Historians of science have extensively explored the impact of the atomic bomb on the development of life sciences following World War II, thoroughly documenting how the dissemination of scientific resources associated with nuclear energy shaped biological knowledge, laboratory instrumentation, and medical practices.1
In this growing historiographic context, the application of nuclear science to food and agriculture has received relatively little scholarly attention. Between 2009 and 2014, Jacob Darwin Hamblin authored several seminal articles on “atomic agriculture” at the International Atomic Energy Agency, particularly focusing on criticism from botanist Ronald A. Silow and conflicts between the agency and the Food and Agriculture Organization regarding the efficacy of nuclear energy applications in agriculture in the so-called developing countries. Hamblin's latest book, The Wretched Atom (2021), places this narrative within a broader analysis of “America's global gamble with peaceful nuclear technology.”2 Nearly a decade ago, food irradiation, as a particularly controversial Cold War practice, was at the center of Karin Zachmann's studies dedicated both to irradiation projects in West Germany and to the transnational political and scientific dimension of this technology.3 In 2014, environmental historian Neil S. Oatsvall wrote an article in Agricultural History on the relationship between policymaking, food production, and atomic agriculture (particularly radiation tracers) in the United States from 1945 to 1960, which he expanded on in his 2023 book Atomic Environments: Nuclear Technologies, the Natural World, and Policymaking, 1945–1960.4 The history of plant breeding in twentieth-century America has been illuminated by science historian Helen Anne Curry in her engaging monograph Evolution Made to Order, which delves into the use of X-rays, chemical mutagenesis, and gamma radiation as tools of biological innovation and vehicles of technological utopianism.5 On the European side, two projects recently funded by the European Research Council—“Living with Radiation: The Role of the International Atomic Energy Agency in the History of Radiation Protection,” coordinated by Maria Rentetzi at the Friedrich-Alexander-Universität in Erlangen-Nürnberg (https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/770548), and “Nuclear Waters: Putting Water at the Centre of Nuclear Energy History,” led by Per Högselius at the Division of History of Science, Technology, and Environment, KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm (https://nuclearwaters.eu/project/)—shed light on topics such as radiation protection and nuclear uses of water, intersecting with the history of atomic agriculture. In the same vein, new works on science diplomacy and nuclear technical assistance occasionally address agricultural topics.6
Despite these contributions, the history of nuclear energy applications in agricultural research, both in its global configuration and its national/local implementations, remains mostly uncharted territory. In an effort to address this gap, I organized a session at the 2019 History of Science Society annual meeting in Utrecht, the first outside North America, with Angela Creager, Anna Tunlid, Karin Zachmann, and myself as panelists. Following the COVID-19 pandemic, I decided to reignite this conversation by arranging an international workshop on nuclear-related agricultural research in September 2022 at the University of Genoa.
This special issue features a selection of the papers presented and discussed at the Genoa workshop. Jacob D. Hamblin highlights how atomic agriculture was embedded in political goals and how national governments and international organizations provided “shelter” for scientific projects; Kapil Patil and Mauro Elli analyze the atomic agricultural programs of India and Pakistan, respectively; and Thomas Rath and Hiromi Mizuno explore the use of the sterile male technique to eradicate pests in Mexico and in Japan. Lastly, my article is dedicated to the establishment of the Casaccia Center for Nuclear Studies near Rome and the broad mutation breeding program implemented in the 1960s and 1970s for durum wheat, typically used for making pasta.
The essays that follow can only speak to some of the themes, approaches, and perspectives guiding the burgeoning research on nuclear energy in agriculture. Nonetheless, they do introduce readers of this journal to some of the core goals and ambitions behind the writing of such history. Four shared motivations underpin the collected articles.
First, these essays unpack the diversified sets of techniques that came to define “atomic agriculture,” with a special focus on mutation breeding (durum wheat in Italy and India, rice in Pakistan) and the sterile insect technique in Mexico and Okinawa. In dealing with “success stories”—the impact of the Creso variety in the production of durum wheat in Italy and the eradication of screwworm in Mexico and melon fly in the Okinawa prefecture—these contributions deconstruct the technocratic narratives often repeated in public debates, while providing a more complex and multilayered evaluation of the relationship between scientific, political, and economic factors in the “success” of nuclear technologies in agriculture. As Hiromi Mizuno shows in her article, for instance, the significance of the melon fly project in Okinawa can be explained not only through the efficacy of its mathematical models but also by considering a vast array of social and political conditions, including the deeper history of colonialism and US occupation, the problematic dependency on agricultural chemicals, and the profound ambivalence toward the “peaceful atom” felt by Japanese scientists who participated in the irradiation of millions of fruit flies while remaining critical of American imperialism and nuclear weapons.
Second, although all essays refer to the Cold War geopolitical infrastructure that characterized atomic agriculture, this is not the only analytical lens adopted in this special issue. Nuclear projects in agriculture were often connected with the implementation of international development aid policies, particularly in Latin America, Asia, and Africa. From this standpoint, the joint program on nuclear techniques in food and agriculture, established in 1964 between the Food and Agriculture Organization and the International Atomic Energy Agency, played a crucial role and is frequently evoked in these articles. However, all atomic interventions in agriculture needed to be reconciled with specific cultural traditions, scientific contexts, and spatial boundaries on the local and national levels. As many contributions in this special issue make clear, the global South was not just a passive recipient of technical assistance but actively leveraged the agricultural application of nuclear energy to pursue autonomous political and economic objectives. As Mauro Elli points out in his article, for instance, Pakistani involvement in atomic agriculture after Partition reveals the intention to use nuclear energy as an instrument to hold the two wings of the country together. Even in a context strongly influenced by US interests, such as the screwworm campaign in Mexico, Thomas Rath shows that Mexican officials fostered their own vision of atomic and agricultural modernization, using the shared border with the United States to gain diplomatic leverage.
Third, while emphasizing the role of international agencies and the contingent dimension of the national, state, and local environments, these essays examine the transnational flow of experts, research tools, technological systems, and irradiated organisms. These networks did not always follow Cold War or “North-South” trajectories. Understanding how seeds or know-how concretely move in a dense space defined by power relations and national interests7 disrupts the “center-periphery” model while also injecting a “South-South” dimension (from Mexico to Pakistan and India, for instance) that decenters the United States and opens new analytical perspectives for a global reconstruction of the circulation of atomic agricultural knowledge across multiple national borders.8
Finally, a thin fil rouge runs through this special issue, connecting all the essays to the broader cultural and symbolic dimensions related to the visual and rhetorical strategies of atomic agriculture, its technopastoral imagery, and its dreamscapes of modernization. World's atomic exhibitions from Milan to New Delhi, posters, cartoons, and TV programs for farmers all helped to spread the powerful vision of a future where nature would be designed, shaped, and rebuilt through the transformative action of nuclear energy.
Notes
See, for instance, Lindee, Suffering Made Real; Creager, Life Atomic; Campos, Radium; Creager and Santesmases, “Radiobiology in the Atomic Age.”
Hamblin, “Let There be Light . . . and Bread”; Hamblin, “Quickening Nature's Pulse”; Hamblin, Wretched Atom.
Zachmann, “Atoms for Peace and Radiation for Safety”; Zachmann, “Peaceful Atoms in Agriculture and Food”; Zachmann, Risky Rays for an Improved Food Supply?
Rentetzi and Germanese, “Science Diplomacy on Display”; Mateos and Suárez-Díaz, “Development Interventions.”
On intra-Asian networks, see also Mizuno, “Mutant Rice and Agricultural Modernization in Asia.”
