Philanthropic Neo-Malthusianism: The Rockefeller Foundation and the Mexico Agricultural Program, 1906-1945

Abstract

At the turn of the twentieth century, the Rockefeller Foundation took a vested interest in promoting agricultural reform programs in the American South. With the success of these initiatives, the Foundation began looking abroad for similar opportunities, and turned to Mexico to implement a similar agenda for agricultural reform. This project, the Mexico Agricultural Program (MAP), reflected the emergence of transnational ideas relating to overpopulation, food production and land capacity that dominated transnational epistemic communities throughout the early half of the twentieth century. This paper looks at the nexus between the Rockefeller Foundation and the United States government and points to the way private philanthropy was used as a diplomatic arm of the American state. The MAP was seen not only as a way for the Rockefeller Foundation to promote its strategies for modernization, but also as a means to secure the state's geostrategic interests, which were also tied to biopolitical concerns relating to global land and food supplies.