Experimenting with Daylight: Wheat, Tropical Determinism, and Economic Development in Colombia, circa 1950

• In Event: Economic Development, Inequalities, Profit, and Trade

Abstract

In the 1920s, the Colombian state revised its economic model based on export agriculture and instead protected domestic industrial and agricultural production through import restriction. Wheat was one of the prohibited food imports. Many Colombians hoped to substitute imported grain with nationally grown. The state supported research to create wheat varieties apt for Colombia’s growing conditions. In the 1930s, Colombian agronomists developed Bola Picota, which derived from parent varieties descended from wheat seeds first brought to Colombia in the colonial era. By 1950, it was Colombia’s most widely grown wheat variety. Meanwhile, in the US, wheat production had increased, due to mechanization, genetic improvements, chemical inputs, land concentration, and subsidies. By 1945, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) worried about maintaining markets for its looming wheat surplus once post-war global production revived. Discouraging countries such as Colombia from growing its own wheat was one strategy employed to ensure a steady market. According to the USDA, Colombia’s equatorial location precluded it from supplying the grain needed for national consumption. Colombian agronomists rejected this notion, as did Rockefeller Foundation (RF) geneticists, who began a collaborative program with the Colombian Ministry of Agriculture in 1950. This paper examines M.A. theses Rockefeller-trained agronomy students produced in Colombia. Borrowing from various U.S.-based studies, these students attempted to show wheat’s viability in Colombia through research on the relationship between the environment and seed variety, focusing on issues such as protein content and photoperiodism, to counter the notion that Colombia could not achieve self-sufficiency in that grain.

Author

• Rebecca A Tally, LaGuardia Community College