Se analiza el peso de la geopolítica en la expansión de las semillas de alto rendimiento en el Tercer Mundo, a través del estudio de los casos de México, India y Costa Rica. En México, la investigación agrícola, apoyada a partir de 1943 por la Fundación Rockefeller, permitió el desarrollo de semillas de trigo altamente productivas. En India, cuna de la denominación Revolución Verde, la llegada de estas semillas ocurrió en el marco de la expansión del comunismo en el Sudeste Asiático y del consecuente interés de Estados Unidos por controlar la conflictividad social en los campos agrícolas. En Costa Rica, su posición estratégica en torno al Canal de Panamá, implicó un notable interés de EU en el desarrollo de un programa de producción de alimentos que prepararía el terreno para que, años después, se adoptaran las semillas y la tecnología de la Revolución Verde.
This article addresses energy flows in the coffee agro-ecosystems of Costa Rica within the context of the socio-ecological transition, between 1935 and 2010, accounting for the shift from traditional to modern tropical agriculture. Estimating indicators of energy efficiency in crop management makes it possible to analyze the changing productive rationality of growers by studying end uses of all biomass appropriated from coffee agro-ecosystems. Coffee land and labor productivity, as expected, multiplied (by factors of 2.01 and 1.56, respectively). However, considering total biomass produced in coffee agro-ecosystems, productivity did not display such a significant increase. In contrast, all other energy efficiency indicators declined. Final energy return on investment (FEROI) fell from 1.02 in 1935 to 0.51 in 2005. External final EROI fell even farther, from 18.90 down to 1.86. The socio-ecological transition brought about the loss of multifunctionality in the final use of products derived from coffee agroecosystems, as new products replaced traditional ones.Keywords Energy return on investment . Coffee . Agroforestry . Energy efficiency . Socio-ecological transition IntroductionThe study of energy flows in farming, understood in a broad sense, represents an effective and versatile way to describe the major changes that have taken place in agrarian systems during the transition from traditional to modern management approaches, as well as to analyze the environmental problems generated in this process. Scholars have used a variety of methods, from traditional energy balances (Leach 1976) to energy return on investment (EROI) (Tello et al. 2016) and life cycle assessment (LCA) (Haas et al. 2000) to analyze energy flows in farming. One aim, from the perspective of environmental and energy sustainability, has been to compare the energy efficiency of traditional and modern systems (Cleveland 1995; or organic vs. conventional management (e.g., Smith et al. 2015). Another approach, from the social sciences and humanities, uses energy flows to study the material foundations and dynamics by which traditional societies were sustained, endeavoring to overcome perspectives that focus exclusively on cultural or monetary concerns. Such studies have assessed hunter-gatherer societies (Rappaport 1969), the collapse of civilizations (Tainter 1990), and the subsistence of peasant farming societies (Infante-Amate 2014).This article evaluates energy flows in Costa Rica's coffee agro-ecosystems within the context of the socio-ecological transition (SET) and the BGreen Revolution,^between 1935 and 2010, spanning both of the aforementioned perspectives within a tropical agricultural system. It estimates indicators about the energy processes of coffee production systems, evaluating its evolving energy efficiency. There is some published research about energy balances in coffee production in Nicaragua (Cuadra and Rydberg 2006), Brazil (Giannetti et al. 2011a, b;Turco et al. 2012;Flauzino et al. 2014;Muner et al. 2015), and Costa ...
<p>Este artículo analiza los procesos de selección y dispersión de las semillas y su importancia en el desarrollo de la agricultura en la historia. Constituye un análisis comparativo entre el surgimiento de la Revolución Neolítica y el desarrollo de la Revolución Verde. Es un estudio interpretativo.</p>
a El autor, especialista en historia agraria y ambiental, es profesor e investigador en la Universidad Nacional, Costa Rica.
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