Events & Calendars 2021-2022 Hugh Hawkins Lecture: Gabriela Soto Laveaga, "Hunger Narratives: Science and the Failed Attempt to End World Hunger"

Gabriela Soto Laveaga will deliver the 2021-2022 Hugh Hawkins Lecture, "Hunger Narratives: Science and the Failed Attempt to End World Hunger." Laveaga is professor of the history of science and Antonio Madero Professor for the Study of Mexico at Harvard University. She is the author of the award-winning book Jungle Laboratories: Mexican Peasants, National Projects, and the Making of the Pill.

Mid-20th-century concerns of an overpopulated, hungry world led scientists to develop high-yielding wheat seeds. Billed as the cure to world hunger, these new seeds flooded the world market and transformed crop production as we know it, often in unplanned ways. Today environmental degradation, indebted farmers and farmer suicides flourish in some of the same spaces that embraced these seed technologies. This talk examines what we can learn about grand narratives to end social problems by explicitly centering on experimental stations in Mexico as the place where these seeds originated.