Making Perfect Markets: The Demand for Global Numbers at the Origin of the International Institute of Agriculture

In the second half of the nineteenth century, markets for agricultural commodities became far more integrated than ever before, but they also created new sources of conflict. The same forces that drove trade integration also led to financialization, the monopoly power of transport companies, and speculation based on information asymmetries. Historiography has identified these issues as crucial in fueling various mixes of nationalist resentment, anti-globalization rhetoric, and protectionist demands among agriculturalists in North America and Europe. This article shows that, instead, in the early twentieth century, agriculturalists and governments across the Atlantic (and beyond) reacted to the emergence of the world market by fostering international cooperation to reorganize trade and make it more transparent and fair. Rejecting the proposal advanced by the American David Lubin to create an international farmers’ union (for farmers by farmers), governments of major world powers agreed to establish the International Institute of Agriculture as the provider of global crop reports. By looking at the early years of the Institute through the prism of the history of quantification, we show how information thus emerged as a global public good and a fundamental element in the infrastructure of world agricultural markets.