Europe's Green Revolution and Others Since : The Rise and Fall of Peasant-Friendly Plant Breeding

How best to foster agricultural development in the Third World has long been a subject of debate and from a European perspective the persistent failure to design peasant-friendly technology is puzzling. From the late 19thcentury, for example, various western European countries also underwent green revolutions " in which systematic attempts were made to promote the adoption of technological innovation by peasant-farmers. This book focuses on the development of public-sector plant-breeding in Germany from the late nineteenth century through its fate under National Socialism. Harwood uses this historical case study in order to argue that peasant-friendly research has an important role to play in future Green Revolutions.