The United States at midcentury was in many ways ideally suited to produce the ideology behind agricultural modernization. As Cullather recounts in capacious detail, the invention of the edible calorie in the final decade of the nineteenth century—a major breakthrough in American ideas about optimal food production—foretold the coming fundamental shift in the world's relationship with food. Early in the twentieth century, the United States found a willing test case in Mexico. Seeking to deter Communist activity south of the border, the US government supported the Rockefeller Foundation's efforts to design a prototype for comprehensive agricultural reform. Here, cullather argues, America could effectively export its exceptionalist vision of democracy sustained through technological advance, inventing new "optimal" measures for population and resource scarcity.
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