In the mid-twen ti eth cen tury, blueberries became one of Amer i can agri cul tures' small-fruit suc cess stories. Some three decades of col lab o ra tive exper i ments involv ing fed eral and state gov ern ments and entre pre neur ial farm ers had unlocked the secrets of cul ti vat ing a berry that both con sum ers and farm ers liked. Contrary to con ven tional thought, how ever, this was not the begin ning of the blue berry indus try in the United States. It was, rather, its trans for ma tion. The wide spread harvesting of blueberries for urban mar kets began with the transportation rev o lu tion in the z840s, but this indus try was fun da men tally difer ent from the one that replaced it. Not only were these berries called "huckleberries" every where but New England, they were also harvested entirely from the de facto com mons. This his tory pro vi des a case study of how a com mons resource-con sid ered prop erty of the har vester-became a pri vate one owned by the land owner and of the social, cul tural, and eco nomic efects of that transformation.
From 1935 to 1942, the US Department ofAgriculture (USDA) ran two educa-tional initiatives-the Schools of Philosophy and the Group Discussion Program-to engage farmers and agricultural leaders in subjects such as history, philosophy, and economics. These programs sought to foster informed, participatory policymaking and democratic engagement in planning by inviting farmers into policy discussions. Drawing on USDA program office archives and site-specific records, this study examines variations in content and delivery across time, region, and audience. It reveals important diferences between events for predominantly white audiences and those for Black participants, with the latter featuring explicit antiracist themes. The analysis also reveals a shift in program focus around 1940, from broadly educa-tional goals toward rallying patriotism, mobilizing early defense production, and addressing the threat of war. These findings illuminate how federal educational programs adapted to political pressures and wartime imperatives while shaping civic discourse in ruralAmerica.
As the civil rights movement arrived in the rural South, activists believed that cooperative farming could address social, economic, and political inequalities. Cooperative leaders considered the Southwest Alabama Farmers Cooperative Association to be one of the most signiicant of these groups and hoped the organization could empower Black farmers and break down white structural control in the Alabama Black Belt. This article contends that this widely accepted interpretation of the cooperative does not reflect the understandings of rank-and-ile members, most ofwhom were interested in attaining economic security. Members worried that participating in civil rights efforts could jeopardize their inancial stability and their ability to remain in the region. Many thus advocated for economic solutions over social and political change.
This article discusses the historical development of cacao experimentation in Colombia, highlighting the role of British plant pathologist Frederick J. Pound, based in Trinidad. Pound's expeditions to theAmazon basin in the late 1930s, financed by the British Empire, aimed to find disease-free cacao trees, leading to the discovery of cacao variability. His subse-quent visits to Colombia in the 1940s contributed to boosting a cacao development and research program despite the challenges the Colombian cacao industry faced, including the mismatch between supply and market demands. This led to the need for imports, despite Columbia's status as a cacao-producing country. The article emphasizes the intertwined relationship between geographical locations, individuals, disciplines, and institutions in advancing agricultural knowledge. It offers a unique perspective on the complex origins of the Green Revolution while emphasizing debates over quality or quantity within the global agricultural productivist discourse. The cacao development plans discussed in this article involved local and foreign experts in driving the agrarian science around cacao, and the exchange and adaptation of their ideas led to the modernization of cacao science.
This article uncovers managerialism's footprints within the postindependence developmental imagination in India-specifically its forays into the rural socioeconomic world. It argues that by following this trail of managerialism, we can gain new insights into the intellectual frameworks of rural development and the many ways in which they have historically reproduced and propped up structures of power in the countryside. The article focuses on an experiment conducted in the 1970s that sought to stimulate the productivity of the "rural poor" through the promise of skilling and the conceit of "problem solving." It situates this experiment in the gradual unfurling of the Green Revolution, which laid bare the contradictions inherent in the question of agrarian productivity. Furthermore, it shows how the issue of rural nonagrarian labor during this period was being taken up by the emerging discipline of "rural management," which in turn produced its own reformist rationales. This article analyzes the inherent contradictions of these rationales and the developmental discourse they legitimized.
