Software for Asia's Green Revolution: The Agricultural Development Council, Arthur Mosher and 'Getting Agriculture Moving'

In the 1950s and 1960s, when new universities and agricultural faculties in many Asian countries were struggling to establish themselves, there was a great shortage of reading materials in the fields of agricultural and rural development and the social sciences generally. Two programs of the Council on Economic and Cultural Affairs (CECA), later re-named the Agricultural Development Council (ADC) -- founded, and funded, to a large extent, by philanthropist John D. Rockefeller 3rd (JDR 3rd) -- had enormous influence on what was read by students, faculty, and the staff of research institutes in the field of agricultural and rural development. These were the CECA/ADC's library book grants program from the early 1950s, and from 1963 its Research and Training Materials program, which prepared a number of specially-authored books and readers for free distribution. This was a crucial period when policy and research, influenced partly by cold war concerns, were shifting from politically difficult agrarian reform efforts to "green revolution" approaches to agricultural and small-farmer development.