The hungry world : America's cold war battle against poverty in Asia / Nick Cullather.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Cullather, Nick, 1959-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Agricultural assistance, American--Asia.

Agricultural assistance, American.

Economic assistance, American--Asia.

Economic assistance, American.

Food supply--Asia.

Food supply.

Food relief--Asia.

Food relief.

United States--Foreign relations--Asia.

United States.

Asia--Foreign relations--United States.

Asia.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (369 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press, 2010.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Cullather has written an engrossing history of how the United States government, along with private philanthropies like the Ford and Rockefeller foundations, aimed to win the hearts and bodies of rural Asia in the post World War II decades by crafting strategies to develop and modernize agriculture and the peasant’s way of life. He explains how America used foreign aid, modernization theory, nutrition, statistics, and technology, to try to reconstruct the social and political order of the decolonized and disadvantaged countries in the region. Initially the issue of how best to intervene in Asia’s rural countryside was contentious, with clashing visions of development and humanitarian aid being argued throughout the 50’s and 60’s. Ultimately, one strategy displaced all the others—the “Green Revolution” and the ability to feed millions through the miracle of genetically designed dwarf strains of grain and rice. Cullather provides a detailed explanation of how this policy of feeding Asian peasants became the single strategy of “progress” adopted by the US rather than industrialization or land reform. As current controversy swirls about how best to aid Africa in the crisis of nation-building, famine, and a poverty-stricken peasantry, the story of the U.S. interventions in Asia become starkly relevant.

Contents:

The world food problem

Mexico's way out

A continent of peasants

We shall release the waters

A very big, very poor country

Parable of seeds

You can't eat steel

The meaning of famine

The conquest of hunger

Present at the recreation.

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780674058828

0674058828

OCLC:

733323635