In Seeding Empire, Aaron Eddens rewrites an enduring story about the past-and future-of global agriculture. Eddens connects today's efforts to cultivate a "Green Revolution in Africa" to a history of American projects that introduced capitalist agriculture across the Global South. Expansive in scope, this book draws on archival records of the earliest Green Revolution projects in Mexico in the 1940s and 1950s, as well as interviews at development institutions and agribusinesses working to deliver genetically modified crops to millions of small-scale farmers across Africa. From the offices of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to the halls of the world's largest agricultural biotechnology companies to field trials of hybrid maize in Kenya, Eddens shows how the Green Revolution fails to address global inequalities. Seeding Empire insists that eradicating hunger in a world of climate crisis demands thinking beyond the Green Revolution.

About the Author
Aaron Eddens is an American Studies scholar and Assistant Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies at Grand Valley State University.

Reviews
"American scholar Aaron Eddens covers a wide swath of history and geography to let in a sliver of light, revealing how the African Green Revolution still carries the blight of the old one." * Africa is a Country *
"A welcomed contribution to alternative histories of the Green Revolution." * Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems *
"Seeding Empire is a deftly written intellectual history on how racial and imperial discourses can evolve from the opening moments of the Green Revolution to the present. It would be especially useful for graduate courses on development." * CHOICE *
"Eddens offers both an unusually accessible entree for readers new to this topic, and a trenchant analysis of the Green Revolution as discourse. In so doing, Eddens directs readers to the power wielded by stories." * Society for U.S. Intellectual History *
"[Eddens] makes a crucial contribution to scholarship on agrarian change in contemporary Africa, which-despite many other angles of important critique-has often ignored less-than-overt dynamics of race and racialization. Even scholars less interested in the specifics of the New Green Revolution in Africa will find value in Edden's efforts to trace these logics and examine their shifting manifestations. . . . He examines beneath the soil, probing roots and continuities, while laying groundwork for other scholars who may seek to examine the fruits of this empire." * Antipode *
"Eddens's rather top-down analysis of the driving logics of Green Revolution memory makes an excellent case for the importance of bottom-up perspectives in development." * H-Net *



Book Information
ISBN 9780520395305
Author Aaron Eddens
Format Paperback
Page Count 206
Imprint University of California Press
Publisher University of California Press
Weight(grams) 272g
Dimensions(mm) 229mm * 152mm * 18mm