Productive Farmers in the 'Free World': Taiwan and the Expansion of the Green Revolution, 1950-1979
「自由世界」的高產農民：臺灣與綠色革命的擴張

講者：朱家立 Leo Chu（Postdoctoral Fellow Laureate Centre for Population and History, University of New South Wales）
與談人：朱華瑄（國立陽明交通大學人社系助理教授）

主持人：詹亞訓（國立陽明交通大學社文所助理教授）
時間：2024/11/20（三）14:00-16:00
地點：國立陽明交通大學 光復校區 人社二館106A
主辦單位：國立陽明交通大學社會與文化研究所

 
▍摘要 Abstract
This talk discusses how the Joint Commission on Rural Reconstruction (JCRR, 農復會) in Taiwan contributed to the “Green Revolution,” or the increase of grain productivity in developing nations through high-yielding seeds. Created in 1948, the JCRR was entrusted with distributing American financial aid for rural modernization. By embedding itself within the administration and extension networks left by the colonial government, the JCRR in the 1950s attempted to secure rice supply, expand agricultural export, and use the foreign exchange and surplus labor to fuel industrialization. To this end, it promulgated a land reform that turned tenants into landowners and strengthened the role of farmers’ association in the dissemination of improved varieties and fertilizers. In the 1960s, the JCRR aimed to generalize Taiwan’s experience as a development model for the “free world.” As the International Rice Research Institute founded in the Philippines by American philanthropic foundations was credited with the Green Revolution in rice, the JCRR launched a similar institute in Taiwan, resulting in the creation of the Asian Vegetable Research and Development Center in 1971. Taiwan’s expulsion from the United Nations, however, threatened the center’s existence. In response, ex-JCRR officials managing the center shifted away from the earlier ideological rhetoric and presented their work as politically neutral. By tracing the evolution of the state imagination of agricultural productivity, this talk highlights Taiwan’s role in scientific exchange in the Cold War.

▍ 講者 Speaker
朱家立(Leo Chu) is a postdoctoral fellow at the Laureate Centre for History & Population at the UNSW. A historian of agriculture and environment specialized in Cold War Taiwan, he also writes broadly about popular culture such as anime and games. His works have been published in Agricultural History, Extrapolation, and Configurations.