11 What Makes an Agriculture Initiative Open? Reflections on Sharing Agriculture Information, Writing Rights, and Divergent Outcomes

Agricultural initiatives in the development sphere have seen torrid evolution. The Green Revolution conjures up images of scientists in lab coats coming up with efficient ways to grow staple crops such as wheat and maize, which were then transferred to developing countries in a wave of technocratic initiatives between the 1930s and 1960s. Lewis' (1954) economic development model suggested that the ultimate goal for the process of economic expansion should be to see complete absorption of small and subsistence rural farming by the capitalist sector. Yet, through implementing the Green Revolution, development practitioners and policymakers soon realized that including Indigenous and rural subsistence farmers in policy and planning could actually be an important development objective in and of itself (Parnwell 2008).