Only recently biological innovations have received the historiographic attention they deserve. In the last half-century, historians of technological change have been more focused on projecting the mechanization and fertilization of the green revolution into the past. But biological innovations are the most common because they are most compatible with farmers’ organic production logic. In the framework of the second wave of industrialization, between the agrarian crisis and the Second World War (1880-1940), peasant and scientific knowledge merged explosively, expanding the catalogue of these innovations: livestock breeds, animal health and nutrition, anti-cryptogamic or new seeds. Among these, the improvement of native varieties through hybridization stands out.

Cruz Gallástegui Unamuno – Vergara, Basque Country (1891)- Pontevedra, Galicia (1960) – was the protagonist of the introduction and development of hybrid maize in Europe. After finished his elementary studies, he started his agronomic training in a fruit tree nursery in Limoges (France), which he completed at the Higher School of Agriculture in Hohenheim-Stuttgart (1914). There he was a classmate of Xulio López Suárez. On the advice of his Galician friends Xan and Xulio López Suárez, who were linked to the Spanish Board for Advanced Studies (JAE), he got a scholarship in 1917 for studies in genetics in the United States. First, he studied in New York with the future Nobel Prize winner, Th. Morgan, in his Fly Room, then with Professors E. Murray East and William E. Castle, in Harvard’s Graduate School of Applied Biology. Later, with a new grant from the Spanish JAE for “Experimental studies of inheritance applied to agriculture”, he studied and researched in agricultural genetics at Connecticut Agricultural Experimental Station, collaborating with D.F. Jones in obtaining the first double hybrid maize in the world (O.D.H). In 1919 he studied Analytical Chemistry with Browning, at Yale, and Plant Pathology with Whetzel, at Cornell, where he also carried out some genetic studies with wheat with Professor Love. He finished his stay in the USA again with Jones in Connecticut.

On his return to Europe, Xan López Suárez offered Gallástegui the management of the Biological Mission of Galicia (MBG), a research centre that the Sociedad Económica of Santiago had requested from the JAE to “scientifically and practically study the improvement of its agricultural and livestock wealth and its derived industries“. It was installed in 1921 in the garden of the Veterinary School in Santiago and since 1926 in Pazo de Salcedo (Pontevedra), where the first double hybrids entirely built in Spain were obtained in 1927. Great Spanish geneticists were trained at the MBG (R. Blanco, M. Odriozola, V. Boceta, E. Vieitez); nowadays it is still working as part of the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC). Gallástegui first efforts began to persuade farmers that they needed better seeds: “There is a great difference between one type of corn and another. Some varieties yield 1,800 kg/hectare while others planted and cultivated in the same way produce 5,000 kg/hectare. The reason for this difference is nothing more than the choice of one seed over another”.

Gallástegui and Donald F. Jones at Connecticut Experiment Station (1918) with the first hybrid double corn crop; Cruz Gallástegui; The cover of his 1958 book. All pictures: Gran Enciclopedia Gallega

A key factor of the success in experimentation and dissemination of double hybrid maize was based on the creation with Daniel de la Sota and other promoters of a Seed Producers’ Union (1930) that in a few years reached more than 250 members, and managed to multiply the double hybrid seed by distributing it free among the members first and selling it at a low price later. The demand for double hybrid seed increased from 16 metric tons in 1930 (400 hectares sown) to 70 metric tons (1.750 hectares) in 1934. Some of the partners were Local Agrarian Societies, which favoured collective innovation and amplified the use of hybrid maize for experimentation and cultivation. The Union organized conferences and workshops on cultivation but also on agricultural cooperation and mutualism. Its model was the Union organized by Svalöf Station, Sweden, the reference centre where Gallástegui travelled in 1928 for inspiration.

In 1934, the Director of the Central Seed Station in Madrid, Marcelino Arana, an enthusiastic admirer of the work of the Biological Mission of Galicia, explained that hybridisation “or crossing, which is not usually limited to being simple, uniting two types, but double or multiple by crossing a hybrid again with another type, allows us to bring together in a single type of wheat the good conditions that are dispersed and isolated in two or more classes or types“. The varieties selected were the yellow Pepita de Oro and the white Reina Blanca . “Also at the A Coruña Farm School he worked on the priority issue of increasing corn production and, with professional rivalry, essay later the hybrid Coruña”.

However, the process had risks. From a very different point of view from that of those peasant agronomists of the first half of the 20th century, some refer to research into the development of double hybrids as the triumph of the green revolution model in its worst version which dominates the autonomy of farms and economically subordinates farmers to input companies because “Until then, both farmers and researchers could obtain identical results and apply the same breeding methods. The introduction of the double hybrid maize seed revolutionized this system because its progeny cannot be replanted since it does not produce the same results as the seed from which it comes and within a few generations the hybrid vigour initially shown declines. This meant that farmers were forced to buy hybrid seed from commercial houses”.

This was not Gallástegui’s idea. He worked with farmers to improve their home lives.

Lourenzo Fernández Prieto is a Full professor of Modern and Contemporary History at the University of Santiago (Galicia, Spain). He is author of 19 books – such as “Agriculture in the Age of Fascism” (2014), “El apagón tecnológico del franquismo”(2008) and “Labregos con ciencia” (1992) – and more than 100 papers on technological and social changes in modern rural society. He is Research Director at Histagra and the Agroecology & History Research Net. Prieto is also vice-president of the Spanish Agricultural History Society (SEHA).