Planting Socialism: Seed Breeding and Biodiversity Loss in Maoist China

• In Event: Innovation, Creation, and Technologies of Change in the 20th Century

Abstract

This paper traces the entanglement and coevolution of plant biotechnology and rural China’s socialist revolution. While there exists rich scholarship on seed in capitalist economies—from the history of hybrid corn in the early 20th century to the empire of Monsanto today—we know relatively little about how seed-breeding operated in a socialist context, in the absence of profit-seeking agribusinesses. Utilizing national publications on agricultural science and local archival documents from Henan Province, this paper reconstructs a socialist network of seed breeding, exchange, distribution, and storage that operated on the principle of mass participation rather than financial interests. Through three moments of technological change—self-reproduction (1958), hybridization (1964), and professionalization (1978)—I investigate the different ways in which peasants experienced deskilling and seed deterioration in a socialist economy.

Situating China’s socialist agricultural revolution within a long history of agricultural modernization, this paper further expands the discussion of hybrid seed beyond its socioeconomic impact to uncover a more profound change: in addition to high yields, “improved” varieties also brought an irreversible decline in the genetic diversity of plant varieties. Over the last century, 94% of seed varieties have disappeared globally, severely threatening the resilience of our food system. In socialist China, state-promoted “celebrity” varieties quickly replaced a vast array of local varieties, resulting in devastating economic and ecological consequences. This paper thus re-examines the potential of “socialist modernity” as a viable alternative to development: while the socialist system may have created a more equitable society by securing peasants’ free access to new varieties, it was not a real alternative in terms of preventing biodiversity loss and protecting our future on earth.

Author

• MENGRAN XU, University of Toronto