[Sci-tech-public] MIT Seminar on Environmental and Agricultural History, October 24, 2008

[Margo Collett]

MIT Seminar on Environmental and

Agricultural History



“The Triumph of Wheat:  Defining Agriculture in the Development Decade”


Nick Cullather

Associate Professor of History, Indiana University


Before dwarf wheat became the emblem of a “green revolution,” a  
different plant, jute, symbolized the future of rural India.  Jute was  
the miracle crop of the 1950s.  It catalyzed new industries, fuelled a  
dynamic village handicrafts sector, and amassed the bulk of India’s  
export earnings.  Modern peasants grew jute.  But modernity has an  
unsteady meaning when it comes to agriculture, and wheat’s victory  
over jute reveals just how radically the ambitions of development  
policy could shift, and how cold war rivalries influenced what Indians  
grew and ate.


Friday, October 24, 2008

2:30 to 4:30 pm

Building E51 Room 095

Corner of Wadsworth and Amherst Streets, Cambridge



Sponsored by MIT’s History Faculty and the Program in Science,  
Technology, and Society. For more information or to be put on the  
mailing list, please contact Margo Collett at mcollett at mit.edu. 
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