Technological Momentum and the Hegemony of the Green Revolution

A Case Study of an Organic Rice Cooperative in Taiwan

Bibliographic Data

ID15674288
AuthorsKuei-Mei Lo (Graduate Institution for Social Transformation Studies, Shih-Hsin University, 111 Muzha Rd. Sec. 1, Wenshan Dist., Taipei City, 116, Taiwane-mail), Hsin-Hsing Chen (Graduate Institution for Social Transformation Studies, Shih-Hsin University, 111 Muzha Rd. Sec. 1, Wenshan Dist., Taipei City, 116, Taiwane-mail)
Year2011
Volume5
Issue2
Pages135-172
Publication date2011-06-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueEast Asian Science Technology and Society An International Journal (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1875-2152 • E-ISSN: 1875-2160
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1215/18752160-1276808
OpenAlexW2168475232
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited16

Increasing productivity through high-yield, high-response, chemical-dependent food crop cultivars to stabilize rural society—that was the Cold War–era social-technical strategy commonly known as the Green Revolution. A similar strategy was implemented in Taiwan in the 1950s as part of a rural reconstruction program sponsored by the United States. Aside from establishing a comprehensive web of social-technical institutions associated with modern agriculture, with the focus on the highly regulated rice sector, the program left a profound and multifaceted legacy in rural Taiwan, affecting social norms no less than it did the landscape. The authors of this article look at how the Green Revolution legacy affected an organic rice cooperative in Meinung, Taiwan. Decades of rural-urban migration have made agricultural machinery a necessity for most farmers. A tight relationship between machine service providers and the seedling production system confines farmers' choices of cultivars to those that are designed for modern cultivation, and these are not often well suited to organic methods. In addition, the comprehensive public technical-social support system that fostered the Green Revolution–style agriculture hardly exists for organic farmers in today's ethos of privatization. Those interwoven factors seriously hinder attempts to deviate from the modern agriculture's chemical-dependent path of agriculture

Agricultural economics · Agriculture · Business · Economic growth · Economics · Geography · Green Revolution · Political science · Productivity · China's Socioeconomic Reforms and Governance · Chinese history and philosophy · GABA and Rice Research

Tools

Open DOISci-Hub