It’s a bit of a cheat, but bear with me for a minute and have a look at a couple of quotes from recent articles in the mainstream media. The first one is from the NY Times. Don’t look at the original piece until you’ve read both quotes:
Drought-resistant X is now providing a better livelihood for some 20 million people. The organization aims to double that reach by the end of next year. The drought-tolerant varieties do as well as or better than traditional X when the rains are good, and when they are bad they will save a farmer from ruin.
And here’s something which came out in The Guardian the day before the previous piece:
The … drought-tolerant varieties developed by Y require a high amount of input of chemical fertiliser and pesticides that are not affordable by the majority of poor farmers. Methods like … organic farming are attractive because they are available and affordable and give a better net income.
Just your normal, fundamental disagreement about what works, and what doesn’t, in agricultural development? Well, maybe. But X in the first quote is CIMMYT’s maize in Africa, and Y in the second quote is IRRI’s rice in the Philippines, so there could be other things at work too. Maize is not rice. Africa is not Asia. And, just maybe, CIMMYT’s media relations are not IRRI’s.
That last possibility only really came to mind because of another recent piece, this one from USAID’s Frontlines newletter:
In partnership with international research institutes and with support from USAID, the Bangladesh Rice Research Institute developed flood- and saline-tolerant varieties of rice that produce higher yields. Rice plants grown using these improved seeds can survive between 12 and 14 days when completely submerged underwater, compared with traditional rice varieties that can only endure three or four days of submersion. For the most vulnerable country in the world to cyclones and sixth-most prone to flooding, these appear to be the perfect seeds to plant.
Now, when I read that, I assumed that one of those “international research institutes” must be IRRI, but that is not specified anywhere in the article. Discrete enquiries with people who should know revealed that IRRI’s Stress-Tolerant Rice for Africa and South Asia (STRASA) team was indeed closely involved in this work. STRASA has contributed directly to the release of 7 salt-tolerant varieties in Bangladesh and 4 submergence tolerant varieties (BR11-Sub1, Swarna-Sub1, Ciherang-Sub1 and IR64-Sub1), with additional breeding lines combining both traits in the pipeline.
Why would USAID not mention that? Why is IRRI’s message not getting across?
I was also surprised that the USAID bulletin had not mentioned the role if IRRI as such. IRRI has a very strong communications team.
Regarding the The Guardian article, you can’t claim that the piece’s author, John Vidal, reflects an IRRI perspective. In fact it would be probably wise to discount much of what he says, given his recent track record. I am unaware of any official pro-organic stance at IRRI. It’s part of any mix.
Not that I don’t love a good CIMMYT-IRRI comms competition – ha! – but I think it’s only fair to point out that John Vidal crapped all over CIMMYT’s mission and Borlaug in another recent article. But I guess we should be pleased that he didn’t actually mention CIMMYT’s name — which one could chalk up to our media relations people doing a particularly good job of keeping CIMMYT’s name from being associated with his less-than-factual rantings. However, this recent article that ran originally in Reforma, one of Mexico’s biggest papers, about Howard Buffett’s visit and keynote talk at the Borlaug100 also does not mention CIMMYT at all, which was a big blow considering how much coddling our comms people did of this journalist. So I think that there is a pretty wide margin of error with media relations. You could have excellent relations with journalists and they could still neglect to mention your organization, and conversely you could have weak media relations and still get good press. This is why it’s so hard to measure the ROI of PR and comms investments.
But while we’re on the subject and I have two knowledgeable people’s brains to tap: what do you think about communications departments actually changing tack and NOT emphasizing their own organization so much? This could be the idea behind the USAID Frontlines article; IRRI gets so much good press from the sub-1 rice work that perhaps they want to actually harness some of that attention on their partners? While I can understand from an organizational perspective that that might be missing the target, from a CG perspective and from a wider mission perspective, using your CG center’s comms department to help get press about what your collaborators do is good for everyone, no? Lifts everyone’s boats, as they say. Here’s an example: when I worked on a BMGF project that had a communications budget bigger than CIMMYT’s entire communications budget, I advocated to my then boss that we partner with CIMMYT to support their communications efforts. My thinking was that the media and the public were going to get tired of only hearing about Ug99 and rust all the time, so if our long-term project goal was to sustainably increase funding to wheat improvement that includes rust resistance, we should expand our communications beyond rust to wheat in general.
Jenny, I think you make very good and sensible points, and I would hope that any genuine communication professional would agree with you. I certainly do. In my experience, however, although people sometimes hire genuine communication professionals for their expertise, they also often ignore that expertise. YMMV.
It was not just John Vidal – who is a disaster for the Guardian (I have been a reader since it was the Manchester Guardian) – but Luigi’s quote was from an officer of Masipag, the usual activist anti-development NGO with funding from goodness knows where to stop IRRI feeding people.
The Vidal article on Borlaug (linked by Jenny) should have got Vidal fired: it is a catalogue of errors (possibly deliberate).
On the legacy of the green revolution, I’m intrigued by the degree of polarisation in the analysis of its consequences, not just by journalists but also by scholars. Vidal’s piece does seem a bit non-factual and ranty in places, but then so does Dave Wood’s comment above about ‘the usual activist anti-development NGO…etc’. People have fundamentally different views about the best ways forward for agriculture and poverty relief, but it would be nice if they could debate them without routinely accusing their opponents of mass murder – a tactic deployed by the Borlaug-philes quite as much as the Borlaug-phobes. I’m no expert in this area, but the sort of data I typically see used to suggest the green revolution’s success is pretty unconvincing. I wrote a little piece with some general thoughts on this on the Stats Views website.
I’d be interested if anyone can point me to evidence that avoids some of the traps I discuss therein.
Chris – the link you gave takes us to some interesting ideas on conflicting interpretations of the Green Revolution and its critics – for example, Raj Patel – and proponents – for example, Gordon Conway. However, when I read Patel’s scintillating analysis I find problems. Right at the start he cites the Indian Prime Minister thanking the USA: “‘We owe our green revolution to America’, said Singh”. This is a bit `tongue in cheek’ of Singh. In fact the India of Indira Gandhi was determined to use what became the Green Revolution to escape the food weapon that the USA was holding over India’s head to gain support for the Vietnam War and to prevent India’s political drift leftwards.
“Johnson used PL–480 agreements as leverage in securing support for U.S. foreign policy goals, even placing critical famine aid to India on a limited basis, until he received assurance that the Indian Government would implement agricultural reforms and temper criticism of U.S. policy regarding Vietnam.” [US Department of State]
India succeeded spectacularly in reducing its dependence on US food hand-outs (and even helped Vietnam with rice research, partly contributing to Vietnam becoming a globally important rice exporter). However, what was certainly originally political – the US need to prevent the spread of communism by increasing food production in potential `domino’ countries – became economic, starting with India’s determination to buy wheat commercially from the US rather than accept free PL-480 food with political strings attached.
Once the economic advantages of the Green Revolution gathered force in developing countries politics took back seat. This leads me to query your statement: “Patel’s argument that a ‘dominant narrative’ of the Green Revolution has been explicitly constructed for political ends…”. When the Cold War ended this was no longer true (or, at least, no longer relevant). It could even be argued that the political benefits of supporting a Green Revolution (actually funded by US Foundations rather than the government) evaporated to be replaced by economic damage to US agriculture as developing countries became self-sufficient and then began exporting in competition with the US (Vietnam rice, again).
The lesson I take home from all this is the impact of the diffusion of agricultural technology. The US was the first adopter of Green Revolution crop breeding technology in short-straw wheat (and rice) from Asia coupled with agronomic inputs. Green Revolution technology then the spread to other countries leading to increasing competition for global exports between the US and later adopters . The same trajectory can be found with GM crops: GM cotton in India and China competing with US exports; GM maize and soybean in South America competing with US exports of the same crops to East Asia.
Now to the bit about on my comment about ‘the usual activist anti-development NGO…etc’ being “non-factual and ranty in places”. True but economically rational on my part. The basic idea is `trans-national Luddism’: a first adopter that sees its dominance eroded by later adopters will guard its position by sponsoring activists to hamper the production by the emerging competition. The first example I noted was `Food First’ (the book of 1977 and the institute). Try this: ‘At least 40 percent of all imported food that directly competes with United States farm production comes from underdeveloped countries.’ (p. 408) and lots more home grown agricultural protectionism. The `Cremate Monsanto’ campaign was activism in India to prevent the spread of Bt cotton (it failed). The sponsors of both these efforts were getting funds from US sources; they were attempting to undermine competing crop production elsewhere. Causality? Not proven.
Interestingly, Patel is a fellow at Food First and a visiting scholar at nearby UC Berkeley – the global epicentre for the promotion of agroecology. In Patel’s peroration (p. 49 of his `Long Green Revolution’ paper) he considers agroecology as a `deep counterfactual’ to the success of the Green Revolution.
I consider agroecology as `non-factual and ranty in places’ and, fortunately, subject to statistical analysis. There was massive support of agroecology by the `usual suspect’ NGOs over the IAASTD report. Was this justified by the findings of the five regional reports? It was not. Tell me the odds of these figures happening by chance. Mentions of `agroecology’ are for Sub-Saharan Africa, 2; Central and West Asia and North Africa, 2; North America and Europe, 2; East and South Asia and the Pacific, 8; Latin America and the Caribbean, 151 (in each case the combination ‘agroecological zone’ was not counted, as this is a former, widespread and non-controversial usage of agroecology). My non-factual conclusion is that this non-randomness indicates an attempt to deflect the vast exports of crops from South America – exports damaging to exports from the USA. This was the conclusion that activist NGOs wanted and endorsed for global agriculture. As you say: “Choosing the data that best supports the argument one wishes to make is the hoariest of subterfuges in social statistics…”
As to what I call the `Berkeley System’ of agroecology, the USA is welcome to become the `first adopter’. When the US reaches an annual 100 million tonnes crop exports produced by agroecological means the rest of the world will doubtless copy, as it did for each of: crop introduction (the basis for 98% of US crop production); hybrid corn; Green Revolution technology (fertilizer plus short straw); and GM crops. Until then the rest of us should wait it out.
Yeah, have to agree that Teh Graun has a real bias against IRRI, and I would also ping Vidal as the culprit. People probably remember the SRI piece that was full of…well…missing details.
And then this from Achim, quoted in that SRI story.
Mm hmm.