The Corn King of Mexico in the United States: A South-North Technology Transfer
Author(s)
Reed, Jeri L.
Abstract
The activities of Mexican banker and hacendado Zeferino Dominguez in the early 20th century raise questions about the assumption that Mexico was merely the beneficiary of modern agricultural science developed in the United States. Dominguez was a banker and large landowner who turned his haciendas into private agricultural experiment stations, conducting research on better methods of growing corn, cotton, wheat, and beans with the labor of his peones. He shared his results through lecture tours and published works in Mexico and traveled extensively in the United States, speaking to groups of farmers and agricultural scientists about his methods of dry farming and corn propagation. He exhibited at agricultural fairs and exhibitions, attended Farmers’s Institutes and conferences, and published a manual for use by average American farmers. Like many agricultural reformers in the United States, he addressed the problems of rural poverty and land concentration not with socialism, but with visions of a Mexico filled with small, capitalistic, home-owning farmers producing with scientific methods and business efficiency.
