Despite initially high expectations, studies on the agricultural uses of atomic radiation began to lose funding in the early 1960s. This broad category of research included grain irradiation, mutation plant breeding, fertilizer studies, food sterilization, and insect control. In both the United States and United Kingdom, meager or uneven results led to massive cuts in expenditures in just a few years. Rather than allow the enterprise to die, scientists such as Henry Seligman (of the UK’s Wantage Laboratory) and Maurice Fried (of the US Department of Agriculture) migrated to the International Atomic Energy Agency. There they found willing patrons for work at the Seibersdorf Laboratory, and colleagues who had experienced the same phenomenon at home. IAEA officials tried to reverse the trends at home institutions, even inventing a system of faux sponsorship (in name but not involving real money), to give scientists the appearance of international endorsement, to assist in their struggles for funding at home. This paper explores the consequences of the IAEA’s attempt to resuscitate the legitimacy of knowledge about agricultural uses of atomic energy, by circulating experts within the UN system. One of these was the creation of an embattled coterie of experts who used every tool at their disposal to justify their research, creating conflict with other agencies such as the World Health Organization and the Food and Agriculture Organization. Another was the fast-paced dissemination of research programs in the developing world, at the same time these were being curtailed in the industrialized world. This paper is drawn from archival research in the archives of the IAEA, FAO, WHO, the US and UK national archives.