The modern food system is built on monoculture. Wherever we look in the age of global capitalism, large organic production regimes routinely gravitate towards a single product. The problems for societies, economies, and environments are legion, and numerous scholars have shown that monoculture came at a price. The MaMoGH project aims to take the next step. If monocultures are notorious trouble spots, why are they still with us?

We want to explore this question during the workshop “Understanding Monoculture. Challenges - Mindsets - Learning Experiences”.

When: August 15-16 2024

Where: Institute for Social Movements

The Program

August 15

Chair: David Drengk (RUB/ TU Dresden)

9:00-10:00 am Frank Uekötter (Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Germany): Giving Sense to the Senseless. Some Opening Remarks

10:00-11:30 am John Garnett (George Mason University Songdo, South Korea): The Invention of Plant Pathology. Rust Races, Rust-Resistant Wheat, and Re-Introducing Diversity into Monoculture Farming, 1878-1955

Jessica Wang (University of British Columbia, Canada & MaxPlanck-Institut, Berlin): Soil Exhaustion, Critiques of Single Cropping, and the Contradictions of Diversified Agriculture in the United States, 1900-1940”

11:30-12:00 am Coffee Break

12:00-1:30 pm Leida Fernández Prieto (Centre for Human and Social Sciences, National Spanish Research Council, Spain): Sugar Monoculture, Pest and Science in the Hispanic Caribbean, 1898-1930

Sam Hege (Yale University, USA): Making the Beef Capital. A Study of Texas' First Commercial Feedlot and the People who Transformed it into a Revolution

1:30-2:30 pm Lunch

Chair: Helen Curry (Georgia Tech)

2:30-4:00 pm Hohee Cho (University of Oxford, UK): Ecology of Plantations. Coconuts, Animals, and Disease in the Pacific Islands

Omri Polatsek (Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin, Germany): Fertilizer and Crises of Knowledge in Egypt's Cotton Monoculture, 1890s-1930s

4:00-4:30 pm Coffee Break

4:30-6:00 pm Gilang Mahadika (Universitas Brawijaya, Indonesia) and Michaela Haug (University of Freiburg, Germany): Against the Monoculture. Agrarian Struggles and the Persistent Paradigm of “Pembangunan” in East Kalimantan, Indonesia

Andres Suarez Agudelo (Justus Liebig University Gießen, Germany): Theorizing the Normalization of Hass Avocado Plantations in Colombia

6:00 pm Networking Dinner at the Institute of Social Movements

August 16

Chair: Michaela Haug (University of Freiburg)

9:30-11:00 am Harm Zwarts (University of Groningen, Netherlands): Dutch Plant Breeding and Genetic Monoculture. The Institute of Plant Breeding, its ‘List of Varieties,’ and the Diffusion of Crop Varieties among Dutch Farmers, circa 1924-1990

Helen Curry (Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, USA) The Seed Gospel and the Software of the Green Revolution. Understanding Monocultures through the History of Extension

11:00-11:30 am Coffee Break

11:30 am-1:00 pm Nathaly Yumi da Silva (Eindhoven University of Technology, Netherlands): Pest on the Plantation. Unraveling the Coexistence of the Stink Bugs with Brazilian Soybeans

Lars Dickmann (University of Heidelberg, Germany): Weaponising Nature. Applied Entomology, Biological Control and Environmental Thought, c. 1920-1950. A Case Study of a Gambir Plantation in Sumatra

1:00-2:00 pm Lunch Break

Chair: Lukas Held (RUB)

2:00-3:30 pm Joel Mead (University of Liverpool, UK): Selling the Industrial Egg. The Role of the State, Producers, and Consumers in Shaping the Intensification of Eggs, 1956-1973

Clémence Gadenne-Rosfelder (École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, France): The Modernisation of Pig Farming in Brittany (1940s-1990s). From Intensification to Industrialisation

3:30-4:00 pm Coffee Break

4:00-5:30 pm Elena Kunadt (TU Berlin, Germany): Weed-free Monocultures. Growing Corn with Atrazine, 1950- 1991

Enid Still (Passau University, Germany): The 'Belief' in Monocultures. Tracing the Racial and Moral Anxieties of Colonial Agriculture

Julia Mariko Jacoby (Duisburg-Essen University, Germany): From Economic Miracle to Allergy Problem. Cedar Plantations in Postwar Japan

5:30-6:00 pm Closing Comments