Europe�s Green Revolution and Others Since: The Rise and Fall of Peasant-Friendly Plant Breeding by Jonathan Harwood (review)

• Autores: Mark Finlay
• Localización: Technology and Culture, ISSN-e 1097-3729, Vol. 54, Nº. 4, 2013, págs. 988-990
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • As with his previous books, Jonathan�s Harwood long-awaited study of the rise of plant breeding in Germany has turned out to be more than a simple monograph. In his preface, the author explains how a chance encounter with literature on the green revolution forced him to reassess his project, and why he left his comfort zone in order to tackle a three-headed intellectual project in which, he openly admits, the �chances of screwing up are so much greater� (p. 11). In the end, Harwood has three distinct goals in this brief and bold volume: to tell the detailed history of the rise of plant breeding sciences in central Europe around the turn of the twentieth century; to examine the strengths and weaknesses of the postwar �Green Revolution� that brought industrial agricultural technologies into the developing world; and to assess what lessons the past can bring to twenty-first-century agricultural biotechnologies.