Food for Soil, Food for People: Research on Food Crops, Fertilizers, and the Making of "Modern" Indian Agriculture

Abstract

Fertilizer was the lynchpin of the modernization narrative of Indian agriculture. Its appeal lay in its capacity to raise production and thereby fight hunger, bring prosperity to farmers, and achieve modernization for backward tropical agriculture. Fertilizer use took various forms in India, ranging from green manure, farmyard manure, and leguminous plants to c! hemical fertilizers. Research on each of these fertilizers in independent India has been closely linked to the political imperatives of the Indian state, its policy of social equity, the farmers' economic condition, the dynamics of cold war politics, and the agro-ecological specificities of farming in India. Through extensive archival research in India and the U.S., this paper explores the pattern of technoscientific knowledge transfer and the factors impacting its production and dissemination. It sheds light on how the scientists grappled to mediate the universalist claim of science with its vast and largely diversified site of application.