The Hungry World America's Cold War Battle Against Poverty in Asia

The ambition to lead Asia into an age of plenty grew alongside development theories that targeted hunger as a root cause of war, Scientific agriculture was an instrument for molding peasants into citizens with modern attitudes, loyalties, and reproductive habits. But food policies were as contested then as they are today. While Kennedy and Johnson envisioned Kansas-style agribusiness guarded by strategic hamlets, Indira Gandhi, Marcos, and Suharto inscribed their own visions of progress onto the land. --