298 Agricultural Revolutions and Change
produced by governments and also sold by fertilizer companies.^18 In addition to
continuing its programme of food aid, the US aid agency, USAID, began to sup-
port fertilizer shipments in the 1960s and to finance rural infrastructure – farm-to-
market roads, irrigation projects and rural electrification. It also funded a large
force of technical assistance experts. Contracts were signed with US land-grant
colleges to assist institution-building in education, research and extension and to
create agricultural universities in the land-grant tradition. One of the most suc-
cessful partnerships was between Cornell University and the University of the
Philippines at Los Banos, next to the IRRI campus.
A conscious objective of the Green Revolution, from the beginning, was to
produce varieties that could be grown in a wide range of conditions throughout
the developing world. To meet this goal, the breeders in Mexico had successfully
bred the new wheats to be photoperiod-insensitive, that is, they would flower and
produce grain at any time of year, in contrast to traditional varieties which tend to
flower at certain seasons, for example when the days are shortening. Provided the
temperature was above a certain minimum and there was sufficient water, the new
varieties would grow almost anywhere.
As early as the 1950s, successful trials of the new Mexican maize and wheat
varieties were conducted in Latin America and Asia. The new varieties in India
yielded at least a ton more than the local varieties. However, local pests and dis-
eases and location-specific soil-management problems remained major constraints.
And the importance of getting the package right was illustrated by an attempt to
introduce the Mexican soft wheats to Tunisia, where the farmers are used to grow-
ing hard wheats, eaten in the form of couscous.^19 In the first year the trials gave
average yields of 1·5 tons/ha, three times that of the hard wheat. The early matu-
rity of the soft wheats also meant they could be harvested quickly before the
Figure 13.4 Rice yields in the Philippines, 1961–1985