History researcher ties 'Green Revolution' to the American South

The Green Revolution refers to a series of research, development and technology transfer initiatives between the 1940's and the late 1970's that increased agricultural production around the world. This campaign disseminated U.S. agricultural methods, such as the use of pesticides, synthetic fertilizers, hybrid seeds and the like to farmers throughout the developing world of the mid-twentieth century. Up to now, most scholars have credited the Rockefeller Foundation with devising the formulas behind this technology transfer, pointing to the Foundation's "Mexican Agricultural Program" that began in 1943 and was later transplanted in Columbia, India and the Phillipines.

Tore Olsson is a Ph.D. candidate in U.S. & Latin American History in the UGA department of history whose dissertation research argues a different origin for the Green Revolution.

Before the Rockefeller Fondation ever went to Mexico, Olsson says, "they forged their vision of a modern countryside in the cotton belt of the U.S. South, having worked there with landowners and tenant farmers since the first decade of the twentieth century." Olsson posits that the Foundation modeled their program in Mexico on their earlier southern work, viewing Mexico's problems as similar to those in the American South a generation earlier. "I think this connection is important because it forces us to rethink the often-imaginary boundaries between the 'First World' and the 'Third World,' as it forces us to take US regionalism into account when thinking of 'Americanizing' projects abroad," Olsson says.

It's fascinating work and many external funding agencies agree. For 2011-2012, Olsson was selected as an International Dissertation Research Fellow with the Social Science Research Council (SSRC), a major research award that no UGA student had ever won. The fellowship supported nine months of research in New York, Washington, D.C. and Mexico City. For the coming academic year he will be the Ambrose Monell Fellow in Technology and Democracy at the University of Virginia's Miller Center for Public Affairs. 

"I'm a transplanted southerner - having been raised in Sweden and Boston - but I have become fascinated with this region since beginning my graduate studies at UGA in 2005," Olsson said. "I've come to believe that what made the American South so distinctive within the nation during the last 150 years - its history of military defeat, poverty, inequality, racial divisions - also means that it has much in common with other parts of the world, particularly the 'Global South,' as many scholars now call the Third World.'

Congratulations to Olsson and to our faculty in the deparment of history, his dissertation committee and hs major professor, Shane Hamilton, who should all take great pride in his accomplishments. It's important to note that, though we more often hear about major grants and breakthroughs in the sciences, innovative research is happening in the humanities as well, new research that shapes and informs a better understanding of our world.