Troubles Below the Waterline: Native Land, Contaminated Water, and Solutions to Global Hunger from Mexico’s Yaqui Valley

Gabriela Soto Laveaga, professor of history at Harvard University and Dibner Distinguished Fellow, examines Mexico’s pivotal role in addressing global hunger in the mid-20th century, revealing the significant but often overlooked consequences that continue to haunt us today.

The mid-1960s ushered in an era of the belief in technological fixes for many social ills. Chief among these was a push to end global hunger using designer seeds that could yield more and thus feed more people. These seeds, developed in Mexican experiment stations were disease resistant in addition to high-yielding. Yet to fully function these seeds needed fertilizer—lots of it. In the hurried quest to find a solution to end global hunger neither the social nor ecological impacts were considered.

Gabriela Soto Laveaga, professor of history at Harvard University and this year’s Dibner Distinguished Fellow in the History of Science and Technology, examines how Mexico became a leading producer of wheat germplasm, how it was instrumental in finding a solution to end global hunger in the mid-twentieth century, and how the decades-long use of fertilizer to produce more food has had devastating consequences today, including contaminated ground water and the health issues of local people.