” conservation of crop varieties, by which some farmers are
protected or subsidized to use seed varieties no longer in common use. This effort also encourages recognition of the value of old as well
as new technologies in growing the seeds, so that continued evolution that preserves diversity may continue. The best sites for on-farm
seed conservation tend to be on small farms in the original areas where crops were domesticated, lending special importance to various
Latin American regions (e.g., highland Peru for potatoes, southern Mexico for maize). In this sense, those who argue for the “conventional”
perspective usually recognize at least a germplasm conservation value for more-traditional techniques. Brush 2000 is a good guide to this
question, and Jarvis, et al. 2008 provides a quantitative assessment of best techniques in a large-scale study. Disagreement enters where
agroecologists argue that official in situ efforts will offer far-too-little ongoing evolution of seeds within a variety of ecological and cultural
contexts, and that in situ conservation may be critically undermined by contamination by GMO crops—for example, controversial studies in
Quist and Chapela 2001 and Dalton 2008 argue that this has occurred in Mexico. The situation is complicated by the fact that Green
Revolution seed varieties have also frequently been incorporated into small-scale operations using various traditional cultivation
techniques, as with maize in Mexico and potatoes in Peru (see Brush 2000 and Zimmerer and Douches 1991, respectively). Agroecologists
argue for generalized crop diversity within an agriculture dominated by small and medium holdings as the only real way to protect and
foster germplasm diversity.
Biodiversity International.
Since 2006, the current name replaces the International Plant Genetics Resources Institute. Associated with the United Nations Food and
Agriculture Organization (FAO) and is a member of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) institutions.
Works to preserve genetic diversity, concentrating on in situ work involving small farmers whose welfare and the welfare of their
communities can be aided by biodiversity in crop preservation and in wild organisms. Publications and bibliographic resources.
Brush, Stephen B., ed. Genes in the Field: On-Farm Conservation of Crop Diversity. Ottawa, ON: International Development
Research Centre, 2000.
The author, still active, is one of the foremost authorities in the field, with decades of research and development experience in Latin
America and elsewhere. Both an argument for the work and a guide to accomplishing it.
Dalton, Rex. “Modified Genes Spread to Local Maize.” Nature 456.7219 (2008): 149.
The latest salvo in the question of whether transgenic maize is spreading to landraces, both confirming Quist and Chapela’s earlier findings
and limiting their significance.
Jarvis, Devra I., Anthony H. D. Brown, Pham Hung Cuong, et al. “A Global Perspective of the Richness and Evenness of
Traditional Crop-Variety Diversity Maintained by Farming Communities.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the
United States of America 105.14 (2008): 5326–5331.
Identifies key elements of successful in situ diversity maintenance in study sites around the world, including Peru, Mexico, and Chile.
Emphasizes the importance of farm size and “underscores the importance of a large number of small farms adopting distinctively different
varietal strategies . . .” (p. 5328).
Quist, David, and Ignacio H. Chapela. “Transgenic DNA Introgressed into Traditional Maize Landraces in Oaxaca, Mexico.” Nature
414.6863 (2001): 541–543.
A highly controversial study showing genetic contamination of maize varieties by GMO maize. Subsequent studies both denied and
confirmed the findings. The latest, Dalton 2008, confirms the spread but could not find that the contaminated crops were being reproduced.
Vavilov, Nikolai I. Origin and Geography of Cultivated Plants. Translated by Doris Löve. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University
Press, 2009.
This book contains a collection of Vavilov’s essays and articles from the 1920s to 1940, first published in Russian on the centennial of his
birth (Leningrad, Soviet Union: Nauka, 1987). It is difficult to understand current concepts and controversies with regard to crop biodiversity
and agricultural technology without an appreciation for Vavilov’s foundational work.
Zimmerer, Karl S., and David S. Douches. “Geographical Approaches to Crop Conservation: The Partitioning of Genetic Diversity
in Andean Potatoes.” Economic Botany 45.2 (1991): 176–189.
Demonstrates extremely sophisticated strategies Andean peasant farmers use to protect and utilize genetic diversity.
Intellectual Property
Controversies over intellectual property (IPR) in GMO crops have highlighted the importance of laws governing patents and copyrights.
Trade liberalization has been linked to campaigns to gain international recognition and enforcement of intellectual-property regimes. These
have been highly controversial both with regard to traditional agricultural commodities and with regard to allegations of “biopiracy” involving
wild plant materials used by the pharmaceutical industry. Dutfield 2002 centers on the relationship of trade and IPR issues and provides a
good foundation of legal thinking on the issue and international agreements, with emphasis on the effects on biodiversity, but covering
crops. Jonas and Shrumm 2012 provides a brief account of the development of alternative methods for intellectual-rights protection for
indigenous peoples, focusing on the scholarly and organizational work of anthropologist Darrell Posey. The controversy over intellectual-
property rights has been heightened because public research institutes and universities doing agricultural research have suffered declining
government support for the last several decades while private firms have increased their research efforts. Public institutions were mostly
bound by arrangements that made new seed and plant varieties available to any user without fee. Private research organizations jealously
guard their research results and control them both through old and new legal mechanisms. Brush and Stabinsky 1996 is somewhat dated,
but the various authors present unusually thoughtful approaches. While intellectual-property regimes are justified to a large extent on the
necessity for providing incentives for investment in research and innovation, it is widely recognized that they can also have a dampening
effect on adoption and invention of new technologies. Latin American governments continue to experiment with and enforce a variety of
policies with respect to intellectual property. For example, Argentina has allowed largely unrestricted use of genetically modified crop
varieties that have been restricted for use in other countries, but it has insisted on liberal rules allowing farmers to replant GMO seeds, in
contradiction of licensing agreements that seed companies have tried to impose. Newell 2009, cited under Transgenic Crops, is excellent
and contrasts the Argentine legal approach to that of other countries in Latin America. Many Latin American institutions have been
establishing a strong capability in genetic engineering for agriculture. Corporate research in bioengineering is also strong in some Latin
American countries, sometimes because of the desirability of working out locally adapted products, and sometimes because regulatory
oversight is more permissive than it is in the United States and Europe.
Brush, Stephen B., and Doreen Stabinsky, eds. Valuing Local Knowledge: Indigenous People and Intellectual Property Rights.
Washington, DC: Island, 1996.
An edited volume treating the theme in a variety of locales. Carefully argued and contrasting view on IPR regimes and their implications.
Dutfield, Graham. Intellectual Property Rights, Trade, and Biodiversity: Seeds and Plant Varieties. London: Earthscan, 2002.
A very useful introduction to the issue, focused on biodiversity implications but with a solid discussion of basic legal questions and case
studies.
Jonas, Harry, and Holly Shrumm. “Recalling Traditional Resource Rights: An Integrated Rights Approach to Biocultural
Diversity.” Malaysia: Natural Justice (May 2012).
A brief article that traces the work of Darrell Posey and colleagues in thinking about IPR and alternative forms of rights protection for
indigenous people.
Irrigation
One of the more important large-scale developments in agricultural technologies was the reshaping of the agricultural landscape through
large-scale irrigation schemes. In turn, the plant varieties, cultivation techniques, and new plant varieties associated with the Green
Revolution, as well as others, were increasingly developed to increase productivity consistent with reliable water delivery. The new
possibilities for rapid growth in irrigated acreages in turn played a significant role in creating the incentives for plant-breeding toward the
high-yielding and often-irrigation-dependent seeds developed in the mid-20th century. These opportunities were often realized as a result of
financing for large-scale infrastructure projects by the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank, USAID, and other international
development institutions (all accessible through their websites). Construction of such large infrastructure projects, often financed from
abroad, has often been controversial, and because of the centrality of irrigation and multipurpose dams for other technologies, the
controversy is far reaching in its implications for technological development and choice. The view that large-scale irrigation schemes
usually favor well-financed and larger-scale operations, even when developed alongside agrarian reform measures, has been advanced
more or less forcefully for virtually every major irrigation project in Latin America. Views highly critical of such projects can be found through
the International Rivers Network and the Environmental Defense Fund, and Fox and Brown 1998 chronicles and analyzes social
movements—many of them concerned with large dam projects—that are critical of large infrastructure development. Aboites Aguilar 2009,
in a searching critique of the author’s earlier work, emphasizes the essentially political character of water development decisions, showing
how central they are to the construction of the power of the state. Reform initiatives concerning water law have been underway since the
early 1990s in Bolivia, Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, Uruguay, and other Latin American nations. Torregrosa 2009 (for Mexico) and Oliveira and
Talamini 2010 (for Brazil) explore issues in how irrigation law reform has played out. An array of technologies invented around the world in
recent decades have provided ways to make more-efficient use of water, and these are in use in some Latin American regions. In addition
to spray dispersion and drip irrigation, these include laser-guided field leveling, on-site and satellite computer monitoring of soil moisture
and salt content to guide water application schedules, computer modeling of microclimate and weather, and modeling of evapotranspiration
rates and soil moisture. Molden 2007 takes a neoclassical approach to promoting irrigation use, but with higher efficiency.
Aboites Aguilar, Luis. La decadencia del agua de la nación: Estudio sobre desigualdad social y cambio político en México
(segunda mitad del siglo XX). Mexico City: El Colégio de México, Centro de Estudios Históricos, 2009.
The author critiques his earlier work, El agua de la nación, on the importance of water development in 20th-century Mexico, showing that
the central questions have less to do with technical issues of water provision and control than they do with the construction of political
authority and the role of the state. While particularly relevant to Mexico, the lessons could be considered universal.
Environmental Defense Fund.
One of the most prominent organizations working at an international level on issues related to large dams and irrigation schemes. Very
important in the campaign to improve accountability at the multilateral development banks, especially the World Bank, which was very
active in funding irrigation projects in Latin America.
Fox, Jonathan, with L. David Brown, eds. The Struggle for Accountability: The World Bank, NGOs, and Grassroots Movements.
Global Environmental Accords. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1998.
Articles that chronicle the effort to make the World Bank more responsive to environmental concerns and the interests of affected
populations in financing large-scale infrastructure projects, including irrigation schemes. Gives a detailed accounting of many aspects and
phases in this work.
International Rivers Network.

Carries on a program of critical examination and organization with respect to large water projects, many in Latin America, with links and
resources.
Molden, David, ed. Water for Food, Water for Life: A Comprehensive Assessment of Water Management in Agriculture. London:
Earthscan, 2007.
A collaborative study effort that largely supports both the expansion of irrigation acreage and water law reforms associated with reducing
the role of the state. The journal of the International Water Management Institute carries largely technical articles on a variety of related
topics.
Oliveira, Letícia de, and Edson Talamini. “Water Resources Management in the Brazilian Agricultural Irrigation.” Journal of
Ecology and the Natural Environment 2.7 (2010): 123–133.
In spite of a painfully bad translation, this article and its brief bibliography is a useful introduction to key features of Brazilian water law
reform.
Torregrosa, María Luisa. Agua y riego: Desregulación de la agricultura en México. Dilemas Sociales y Económicos en
Latinoamérica. Mexico City: FLACSO, 2009.
A critical analysis of water reforms in Mexico that highlights successes, failures, and specific effects according to land tenure and size of
operation.
Soils, Forests, and Soybeans
As elsewhere in the world, new attention is being given in Latin America to soil structure, chemistry, and microbiology. Justus von Liebig’s
view in the 19th century that soil was merely a medium for plant nutrients promoted a cavalier approach in the 20th century to the
application of chemical fertilizers and pesticides, without attention to the effects on soil characteristics vital to plant health. For example, soil
salinization and compaction are widespread consequences of irrigation and agrichemical use. The extremely wide diversity of soil types in
Latin America has called attention to the complexity of understanding soil health in relation to long-term productivity. Many observers
believe that the failure to understand or respect the complexity and diversity of soils has been a consistent part of rapacious and/or ill-
considered agricultural development. With these concerns in mind, the Brazilian soil association published a massive volume that surveys
Brazilian soil types (Araujo 2002). European Soil Portal focuses its attention on soils around the world in light of climate change concerns
and is planning to release Soil atlas of Latin America and the Caribbean, working with national agricultural research agencies. In the early
1980s, little soy was produced in tropical regions due to limitations largely set by soil conditions. The Brazilian national agricultural agency,
EMBRAPA, along with regional university and privately financed researchers (frequently financed by grower’s associations), developed
various recipes for fertilizers and other soil amendments, along with adaptation of soy varieties to the soil conditions of the Brazilian tropics.
This has led to the rapid conversion to large-scale soybean plantings of a very large share of the Brazilian cerrado, a scrub forest
association that accounts for something close to a third of Brazil’s immense biodiversity. This is considered by many to be an enormous
economic success, by which Brazil has become one of the top two soybean producers in the world and a major supplier to China. Others
consider that the expansion of soy into the cerrado has been as damaging as Amazon rainforest deforestation in terms of the loss of
biodiversity, and at the same time, this expansion has strongly reinforced the role of large landholders in the Brazilian economy and control
of state policy. Pietrafesa and Dutra e Silva 2011 offers a variety of articles that discuss the origins and impact of the soy economy on the
cerrado.
Araujo, Quintino Reis de, ed. 500 anos de uso do solo no Brasil. Papers presented at the XIII Reunião Brasileira de Manejo e
Conservação do Solo e da Água, held 6–11 August 2000 in Ilhéus, Brazil. Ilhéus, Bahia: Equipe Editus, Universidade Estadual de
Santa Cruz, 2002.
Articles from a national conference provide an encyclopedic treatment of Brazilian soils. The articles are of uneven quality but succeed in
giving an idea of the richness of the topic, and in some cases, they are authoritative and thorough.
European Soil Portal—Soil Data and Information Systems. European Commission, Joint Research Centre.
The European Commission has been financing a project to provide thorough mapping of soils in the world, particularly in response to the
need to respond to soil-related climate change issues. They have been doing country-by-country mapping in Latin America and plan to
publish Soil Atlas of Latin America and the Caribbean in September 2013.
Pietrafesa, José Paulo, and Sandro Dutra e Silva, eds. Transformações no cerrado: Progresso, consumo e natureza. Goiânia,
Brazil: Editora da PUC Goiás, 2011.
Edited volume with articles in Portuguese and one in English that provide historical perspective, geographical description, and analytical
frameworks for assessing the enormous changes brought to the region as a consequence of the recent conversion of much of the territory
to highly mechanized, chemically dependent, large-scale soy bean operations, one of the largest territorial expansions of agriculture in the
world since World War II.
Pest Management and Pesticides
Heavy dependence on pesticides is common in Latin America, to a considerable extent a heritage of the Green Revolution, potentiated by
the inherent pest vulnerability of crops grown in hot and humid climates and by weak government regulation. Not only are crops more
generally vulnerable to pests in frost-free climates, but the pests and diseases of warm climates are often able to adapt more rapidly to
measures used to control them. Brazil now uses the largest quantity of pesticides of any country. For several decades, pesticide-
manufacturing companies have been moving production and some research to nations with less regulatory oversight, including many Latin
American countries. Wright 2005, Murray 1994, and other studies show that pesticide use in Latin America constitutes a serious public
health and ecological problem. The main technical answer to problems created by pesticides that is given by the conventional agricultural
approach is known as “integrated pest management,” or IPM. IPM seeks more-discriminating understanding of host-pest dynamics and, on
the basis of that, more-selective use of pesticides and other control methods. There is little debate that IPM constitutes an improvement
over slapdash methods it often replaces, but agroecologists argue that it does not go deeply enough into the ecological analysis and
treatment either of the host-pest relationship or the best methods of pest control. (See also Altieri, 1995, Gliessman 2007, and Vandermeer
2011, all cited under the Agroecological Perspective.) For the tropics as a whole, Taylor, et al. 2003 provides a technical entry into the
question of the fate of pesticide residues.
Murray, Douglas L. Cultivating Crisis: The Human Cost of Pesticides in Latin America. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1994.
Murray brought his experience in regulation of worker health and safety and his training as a sociologist to his practical work and
epidemiological research in improving pesticide regulation in Nicaragua. His work extends to other Central American regions, with general
points made about pesticides in Latin America.
Taylor, Milton D., Stephen J. Klaine, Fernando P. Carvalho, Damia Barcelo, and Jan Everaarts, eds. Pesticide Residues in Tropical
Ecosystems: Distribution, Fate, and Effects. London: Taylor & Francis, 2003.
A highly technical work that in articles by various investigators seeks to establish the environmental fate and significance of pesticide use in
the tropics, with several Latin American studies.
Wright, Angus. The Death of Ramón González: The Modern Agricultural Dilemma. 2d ed. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2005.
This work seeks to trace the history and define the dilemmas of agricultural development arising out of the Green Revolution work carried
out in Mexico, beginning in 1941. Part of the work is a field study carried out in Mexico to document pesticide use practices and their effects
on farmworker and environmental health.
Livestock
Greatly increased demand for meat has led to an explosion of interest in livestock in Latin America, as elsewhere. There are some
surprises in the sector, however. For example, Argentina, once one of the world’s most important exporters of beef, remains a major
producer but consumes domestically so much beef that the nation’s role in world trade is now relatively minor. Brazil now has the world’s
largest number of beef cattle, with well over 90 percent grass fed. Some see this as an advantage in terms of improved human health and
use of environmental resources, while others hold that it represents an economically inefficient and environmentally wasteful practice that
encourages deforestation. While expansion of livestock into the Amazon region was initially reliant on simple clearing without further
management, resulting in low productivity and rapid exhaustion of soils, cattle have been increasingly raised on carefully worked-out
regimes of introduced grasses and soil treatments. These have both encouraged further expansion of cattle into the Amazon and, to some
extent, stabilized operations into a more sustainable pattern of resource use. As a result, the controversy over livestock-driven
deforestation has simultaneously become more intense and more complex, as shown in Faminow 1998. Many are now talking about a
“livestock revolution” comparable to the “Green Revolution,” which is based on improved breeding technologies along with the development
of complementary techniques and practices. From Mexico to Argentina, most Latin American nations have researchers and ranchers who
are active participants in these changes (see chapter 10 of Conway 2012, cited under the All-Inclusive Approach, and Guimarães, et al.
2004, a volume that provides an overview of various technologies and evaluation techniques, as well as brief bibliographies). The volume
demonstrates the way some grazing technologies until recently taken to be experimental have moved into accepted parts of the
“conventional” discourse. Various systematic schemes for moving grazing animals across the landscape to improve pasture performance
have been enthusiastically embraced by many small-scale and some large-scale producers in Latin America. Many of the rotational grazing
systems have been developed in France and the United States and need more work on adaptation to the specific and highly diverse forage
ecologies of Latin America, work that is indeed ongoing both by formal research institutions and by informal on-farm experimentation.
Eaton, et al. 2011 summarizes a characteristic research effort, showing the advantages of such systems in the Brazilian pantanal.
Eaton, Donald Parsons, Sandra Aparecida Santos, Maria do Carmo Andrade Santos, José Vergílio Bernardes Lima, and Alexine
Keuroghlian. “Rotational Grazing of Native Pasturelands in the Pantanal: An Effective Conservation Tool.” Tropical Conservation
Science 4.1 (2011): 39–52.
Research showing both economic and environmental advantages of rotational grazing in one of the most environmentally important regions
of Latin America.
Faminow, Merle D. Cattle, Deforestation, and Development in the Amazon: An Economic, Agronomic, and Environmental
Perspective. Wallingford, UK: CABI, 1998.
Faminow argues that cattle production in the Amazon is not necessarily the destructive and economically marginal activity as usually
predicted. Careful management can produce (and has produced) reliable profits without despoiling soils and can be done on much more
limited amounts of cleared land than the predominant extensive grazing.
Guimarães, Elcio Perpétuo, José Ignacio Sanz, Idupulapati M. Rao, María Cristina Amézquita, Edgar Amézquita, and Richard
James Thomas, eds. Agropastoral Systems for the Tropical Savannas of Latin America. CIAT Publication 338. Cali, Colombia:
CIAT, 2004.
This edited volume provides a highly useful guide to various regions of and practices in Latin American livestock production. It discusses
and provides evaluation methods for rotational and other grazing systems.
“Nontraditional Exports”
Liberalized trade combined with a long-term drop in the costs of rapid shipping of agricultural commodities has led to changes in
agricultural technologies and the crops they support. The possibility of shipping highly perishable fruits and vegetables, often by air freight,
has produced and continues to produce rapid technological change from Mexico’s northern irrigated valleys to the vineyards of Chile’s
central valley and to the previously remote sertão of the Brazilian Northeast. Programs supported by the US and European government “aid
agencies” promoted intensive production of “nontraditional exports” commodities—that is, not the “traditional” bananas, coffee, cacao, and
cotton but rather fruits and vegetables—into such areas as highland Guatemala. These farms are usually dependent on liberal applications
of synthetic pesticides and fertilizers and on increased use of hired labor. Conroy, et al. 1996 shows how major intentional and unintended
social and technological changes followed in the wake of these programs, as does Deere and León 2001. McIntyre, et al. 2009b
(International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development: Agriculture at a Crossroads; Latin America
and the Caribbean Report), cited under Contrasting Perspectives in Confrontation and Compromise, is sharply critical of nontraditional
export programs. Important items in the global supermarket basket are farmed shrimp, salmon, and a variety of freshwater fish, and
aquaculture is a rapidly growing field of production and research in Latin America. Wurmann, et al. 2011 points out that in some areas it has
helped to diversify production in ways that make opportunities for small producers, while the more lucrative part of the industry tends to be
dominated by large and often-transnational firms. Chile has been particularly heavily invested in salmon farming, sometimes with stark
results promoting disease that forbid further production in the region. Shrimp and salmon farming have been chronically susceptible to
disease outbreaks and have sometimes left trails of ecological damage in their wake. Shrimp farming has also been vulnerable to damage
from pesticide and fertilizer runoff from agricultural fields, making for complicated conflicts between aquaculture and field agriculture. The
US Agency for International Development of the US government (USAID) has been a leading force active in promoting “nontraditional
exports” and aquaculture projects.
Conroy, Michael E., Douglas L. Murray, and Peter M. Rosset. A Cautionary Tale: Failed U.S. Development Policy in Central
America. Food First Development Studies. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1996.
A carefully researched and persuasive critique of nontraditional export policies and programs that pointed out problems other investigators
would study. The authors have extensive firsthand experience in the area, as well as producing the specific research for this volume.
Deere, Carmen Diana, and Magdalena León. Empowering Women: Land and Property Rights in Latin America. Pitt Latin American
Series. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2001.
Crop choices, financing, and technologies, as well as legal regimes, have an effect on the ability of women to acquire and maintain property
rights. Nontraditional export programs have sometimes led to property right shifts toward men and to a more general set of inequalities
exacerbated by the programs.
US Agency for International Development.

Reports and publications on various nontraditional export programs. USAID began in the 1970s to explore alternatives to large-scale
plantation export strategies and thus became the most prominent agency in the financing of nontraditional export programs, focused
especially on Central America and the Andean nations.
Wurmann, Carlos, Alejandro Flores, Byron Jara, Salomon Salcedo, and Octavio Sotomayor. “Fishing and Aquaculture: Towards
Better Governance and Sustainability.” In The Outlook for Agriculture and Rural Development in the Americas: A Perspective on
Latin America and the Caribbean 2011–2012. By Economic Commission on Latin America and the Caribbean, Inter-American
Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture, and Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, 59–68. San Jose, Costa
Rica, IICA, 2011.
Has an assessment of current prospects and problems in Latin American aquaculture.
The Land-Sharing versus Land-Sparing Debate in Conservation and Agriculture
Environmental concerns in agriculture have created a debate in Latin America and elsewhere about fundamental conservation strategies.
Some argue for a strategy of “land sparing,” whereby high levels of intensification—typically involving heavy use of synthetic fertilizers and
pesticides otherwise considered environmentally hazardous—on agricultural land are seen as a benefit to the environment by reducing the
total area of land in agricultural activity, and thus also reducing the need for further deforestation or encroachment on other nonagricultural
land. Those areas devoted to agriculture are to be regarded to a greater or lesser degree as “sacrifice zones”—a term used to describe
Brazil’s biologically diverse cerrado, for example, in which species conservation is largely impossible. The contention is that by focusing
high-yield agriculture on such areas, agriculture can be excluded from more protected areas, such as the Amazon humid rainforest, where
species richness can be respected. Dennis Avery, an economist associated with the Center for Global Food Issues, puts forward the most
sharply delineated, unapologetic version of this point of view. On the other side are those who argue that intensification typically produces
unacceptable levels of environmental damage both on land in production and on nonagricultural land affected by chemical pollution and
other secondary effects. This so-called “land sharing” perspective focuses not on intensification but rather on making agricultural production
less damaging to agricultural land and to neighboring areas. For those arguing for land sharing, there are a variety of compelling reasons to
think that the biological quality of the agricultural landscape is critical to the long-term survival of species, even in areas specifically devoted
to species conservation. Perfecto, et al. 2009 is a forthright “land sharing” argument, with the authors’ experience and evidence coming
largely from Latin America. While in other contexts the agroecology view that tends to support “land sharing” is usually identified with
“environmentalism,” the “land sparing” perspective is frequently espoused by prominent spokespeople for “environmentalism,” thus creating
a deep split in the community of environmental concern. An increasingly common intermediary position on the land-sparing versus land-
sharing debate is elaborated in Fischer, et al. 2008, an article that is not primarily focused on Latin America but considers literature from the
region and sets out to establish general principles rather than a distinctively regional approach. The British Food Ethics Council devoted a
special issue to “sustainable intensification” (Barling 2012) that considers the issue within the broad context of global agriculture and
touches on a variety of topics beyond the question of saving land from agricultural development.
Barling, Liz, ed. Sustainable Intensification: Unravelling the Rhetoric. Food Ethics: The Magazine of the Food Ethics Council 7.2
(2012).
A variety of articles from authors largely critical of what we have called here the conventional perspective, but with a serious effort to clarify
areas of legitimate disagreement and needed research.
Center for Global Food Issues.

The center has on the masthead of its website the phrase, “Growing More Per Acre Leaves More Land for Nature,” and this land-sparing
view is carried forward by many of its publications.
Fischer, Joern, Berry Brosi, Gretchen C. Daily, et al. “Should Agricultural Policies Encourage Land Sparing or Wildlife-Friendly
Farming?” Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment 6.7 (2008): 380–385.
Useful because it lays out the basic arguments on both sides with some fairness, considers strengths and weaknesses of each, and
provides a good literature review to date of publication.
Perfecto, Ivette, John Vandermeer, and Angus Wright. Nature’s Matrix: Linking Agriculture, Conservation and Food Sovereignty.
London: Earthscan, 2009.
An argument for the land-sharing view, written by an ecologist, an evolutionary biologist, and a historian, all with extensive Latin American
experience. Focuses on but not limited to the humid tropics of Latin America, with various case studies.
Climate Change
The issue of global climate change has increasingly shaped debates over the future of agricultural technologies in Latin America.
Uncertainty over regional effects complicates the debate considerably, but the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) argues
that expectation of increasingly unstable climates should drive economic and technological policy toward considerations of security in the
face of droughts, floods, sea-level rises, and more-intense storms. Such arguments divide along somewhat well-worn paths, as people
promoting conventional approaches continue to emphasize the advantages of overall maximization of production while agroecologists
would like to see more stability built into agricultural production. In Brazil and many other Latin American countries the overwhelming
contribution to CO2 and other climate gases comes from deforestation, turning the debates back toward controversies over the driving
forces behind deforestation and the best ways to combat them. The role of biofuels is highly controversial. Reducing Emissions from
Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD) schemes for compensating climate stabilizing activities are also highly controversial, and
Wittman and Caron 2009, the authors’ work in Guatemala, is not encouraging. Fernandes, et al. 2012 provides an authoritative entry into
this complex material. Maletta and Maletta 2011, in contrast, puts forward the view that climate change will have relatively modest effects in
Latin America, but that efforts should be pursued toward adaptation to changes that may occur. Carey 2010, by providing a rich and
sophisticated historical analysis of climate change in the recent past, poses fundamental questions about how society responds to such
challenges, raising disturbing issues about the role of scientists and engineers as well as other self-interested people and institutions.
Carey, Mark. In the Shadow of Melting Glaciers: Climate Change and Andean Society. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010.
By analyzing past incidents of climate change and their effects on society, Carey provides a profoundly disturbing prospect for the future,
without relying on particular models of climate change to come. His account emphasizes the role of expertise and institutional bias as
problematic actors in the assessment of and response to climate change.
Fernandes, Erick C., Ayat Soliman, Roberto Confalonieri, Marcello Donatelli, and Francesco Tubiello. Climate Change and
Agriculture in Latin America, 2020–2050: Projected Impacts and Response to Adaptation Strategies. Washington, DC: World
Bank, 2012.
A thorough study with emphasis on possible strategies for the World Bank and other international banks and agencies. Not as highly critical
of international mitigation compensation schemes (REDD) as are many academic studies, such as Wittman and Caron 2009.
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

The IPCC’s periodic reports, available online, offer chapters on Latin America, and special reports on topics such as biofuels have strong
implications for the region. Produced by interdisciplinary teams in what is primarily a consensus process. Essential starting point in learning
about climate change in agriculture in terms of reducing agriculture’s impact and in terms of adapting agricultural production to climate
change scenarios.
Maletta, Héctor, and Emiliano Maletta. Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security in Latin America. Brentwood, UK: Multi
Science, 2011.
Argues that dire predictions from some IPCC reports regarding the effects of climate change on Latin American agriculture are
exaggerated. Latin America will be less affected than other world regions. Says the predictions do not adequately take into account the
biological adaptability of plants and cultivars and the adaptive capacity of farmers and agriculture as an industry. Recommends only modest
policy changes to facilitate adaptation and to improve current performance of agricultural technologies.
Wittman, Hannah K., and Cynthia Caron. “Carbon Offsets and Inequality: Social Costs and Co-benefits in Guatemala and Sri
Lanka.” Society & Natural Resources 22.8 (2009): 710–726.
One of the first and best studies of attempts to make carbon offset schemes beneficial to poor rural communities. The existing inequalities
of power and wealth undermine the program but in different ways, according to the contexts.
Biofuels
The development of industrial, heating, and transportation fuels is so rapid in much of Latin America that it is extremely difficult to remain
abreast of the territorial expansion of production and innovation in cultivation and processing technologies. Many in Latin America, again
especially in Brazil and other major cane-producing countries, see opportunity in fighting climate change through the production of
“renewable fuels” from sugar that arguably reduce the net global emissions of greenhouse gases. Palm oil production is booming in some
regions, with similar expectations. Brazil’s ethanol program, which dates back to the 1970s and provides a large share (about 40 percent in
2011) of Brazil’s transportation fuels plus significant exports, gives the country a long lead on competitors in terms of policy, technologies,
and business acumen in the field. Brazil and the United States together now produce well over half of commercial biofuels. The rough
equality in production between the two countries is maintained by tariffs and subsidies propping up the biofuel sector in the United States.
Barros 2012 gives a history and current status into 2011 of the Brazilian situation. Humid tropical climates in general, without question, offer
a major competitive advantage in biofuel production in terms both of energy balance and profitability. On the other hand, many worry about
the potential for biofuel production to repeat many of the doleful consequences of large monocrop dependence, including competitive
exclusion of food production and higher food prices. Brazil argues that it can meet major increases in biofuel demand without raising food
prices or opening up new land in forested regions. The entire question of rising agricultural production of biofuels is enormously
complicated and is filled with uncertainties but can be counted on to influence agricultural technologies and policy choices in coming
decades. Gordon Conway’s combination of enthusiasm and caution in his work (Conway 2012, cited under the All-Inclusive Approach) is
typical of the debate over biofuels. The sources given here are chosen as ways of keeping up on a field developing so rapidly that it is
difficult to find definitive or comprehensive treatment of even major subtopics. The IPCC and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation
and Development (OECD) International Energy Agency (IEA) publish periodical studies on the topic, a representative example of which is
given below. Biofuel Watch is issued by an organization frankly opposed to most biofuel development plans, while Biofuels Digest and
Biofuels Journal claim neutrality, but both are more friendly to the industry, and Biofuels Digest is in most respects a trade journal for the
biofuels corporations.
Barros, Sergio. Brazil Biofuels Annual Report 2012. GAIN Report: BR12013. Washington, DC: USDA Foreign Agricultural Service,
Global Agricultural Information Network, 2012.
Annual reports by Barros for the USDA provide authoritative information on the Brazilian biofuels industry with well-selected statistical
presentations.
Biofuel Watch.
A British organization that maintains a website to “raise awareness of the negative impacts” of industrial biofuels and bioenergy on
biodiversity, human rights, food sovereignty, and climate change. Offers both popular and more-analytical material sounding cautionary
notes on biofuels.
Biofuels Digest.
A rich source of news, articles, and bibliography, claiming neutrality but with a decidedly booster’s edge and an editorial board that reflects
an industry perspective.
Biofuels Journal.
A publication of Future Science Ltd., which publishes in a variety of fields, with a largely academic editorial board and a reasonably critical
approach that nonetheless reflects enthusiasm for the overall endeavor of biofuel development.
The Cuban Experiment with Agro-ecology
A fascinating experiment in technological change in agriculture was carried out by the Cuban government as a direct result of the collapse
of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s. The context, practices, and a series of case studies from mostly Cuban agricultural scientists detail
the situation in Funes, et al. 2002. The end of cheap petroleum and agrichemical exports to Cuba led the nation to declare a “special
period” in which every path toward reduced fossil fuel dependence was explored. Cuba had followed a Soviet model built on the
deployment of a decidedly conventional agricultural model. The “special period” created powerful pressure for Cuba to adopt the world’s
first national program in organic agriculture, emphasizing reduced fossil fuel dependence. The program made significant advances in
advancing an essentially agroecological model. The effort involved creating urban gardens and teaching organic farming techniques to
farmers and urbanites alike. The government greatly expanded existing facilities and created new ones for the production of organic pest
control materials and beneficial insects. Major achievements in research and implementation fell short of completely overcoming the
challenges presented, and many in government ministries in Cuba and foreign critics began to pressure for a return to conventional
agriculture as new fuel and chemical supplies began to be found. Avery 2009 claims to unveil the hidden and complete failure of the Cuban
experiment with agroecological approaches to feeding itself, and Altieri and Funes-Monzote 2012 replies directly—the authors are friendly
to the experiment but discuss various problems and challenges. Assessment of Cuba’s still-recent and partially ongoing experiment
provides unique opportunities to understand barriers and opportunities in expanding more ecologically sound approaches to agricultural
development.
Altieri, Miguel A., and Fernando R. Funes-Monzote. “The Cuban Agriculture’s Paradox: The Persistence of the Agroecological
Paradigm and the Emergence of Biotechnology.” Monthly Review 63.8 (2012): 16–26.
In replying to Avery’s article, the authors deny his interpretation of the relevant statistics in a detailed analysis and continue to defend the
agroecological program launched by the Cuban government, but they discuss their distress with strong resistance to it among some Cuban
policymakers, who are moving to a more “industrial” model partly based on adoption of biotechnologies.
Avery, Dennis T. “Cubans Starve on Diet of Lies.” Center for Global Food Issues, 2 April 2009.
At website of the Center for Global Food Issues. Avery argues that the supposed success of the Cuban agricultural experiment with organic
production is belied by chronic food shortages and other persistent problems.
Funes, Fernando, Luis García, Martin Bourque, Nilda Pérez, and Peter M. Rosset. Translated by Dulce María Vento Cárdenas,
Lidia González Seco, Robin Clement, Kristen Cañizares, and Peter Rosset. Sustainable Agriculture and Resistance: Transforming
Food Production in Cuba. Oakland, CA: Food First, 2002.
The original Spanish version was published as Transformando el campo cubano: Avances de la agricultura sostenible (Havana, Cuba:
Asociación Cubana de Técnicos Agricolas y Forestales, 2001). A series of articles, primarily by Cuban researchers participating in the
transformation of agriculture undertaken during the “special period.” Presented in an upbeat and hopeful way that underplays the problem
of overcoming the entrenched conventional perspective on agriculture in Cuban institutions.
Education
While international aid agencies lined up in the mid-20th century to offer agronomic advice to Latin America, many Latin American countries
were producing and sometimes continue to produce a significant and enduring surplus of people formally trained as agronomists. The
International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD) report on Latin America
(McIntyre, et al. 2009b, cited under Contrasting Perspectives in Confrontation and Compromise) emphasizes throughout that there appears
to be a misfit between the needs of the agricultural economy and the quantity and type of skills being created. Some suggest that the
problem is that the kind of education offered is not “modern” or “advanced” enough to satisfy the needs of a rapidly modernizing agricultural
economy. Others suggest that the education has been shaped all too much by a conception of what is modern and desirable in Latin
American agriculture, on the basis of an uncritical view of the perceived successes of agriculture elsewhere rather than on a clear
assessment of what is most appropriate in Latin America. Applied anthropologists and rural sociologists with an interest in rural
development began in the 1990s particularly to think about how to discover, understand, apply, and teach indigenous and local knowledge,
which involve a number of difficult conceptual and practical challenges. DeWalt 1994 emphasizes the specific need of adaptation of
traditional knowledge to specific situations, and Scoones and Thompson 1994 emphasizes institutional barriers, while Sillitoe 1998 shows
how concepts of traditional knowledge are shaped by anthropological practitioners, and Warren, et al. 1995 explores these issues from a
variety of theoretical perspectives and case studies. One approach to resolving this question is to emphasize “farmer-to-farmer” education,
in which structures are created for farmers to share information both within their home regions and nationally and internationally. Relatively
well-financed larger farm operators use formal and informal associations to accomplish this purpose. Small farmers and peasants often
require specific assistance organized by nongovernmental or public institutions. Holt-Giménez 2006 reports on successful efforts in Mexico
and Central America. Conway 2012 provides an insider’s discussion and a rich bibliography on issues on agricultural education and
extension services, largely within more-traditional institutional structures than that advocated in Holt-Giménez 2006. Economic Commission
for Latin America and the Caribbean, et al. 2011 emphasizes that use of the Internet and mobile phones tends to duplicate the inequalities
inherent in rural economies. Poorer farmers often lack the education and access to make the Internet an effective tool and are often beyond
the reach of Internet and phone networks, while more-prosperous operations have now fully incorporated information technologies into their
work.
Conway, Gordon. “Farmers as Innovators.” In One Billion Hungry: Can We Feed the World? By Gordon Conway, 207–226. Ithaca,
NY: Cornell University Press, 2012.
As a participant in the last four decades of innovation in agricultural education and extension, Conway provides an invaluable summary of
major trends in the field and an equally invaluable bibliography.
DeWalt, Billie R. “Using Indigenous Knowledge to Improve Agriculture and Natural Resource Management.” Human Organization
53.2 (1994): 123–131.
DeWalt’s extensive experience in Latin America and practical approach allows him to explore the topic, with useful insights.
Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture, and Food
and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. The Outlook for Agriculture and Rural Development in the Americas: A
Perspective on Latin America and the Caribbean, 2011–2012. San Jose, Costa Rica: IICA, 2011.
Technological development proceeds favorably, but there is a strong need for improvement in information and communications training and
technologies, which currently reflect and perpetuate inequalities and dampen economic growth in agriculture. In contrast to the IAASTD
report on Latin America, there is little perception of the need for fundamentally new approaches to the agricultural curriculum.
Holt-Giménez, Eric. Campesino a Campesino: Voices from Latin America’s Farmer to Farmer Movement for Sustainable
Agriculture. Oakland, CA: Food First, 2006.
The author describes the growth of campesino-to-campesino education as a method in Mexico and Central America. He writes both as an
observer and participant, with long experience in Latin American agriculture. Useful for graduate and undergraduate classes.
Scoones, Ian, and John Thompson, eds. Beyond Farmer First: Rural People’s Knowledge, Agricultural Research and Extension
Practice. London: Intermediate Technology, 1994.
Looks at the challenges to existing research and extension institutions that need to be met to make effective use of local and traditional
knowledge, acknowledging that there are built-in biases that work against such efforts.
Sillitoe, Paul. “The Development of Indigenous Knowledge: A New Applied Anthropology.” Current Anthropology 39.2 (1998):
223–252.
Sillitoe focuses on the role of anthropologists in identifying a variety of disparate cultural phenomena that relate to agricultural production
and that might not be as apparent as such to researchers from other disciplines.
Warren, D. Michael, L. Jan Slikkerveer, and David Brokensha, eds. The Cultural Dimension of Development: Indigenous
Knowledge Systems. IT Studies in Indigenous Knowledge and Development. London: Intermediate Technology, 1995.
A collection of articles largely from applied anthropologists and development workers, on the basis of field experience.
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5/20/22, 5:00 PM Agricultural Technologies - Latin American Studies - Oxford Bibliographies

LAST REVIEWED: 13 JANUARY 2021

The Conventional Agriculture Perspective

Center for Global Food Issues.

Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research.

The Agroecological Perspective

Global Development and Environment Institute.

Institute for Food and Development Policy (Food First).

International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements.

Sociedad Científica Latinoamericana de Agroecología.

Contrasting Perspectives in Confrontation and Compromise

The All-Inclusive Approach

Management and Expertise in Pre-Columbian Technologies

Earls, John. “The Character of Inca and Andean Agriculture.” 1998.

Tortolero, Alejandro. El agua y su historia. Mexico City: Siglo XXI, 2000.

The Colonial Period

The Columbian Exchange

Plantations, Forests, and Slavery

Haciendas and Other Technologies of Security

The Industrial Age, 19th and 20th Centuries

Political Independence and Economic Dependence

Plantations in the National Period

The Nationalization of Nature

Mines, Guano, and Modern Chemistry

Agriculture and Industrialization in the 20th Century

State Policy and Agricultural Development

Latin America and the Green Revolution

Theoretical Debates on Dualism

Environmental Defense Fund.

International Rivers Network.

Soils, Forests, and Soybeans

Pest Management and Pesticides

points made about pesticides in Latin America.

limited amounts of cleared land than the predominant extensive grazing.

US Agency for International Development.

The Land-Sharing versus Land-Sparing Debate in Conservation and Agriculture

Center for Global Food Issues.

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

The Cuban Experiment with Agro-ecology

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