Gabriela Soto Laveaga, Harvard University

Wheat seeds, Agronomists, and Telling Stories: Experimental Camps as Pivots of Development in Mexico and India

One of the world's largest wheat seed banks sits less than an hour drive from Mexico City. Part of a much larger research complex devoted to the study, experimentation and distribution of wheat and corn this (now) international center traces its history to an earlier era when hybrid seeds promised to eliminate global food scarcity. While wheat seeds remade both the region's landscape and the economy experimental camps devoted to the study of wheat positioned Mexico as a global site for plant science research. For instance in the country's north, CENEB, an experimental camp routinely referred to as the 'wheat mecca' by and for agronomists, plant pathologists, and scientists, has significant impact on global wheat research agendas. In fact, it was from this site where the Green Revolution was launched in the 1960s. Curiously, however, few studies tend to use Mexican wheat research as a pivot to discuss the flow of scientific ideas or, for that matter, development aid in the mid-twentieth century. This talk centers on two wheat seed experimental sites - one in central Mexico and the other in Nothern India - to guide us in understanding how we narrate histories of scientific production and knowledge circulation.