Today, I’m on my way with a friend to visit an agroecological farm started a few years ago by a group of purged academics—scholars dismissed from their university positions during Turkey’s 2016 political crackdown. Once part of the local university, they turned to cultivating a few acres of land just outside the city. The farm still survives, though not without struggle.
As we bumped along the road toward the fields, our conversation drifted across dozens of topics—including the use of pesticides. Then suddenly, my friend turned to me and asked, “Have you heard of the ‘Black Wounds’—Birîna Reş?”
I hadn’t.
It was the early years of the Cold War. Turkey had been included in the U.S. Marshall Aid plan—not for post-war reconstruction, but for building a strategic alignment near the border with the Soviet Union. Alongside shipments of powdered milk and food came military bases. And toward the end of the 1950s, a shipment of wheat seeds treated with pesticide arrived in Turkey. The government distributed these seeds for free to landowners affiliated with the ruling party. But instead of planting them, many landowners sold the wheat cheaply on the open market. Easy money.
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Rural Sociology Wageningen University 