The paper explores the French discourse regarding agricultural reform in Mandate Syria, and evaluates the ways in which it translated into the use of technologies on the ground, with real impacts on the environment. By exploring the extent to which modern agricultural technologies were implemented, it evaluates how well the colonial discourses reflected realities and the deployment of technologies on the ground. By the early 1920s, the French mandatory authorities in Syria had generated plans for "developing" the region agriculturally. In a discourse that harkened back to a Syria hailed as one of Rome’s richest breadbaskets, they proclaimed a project already under study in anticipation of receiving the mandate to rule Syria. Following its imposition, French official discourse enthusiastically projected great returns from the use of motoculture and other advances in agricultural technologies. The paper uses a report entitled L’Agriculture en Syrie et en Palestine, which was compiled by Paul Parmentier, a member of the French mission sent to Syria after the Congrés française de la Syrie held in Marseille in January 1919, and published for a wider audience in 1922. The report details his observations on the state of agriculture in Syria as reference points for the terms in which agricultural reform was initially framed. However, as attempts to increase production of certain crops such as silk and cotton did not immediately generate the expected, optimistic results, the colonial discourse on agricultural reforms shifted. The paper thus also gauges responses to the impact and achievements of the reforms by analyzing contemporaneous periodicals and reports on the state of agricultural activities and the employment of agricultural technologies. In 1935, Mohammed Sarrage, a Syrian student at the University of Toulouse, published his dissertation La Nécessité d’une Réforme Agraire en Syrie. His dissertation exposes how the actual policies of the mandatory state had not followed through on the promises of its initial rhetoric. Furthermore, while acknowledging the potential benefits of modern technology he points out that additional projects such as a system for its repair as well as education in its use—both of which are lacking—are necessary to realize any such benefits. Sarrage’s views on the nature and scope of the agricultural reforms expose the distance between the discourse of the French mandatory authorities and their actual policies and reveal the expectations of a Syrian nationalist who would later join the resistance to French rule.