Exporting Agrarian Expertise

377 Pages·2016·13.14 MB·English

by  Karl Bruno

Exporting Agrarian Expertise
Development Aid at the Swedish University of Agricultural
Sciences and Its Predecessors, 1950–2009
Karl Bruno
Faculty of Natural Resources and Agricultural Sciences
Department of Urban and Rural Development
Uppsala
Doctoral Thesis
Swedish University ofAgricultural Sciences

Uppsala 2016
Acta Universitatis agriculturae Sueciae
2016:59
Outer cover: The 1954/55 international FAO/Sweden course in animal reproduction
visits Trolmen manor, Skaraborg County. Professor Nils Lagerlöf (fifth from right) and
his students are hosted by the owner of Trolmen, Fredrik Wehtje (fourth from right).
Photo: Lars Drejare, from the collections of the Swedish Veterinary Museum
Design: Anni Hoffrén
ISSN 1652-6880
ISBN (print version) 978-91-576-8620-6
ISBN (electronic version) 978-91-576-8621-3
© 2016 Karl Bruno, Uppsala
Print: SLU Service/Repro, Uppsala 2016
Exporting Agrarian Expertise: Development Aid at the Swedish
University of Agricultural Sciences and Its Predecessors, 1950–
2009
Abstract
Agrarian expertise has been employed in the context of Swedish development aid since
the 1950s. Throughout this time, the Swedish institutions of higher agrarian
education—the Agricultural College, the College of Forestry, and the Veterinary
College, in 1977 merged to form the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences—
have played important roles. In this dissertation I consider three problems with respect
to these institutions’ involvement in development aid: (1) How and why did actors at
the three colleges begin framing their expertise in a development context? (2) How did
Swedish agrarian experts approach the problem of development in contexts about
which they had little prior knowledge? (3) How and why did a long-term institutional
collaboration evolve between the agrarian institutions of higher learning and the
Swedish development aid authorities, and what were its characteristics?
The study follows actors and their standpoints through three different aid projects:
international courses in animal reproduction at the Veterinary College first planned and
held in the mid-1950s; the planning and implementation of the Chilalo Agricultural
Development Unit in the 1960s and 1970s; and SLU’s support to higher forestry
education in Ethiopia in the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s. It also examines the growth and
subsequent decline of a continuous institutional collaboration between the institutions
of higher agrarian education and SIDA, the Swedish government agency responsible
for development aid. Based on my findings, I argue that the framing of Swedish
agrarian expertise as relevant to the developing countries—particularly at the
Agricultural College in the 1960s—was part of a broader attempt to widen the scope of
agrarian science in Sweden in response to social change at home. At the same time, the
development strategies proposed by the Swedish experts were anchored in the
particulars of the Swedish agrarian context. This made them attuned to the local
adaptation of technologies and to the value of practical knowledge but less sensitive to
the societal contexts and social effects of their interventions. Their attempts to bring
their knowledge to bear on the developing world also helped create a long-lasting
institutionalized relationship between SLU (and the three colleges before it) and the
Swedish development aid authorities, through which SLU exercised influence on much
of Sweden’s agrarian development aid from the mid-1960s to the early 1990s.
Keywords: animal reproduction, Chilalo Agricultural Development Unit, development
aid, Ethiopia, forestry education, India, rural development, Swedish University of
Agricultural Sciences, technology transfer, Wondo Genet
Author’s address: Karl Bruno, SLU, Department of Urban and Rural Development,
P.O. Box 7012, SE-750 07 Uppsala, Sweden
E-mail: karl.bruno@ slu.se

Acknowledgments
I have written this dissertation as part of a larger research project on the history
of SLU, the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (“The Swedish
University of Agricultural Sciences—in the Service of the Sector and of the
Sciences”). My supervisor Per Lundin initiated this project, and his
forthcoming book on SLU’s development into a research university will make
up the second half of its results. Project funding has been provided by SLU’s
vice-chancellor and faculties, and their generous support has been a
precondition of its realization. This means the project has been sponsored and
hosted by the organization that is also the object of its research. As project
researchers, Per Lundin and I have, however, retained full responsibility for the
selection and formulation of our research problems. To further safeguard our
independence, the project also included a scientific reference group that we
have been able to draw on. It was decided from the outset that the project
should result in two book-length studies, each dealing with a clearly delimited
and scientifically motivated problem. My dissertation on development aid at
SLU is one of them; it will be complemented by Per Lundin’s upcoming book.
Funding is one prerequisite for doctoral studies. Supervision is another. My
first and primary personal thanks are addressed to my principal supervisors,
Per Lundin and Janken Myrdal: for giving me the opportunity to join the
project, for supporting me as I tried to get my grips on what in more ways than
one was a new field, and for being very inspiring and emulable scholars. I also
want to thank you both, but perhaps particularly Janken, for encouraging me to
read broadly, something I believe is of immense value for any doctoral student.
My third supervisor, Carin Martiin, entered the project halfway through—
thank you for agreeing to come onboard, for your steady support, and for your
confidence in my work.
Many other people have commented on my drafts and I am grateful to you
all. I particularly want to thank my two seminar opponents, Annika Berg and
Erland Mårald, who both presented thoughtful and very useful critiques. My
colleagues at the Division of Agrarian History have also given me feedback, in
as well as out of seminars. Thank you, and thank you for making the division a
comfortable and creative work environment. Special thanks to my former
office mate, Karin Hallgren!
During my third year I spent two months as a visiting PhD student at the
Interfaculty Center for Agrarian History at KU Leuven, Belgium. Springtime
in Leuven proved surprisingly conducive to writing and my time there was
instrumental in finishing the first draft of the dissertation in time for the final
seminar. Thanks to Yves Segers for agreeing to host me, to all of the
ICAG/CAG staff for welcoming me, and especially thanks to Stephanie
Kerckhofs for sharing your office!
I have met and talked to a number of people who, in one way or the other,
have been involved in the events I study. Thank you for sharing your time,
knowledge, and often materials; I hope you will recognize something of your
own experiences in this book. I particularly want to thank Mårten Carlsson,
who have not only furnished me with interesting information and documents
but also read and commented the manuscript—twice! Also thanks to Inge
Gerremo, for information, contacts, comments, and enthusiasm, and to Sven
Sjunnesson, for giving me access to your photographs from Ethiopia and
Sweden.
Writing a historical dissertation requires many hours of work with source
material of various kinds. I am indebted to the staff at all the libraries and
archives I have used, in Stockholm, Uppsala, and Umeå. I especially want to
thank SLU’s archive and library staff who have helped me a lot whenever
needed. Furthermore, I want to give special thanks to Inger Lood at the
Swedish Veterinary Museum for kindly reproducing photographs from its
collection.
Finally, Anna: thank you for always believing more in me than I usually
believe in myself. Writing this book would have been so much harder
without you.
Stockholm, 5 May 2016
Contents
Introduction 11
Research Problems and Questions 14
The Geopolitics of Development Aid 18
Some Characteristics of Expert Authority 22
Agrarian Expertise in Development 25
Experts across Organizational Boundaries 37
Earlier Research 38
Delimitations and Source Material 45
Terminology 54
Practical Training for Modern Practitioners: Nils Lagerlöf, India, and Early
Swedish Development Aid at the Veterinary College, 1950–1960 57
“I Look Forward to Men Like You for Help” 59
Swedish Veterinarians in India 70
Educating Prophets 79
From Sweden to the World 87
Practical Training for Modern Practitioners 96
The Formative Moment:The Agricultural College and the Formation of
Swedish Agricultural Aid, 1960–1965 101
A New Context for Agrarian Development Aid 102
Experimentation or Education? 109
The NIB Crisis, the “Scandal Farm,” and the Agricultural Aid 127
Enter Regional Development 133
The Formative Moment 142
Bringing Ultuna to Addis and Arussi: The Agricultural College and Swedish
Rural Development Aid to Haile Selassie’s Ethiopia, 1965–1974 145
Developing Feudal Countrysides? 148
Field Planning 162
An U-tuna in Ethiopia 178
Bringing Ultuna to Addis and Arussi 200
The Rise and Fall of the Rural Development Pair: The Institutional
Collaboration between SIDA and SLU, 1966–1996 205
CADU and the Rural Development Pair 207
Development at the Agricultural University 212
Development Consulting and Service Export 220
Rural Development Research at IRDC? 228
The Department of Rural Development Studies 241
The Rise and Fall of the Rural Development Pair 251
Silvi-Cultural Encounters: SLU and Swedish Forestry Aid to Ethiopia,
1986–2009 255
Early Forestry Paradoxes 257
Forestry Education without Forests? 267
A Post–Civil War Interlude 284
Academization Completed 293
Silvi-Cultural Encounters 303
Conclusions 309
Transcending Historical Tensions: Establishing Swedish Agrarian
Expertise in Development Aid 309
Practice and Localism: A Swedish Ideology of Agrarian Development 313
From Individual Projects to Academization: The Rural Development Pair
in Swedish Agrarian Aid 320
From the Enskede Slaughterhouse to SLU Global 325
Sammanfattning 331
Sources and Literature 339
Appendix A: List of key actors 363
Appendix B: List of organizations 369
Index 375
Acronyms
These are the most central organizational acronyms used in the text. For a full
list, see appendix B.
AUA Alemaya University of Agriculture
CADU Chilalo Agricultural Development Unit
CHE Commission for Higher Education (Ethiopian
Ministry of Education)
EPID Extension and Project Implementation Department
(Ethiopian Ministry of Agriculture)
FAO Food and Agriculture Organization of the United
Nations
IRDC International Rural Development Center (SLU)
LANT Agricultural Division (SIDA)
NATUR Natural Resources Management Division (SIDA)
NIB Swedish Agency for International Assistance
NRCD-MD Natural Resources Conservation Development, Main
Department (Ethiopian Ministry of Agriculture)
SAREC Swedish Agency for Research Cooperation with
Developing Countries
SIDA Swedish International Development Authority
Sida Swedish International Development Cooperation
Agency
SLU / SUAS Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences