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Cultivation of cereals by the first farmers was not more productive than foraging
Samuel Bowles
Santa Fe Institute, Santa Fe, NM, 87501; and University of Siena, Siena 53100, Italy
Edited* by Henry T. Wright, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, and approved February 2, 2011 (received for review July 26, 2010)
1E-mail: bowles@santafe.edu. Abstract
Did foragers become farmers because cultivation of crops was simply a better way to make a living? If so, what is arguably the greatest ever revolution in human livelihoods is readily explained. To answer the question, I estimate the caloric returns per hour of labor devoted to foraging wild species and cultivating the cereals exploited by the first farmers, using data on foragers and land-abundant hand-tool farmers in the ethnographic and historical record, as well as archaeological evidence. A convincing answer must account not only for the work of foraging and cultivation but also for storage, processing, and other indirect labor, and for the costs associated with the delayed nature of agricultural production and the greater exposure to risk of those whose livelihoods depended on a few cultivars rather than a larger number of wild species. Notwithstanding the considerable uncertainty to which these estimates inevitably are subject, the evidence is inconsistent with the hypothesis that the productivity of the first farmers exceeded that of early Holocene foragers. Social and demographic aspects of farming, rather than its productivity, may have been essential to its emergence and spread. Prominent among these aspects may have been the contribution of farming to population growth and to military prowess, both promoting the spread of farming as a livelihood.
labor productivity technological change time discount certainty equivalent
Footnotes:
Author contributions: S.B. designed research, performed research, analyzed data, and wrote the paper. The author declares no conflict of interest.
↵*This Direct Submission article had a prearranged editor. This article contains supporting information online at www.pnas.org/lookup/suppl/doi:10.1073/pnas.1010733108/-/DCSupplemental.
What does that mean for the article?--Andreas Hausberger 13:34, 8 March 2011 (UTC) — Preceding
unsigned comment added by
Conversano Isabella (
talk •
contribs)
Are vineyards not a form of agriculture? There is no mention of them in this article and the vineyard article makes scant reference to agriculture. PeterEastern ( talk) 11:18, 29 December 2011 (UTC)
Agriculture and land cultivation for food (for humans and animals) is a vital topic for any credible reference source. It also has social merit, social as defined by "beneficial to global well-being", not in the context of "social mobile gaming".
This was a well-written article, but it is in need of an update! Many of the references are well-regarded, credible. I checked several. This is what I found: Although accessed here on WP in 2008 for example, the external source indicates that findings were based on current data. And "current data" as of 2003 or 2005 was often 1995 or 2000. There has been enormous change since then, see in particular anything pertaining to China, or the People's Republic of China as the article describes it. (That is accurate, PRC is correct, but it gives insight into how dated the article is).
This makes me feel sad, that Agriculture receives so much less attention on WP than Private equity, a minor sub-category of finance, which is a sub-category of business. Actually, even worse, is that Agriculture receives much less attention than digital currency or obscure political ideologies or conspiracy theories or iPhones or television programmes or Angry Birds. None of those topics would exist (nor continue to exist!) without the existence, and flourishing of Agriculture. It is NOT an historical topic!
I wish I could contribute. Unfortunately, my field of expertise is in much less useful things (it is sadly evident on my user page). Could something be done to address this? I would be glad to help if given some guidance by someone who has subject matter knowledge. -- FeralOink ( talk) 03:51, 2 April 2012 (UTC)
There is a banner, in fact, it is the very first banner on this page, indicating that Agriculture is deemed to be of vital importance to Technology. (I think that is a VERY sensible decision, by the way)! But it only uses the word Technology, with no URL. Is the link to Technology implicitly active by virtue of the banner? I checked the meta-data, blah-blah, couldn't tell for certain, didn't want to mess up anything. All the other banners for article significance-to-topics include an inline WP-link to the relevant topic e.g. food and drink. -- FeralOink ( talk) 04:15, 2 April 2012 (UTC)
Can we get a source for the agricultural output table? Thanks to whoever made it, but it can't be included without a source.
Hi everyone - I am planning to work on this article as an entry for the WP:The Core Contest, now ongoing. My plan is to initially work on addressing the tags currently on the article. After that, I will work on taking care of un-tagged problems, including unreferenced section, unreliable sources, dead links, etc. My eventual plan is to put the article up for GAN, although on an article of this size and importance, that could take a while :) In the meantime, any comments, suggestions, tagging, etc., would be much appreciated. Dana boomer ( talk) 00:44, 16 April 2013 (UTC)
-Read down to by country chart:More later Johnbod ( talk) 21:03, 5 May 2013 (UTC)
I've not done anything major before so this is very tentative.
Agriculture, also called farming or husbandry, is the cultivation of life forms to support human life. Beginning over 10,000 years ago, humans in different continents discovered different species they could domesticate, and they developed different cultural practices adapted to the seasons, climates, soils, rainfall, and available pasture where they lived. Initially agriculture just provided food and clothing, but in different areas humans soon expanded its scope to provide human helpers (dogs, horses, etc.), recreation (alcohol and other drugs), raw materials (hemp, lumber, resin, leather), ornamentation (flowers, etc.) This expansion continues today.
The development of agriculture provided the food surpluses which enabled humans to specialize, and thus was the key enabler in the rise of urban civilization. The fact that humans and animals lived closely together also led to a number of diseases jumping from domestic animals to humans.
Farming means human control not only by domesticating the species of plant or animal, but by modifying the environment in which the species grows: for plants by modifying the soil or other growing medium by tillage, fertilization and amendments and controlling the amount of water provided by irrigation or drainage and for animals by controlling the food, water, and predators.
In the developed world the drive for more control has meant the replacement of human labor by engineering of machines, environments, and genomes, leading to such innovations as genetically modified organisms,concentrated agricultural feeding operations (CAFO’s), precision agriculture, and robotic agriculture. On the other end of the continuum movements for organic farming, sustainable agriculture, locavore/farmers markets have become prominent in many countries.
As an economic system, agriculture and systems of land tenure are intertwined. Examples include the communal landholding of some Native American tribes and some African entities; the collective farms of the USSR, the latifundia and plantation agriculture of ancient Rome, Spanish America, and the Southern US, the kibbutz of Israel, the family owned and operated farms still dominant in the US, the leased lands of Ulster, and the large land purchases in some African nations by nations like China, etc.
Bill Harshaw ( talk) 22:00, 6 May 2013 (UTC)
There's a problem with the history sections here in that they focus on agriculture in the Middle East and Europe, whereas agriculture was really developed in several different areas. The History of Agriculture article handles the problem by devoting separate sections to each area, though there's still inconsistency with the series of "Agriculture in..." set of articles. Bill Harshaw ( talk) 21:34, 14 May 2013 (UTC)
Does wikipedia have any general rules on including statistical tables? Any bot to automatically flag tables which need updating? As for the current table, I think it's too easy to misread the table--sugarcane is first only because it's the cane, not the refined sugar. Ranking crops by value or acreage rather than tonnage would make more sense. Bill Harshaw ( talk) 21:20, 27 May 2013 (UTC)
Generally I can see a lot of improvement, & it looks pretty good.
-more later. Done down to "Genetic engineering". Johnbod ( talk) 13:32, 3 September 2013 (UTC)
Johnbod ( talk) 20:53, 8 September 2013 (UTC)
Just passing by here, but the section on the Greco-Roman world seems a little cockeyed. Ancient Greek Agriculture (Routledge, 1995), p. 45, takes note of the "more advanced agricultural technology of the Romans". The main agricultural writers of antiquity (in terms of extant treatises devoted solely to agriculture) are Roman: Cato the Elder, Varro, and Columella, with a lot of information from Pliny the Elder about agricultural techniques such as mineral soil amendments and other fertilizers, crop rotation, grafting, and selective breeding. Unfortunately, Roman agriculture isn't a sufficient article, but see for instance the top image of the early harvesting machine invented in Roman Gaul. The body of knowledge that produced the aqueducts also advanced irrigation techniques, and there's an entire book on Roman farming implements. There's a sweet little intro to Roman farming here. The extent of the Roman Empire spread food crops throughout Europe, and the Romans grew a wide variety of produce (see sections on grains and legumes, produce, farmers' markets and the annona or bread dole). Viticulture was a major economic activity, and there's a new book called The Roman Agricultural Economy. Sicily, Egypt and the North African provinces were exporting "breadbaskets", and in fact one key to the Empire's prosperity and success was the attention to the food supply and large-scale agriculture ( latifundia). See for instance grain supply to the city of Rome, but grain was shipped around the Mediterranean, and was always a logistical concern of the Roman military. See also Deforestation during the Roman period. The article implies that there wasn't much difference in the scale and productivity of agriculture between the Roman Imperial world and medieval Europe, but that may not be entirely accurate. (One erroneous piece of trivia: horses were not used for agriculture, at least not by the Romans, so i doubt by the Greeks either. Oxen did heavy farm work, and mules.) I'm not suggesting that more than a couple of sentences be spent on Rome, but I'm am just indicating the diversity and scope of Roman agriculture. It's a bit puzzling to see Plato and Aristotle turn up as significant figures in the history of agriculture to the exclusion of Roman farmers. Cynwolfe ( talk) 02:55, 25 September 2013 (UTC)
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Please change this link http://www.nationalaglawcenter.org/assets/crs/RL32677.pdf to this http://www.nationalaglawcenter.org/wp-content/uploads/assets/crs/RL32677.pdf
The links have been updated. Thanks!
Erumley ( talk) 18:00, 26 September 2013 (UTC)
Noodleki, while I appreciate your enthusiasm, please stop with your massive changes to the history section of the Agriculture article. This section (and its subsections) has been carefully crafted through extensive talk page discussion, using high quality sources, in an attempt to take the article to GA and possibly FA status. By replacing it with the information that was previously in the History of agriculture article, you are destroying the flow, sourcing and comprehensiveness of the section. The history section of the Agriculture article is much better than the History of agriculture article previously was - that much we agree on. That is because I have worked extensively on the Agriculture article as a whole, while no-one has put such effort into the History of agriculture article. The solution in this situation is to improve the History of agriculture article, not replace major sections of the Agriculture article with what is in many cases unsourced trivia. You have been bold, I have reverted, now please discuss, per WP:BRD. Dana boomer ( talk) 00:48, 16 January 2014 (UTC)
Please read a few pages from here, and this essay. I'm not talking about the invention of agriculture, which is obviously the centre stage. However, by about 3,000BC, with the onset of intensive agriculture, irrigation, plows and so forth, very little changed until the modern era. This is a statement of fact. That's not to say things didn't happen, but the basic nature of a subsistence economy was always there. I think you misunderstand what subsistence economy is. It doesn't mean that everyone is desperately cramming what they find in their mouth with no time to build a pyramid or two, it means that the vast majority of population engage in agriculture, which was the case until the early 19th century.
To be constructive, let me delineate stuff that is really needed. A paragraph clearly explaining significance - that BAR allowed the breaking of malthusian trap, pop explosion and industrialization, through rational, empirical and later scientific methodologies. The process of enclosure, Norfolk system of rotation, early mechanisation (seed drill, iron plough, threshing machine, steam power are the essentials), the first artificial fertilizers (1840s). A para on the creation of a truly global market in late 1800s, with steamships and rail. This is really the bare minimum. As I mentioned earlier a whole section on the Green revolution is just crazy. Why is there a separate history article, if the material on this page is more in depth?
If you want the earlier sections left as they are, then that's fine. I'm also open to modifying or shortening the text and adding more refs. Noodleki ( talk) 11:49, 16 January 2014 (UTC)
(undent)Noodleki, stop making changes like this one. You replaced a completely sourced section on the Columbian exchange with a completely unsourced one, and added a ton of other unreferenced material. This article is going for GA, that means it needs to be sourced. I just said I was going to be working on expanding the material you wanted expanding, and I will use some of your sources, but please stop jumping in and adding unreferenced material all over the place. Dana boomer ( talk) 23:13, 16 January 2014 (UTC)
(undent)Noodleki, you are still adding in poorly sourced or unsourced, redundant, undue weight information. Please see above for why many of your sources are not acceptable. I have made numerous changes and additions to the article to attempt to address your points, without receiving a response from you. Please discuss here. Your edits are beginning to become disruptive, as you are continually reducing the quality of the article sourcing, not improving it. Dana boomer ( talk) 23:08, 18 January 2014 (UTC)
I don't know how I can make this clearer. If the entire Middle Ages section was removed the broad historical outline would remain. Remember that graph. Flat and then boom. Bakewell is generally regarded as one of BAR's major figures, being the major figure behind improvements in selective breeding, according to absolutely everyone. I dunno why you think he was a great publicist - as a matter of fact very little is known about him. Global trade, I can only repeat what I said before - the trade in food in 19th century basically only affected England after the tariffs went down, from North American crops to Australian refrigerated meat. It is completely misleading to refer to a general expansion. East Asia - I assume you mean railways in India - this had no impact on global trade at all, Latin America was also little. TRade within borders? a) thats not what the paragraph is addressing and b) Hang on, wot an excellent idea! An extra paragraph on how improved transport networks, (canals, macadam roads and later rail) created a big internal market for food in late 18th century, removing local scarcity problems for ever.
Mentioning Ransomes is important - it provides scope and context. Instead of some guy invented an implement, it shows how that implement was actually used by landowners and how companies competed to improve the process - a crucial element in the game. Meikle's implement was also of great importance and was followed by a similar continual prcess of improvement.
If anything the article attaches undue weight to the green revolution. This was just an export of preexisting techniques to Asia and elsewhere - rather than being transformative in itself. Text on changes in climate in middle ages can be removed or drastically cut, as can info on what crops they grew, and overly detailed stuff on the manorial system and mulboard ploughs. Noodleki ( talk) 16:11, 19 January 2014 (UTC)
I noticed the GA-nomination and was pleasantly surprised to see a top-level topic nominated. Overall, it looks like a very good article.
But why does only Europe gets any treatment for the period from the 1st to the 16th centuries? It doesn't seem as if there is any definition of agriculture that is specifically "medieval" or that it would be important than, say, development in the Americas or East Asia.
Peter Isotalo 15:57, 21 January 2014 (UTC)
AioftheStorm ( talk) 16:13, 21 January 2014 (UTC)
Prior content in this article duplicated one or more previously published sources. Copied or closely paraphrased material has been rewritten or removed and must not be restored, unless it is duly released under a compatible license. (For more information, please see "using copyrighted works from others" if you are not the copyright holder of this material, or "donating copyrighted materials" if you are.) For legal reasons, we cannot accept copyrighted text or images borrowed from other web sites or published material; such additions will be deleted. Contributors may use copyrighted publications as a source of information, but not as a source of sentences or phrases. Accordingly, the material may be rewritten, but only if it does not infringe on the copyright of the original or plagiarize from that source. Please see our guideline on non-free text for how to properly implement limited quotations of copyrighted text. Wikipedia takes copyright violations very seriously, and persistent violators will be blocked from editing. While we appreciate contributions, we must require all contributors to understand and comply with these policies. Thank you. Diannaa ( talk) 19:07, 4 April 2014 (UTC)
In section 2.6 "Modern developments" we find the following sentences:
"Many farms began to be enclosed by yeomen who improved the use of their land. This process of land reform accelerated in the 18th century with special acts of Parliament to expedite the legal process.[48] The consolidation of large, privately owned holdings, encouraged the improvement of productivity through experimentation by enterprising landowners."
There is only one source cited here, but it is a good source; the problem is of course that the actual content of that source has been lost in this passage of section 2.6! I want to also mention that these sentences might actually be making claims contrary to the data on this topic. For one thing, to my understanding it is accepted that low technological agriculture has a greater efficiency per hectare on small holdings than on large consolidated estates (I point you to, for example, P. Rosset, “Small is Bountiful,” The Ecologist 29 (1999): 207).
The process of enclosure is here, in a few light and general words, are it seems to me presented in an incredibly optimistic and unrealistic light. The great social unheaval caused, for example, by the Acts of Enclosure are swept under the rug. To claim without evidence that this "encouraged the improvement of productivity" seems very iffy. I would argue it would not do justice to scholarly work of the past 150 years to present the development of agriculture in this smooth and tidy light. Even Marx devoted a chapter to this topic in his chapter on what he termed, 'primitive accumulation'. More to the point, the issue of actual land repurposing as a result of the enclosures is not discussed at all. Sheep farming is very different than produce and grain production. As I understand the Enclosures (and which you will probably find in citation [48]!), in many cases in the UK, smallholdings with very diverse plantings were consolidated into giant sheep-farms while people were driven from their lands. Is Section 2.6 of this Wiki article implicitly condone that? At the very least, let's bolster this paragraph, make it more studied, and make claims citing more than one source.
152.3.171.133 (
talk)
21:35, 8 May 2014 (UTC)
The first sentence of the article has been disputed it currently reads
with the underlined section being the controversy. Agriculture and husbandry, I would agree are different concepts but almost every definition of agriculture I can find says it is farming. See
Dictionary.com which says "the science, art, or occupation concerned with cultivating land, raising crops, and feeding, breeding, and raising livestock; farming"
. The source there also seems to use farming as a synonym for agriculture in places. I have approved the latest edit and notified relevant editors of this section of the talk page.
SPACKlick (
talk)
11:12, 16 September 2014 (UTC)
References
Section Agriculture#History should contain only the lede of article History of agriculture. Fgnievinski ( talk) 01:56, 21 July 2015 (UTC)
I found this article in a frankly horrifying state. I've been working on it and I think it's fair to say it's up to "terrible", which is better than "horrifying". But it has a long way to go. Anyone from here want to help? CometEncke ( talk) 00:00, 20 February 2016 (UTC)
The article should also state examples of civilizations that have vanished due to irrigation and agriculture like the Indus Valley and Akkadians. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 186.179.143.173 ( talk) 03:13, 17 October 2016 (UTC)
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![]() | This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Archive 1 | Archive 2 | Archive 3 | Archive 4 |
Cultivation of cereals by the first farmers was not more productive than foraging
Samuel Bowles
Santa Fe Institute, Santa Fe, NM, 87501; and University of Siena, Siena 53100, Italy
Edited* by Henry T. Wright, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, and approved February 2, 2011 (received for review July 26, 2010)
1E-mail: bowles@santafe.edu. Abstract
Did foragers become farmers because cultivation of crops was simply a better way to make a living? If so, what is arguably the greatest ever revolution in human livelihoods is readily explained. To answer the question, I estimate the caloric returns per hour of labor devoted to foraging wild species and cultivating the cereals exploited by the first farmers, using data on foragers and land-abundant hand-tool farmers in the ethnographic and historical record, as well as archaeological evidence. A convincing answer must account not only for the work of foraging and cultivation but also for storage, processing, and other indirect labor, and for the costs associated with the delayed nature of agricultural production and the greater exposure to risk of those whose livelihoods depended on a few cultivars rather than a larger number of wild species. Notwithstanding the considerable uncertainty to which these estimates inevitably are subject, the evidence is inconsistent with the hypothesis that the productivity of the first farmers exceeded that of early Holocene foragers. Social and demographic aspects of farming, rather than its productivity, may have been essential to its emergence and spread. Prominent among these aspects may have been the contribution of farming to population growth and to military prowess, both promoting the spread of farming as a livelihood.
labor productivity technological change time discount certainty equivalent
Footnotes:
Author contributions: S.B. designed research, performed research, analyzed data, and wrote the paper. The author declares no conflict of interest.
↵*This Direct Submission article had a prearranged editor. This article contains supporting information online at www.pnas.org/lookup/suppl/doi:10.1073/pnas.1010733108/-/DCSupplemental.
What does that mean for the article?--Andreas Hausberger 13:34, 8 March 2011 (UTC) — Preceding
unsigned comment added by
Conversano Isabella (
talk •
contribs)
Are vineyards not a form of agriculture? There is no mention of them in this article and the vineyard article makes scant reference to agriculture. PeterEastern ( talk) 11:18, 29 December 2011 (UTC)
Agriculture and land cultivation for food (for humans and animals) is a vital topic for any credible reference source. It also has social merit, social as defined by "beneficial to global well-being", not in the context of "social mobile gaming".
This was a well-written article, but it is in need of an update! Many of the references are well-regarded, credible. I checked several. This is what I found: Although accessed here on WP in 2008 for example, the external source indicates that findings were based on current data. And "current data" as of 2003 or 2005 was often 1995 or 2000. There has been enormous change since then, see in particular anything pertaining to China, or the People's Republic of China as the article describes it. (That is accurate, PRC is correct, but it gives insight into how dated the article is).
This makes me feel sad, that Agriculture receives so much less attention on WP than Private equity, a minor sub-category of finance, which is a sub-category of business. Actually, even worse, is that Agriculture receives much less attention than digital currency or obscure political ideologies or conspiracy theories or iPhones or television programmes or Angry Birds. None of those topics would exist (nor continue to exist!) without the existence, and flourishing of Agriculture. It is NOT an historical topic!
I wish I could contribute. Unfortunately, my field of expertise is in much less useful things (it is sadly evident on my user page). Could something be done to address this? I would be glad to help if given some guidance by someone who has subject matter knowledge. -- FeralOink ( talk) 03:51, 2 April 2012 (UTC)
There is a banner, in fact, it is the very first banner on this page, indicating that Agriculture is deemed to be of vital importance to Technology. (I think that is a VERY sensible decision, by the way)! But it only uses the word Technology, with no URL. Is the link to Technology implicitly active by virtue of the banner? I checked the meta-data, blah-blah, couldn't tell for certain, didn't want to mess up anything. All the other banners for article significance-to-topics include an inline WP-link to the relevant topic e.g. food and drink. -- FeralOink ( talk) 04:15, 2 April 2012 (UTC)
Can we get a source for the agricultural output table? Thanks to whoever made it, but it can't be included without a source.
Hi everyone - I am planning to work on this article as an entry for the WP:The Core Contest, now ongoing. My plan is to initially work on addressing the tags currently on the article. After that, I will work on taking care of un-tagged problems, including unreferenced section, unreliable sources, dead links, etc. My eventual plan is to put the article up for GAN, although on an article of this size and importance, that could take a while :) In the meantime, any comments, suggestions, tagging, etc., would be much appreciated. Dana boomer ( talk) 00:44, 16 April 2013 (UTC)
-Read down to by country chart:More later Johnbod ( talk) 21:03, 5 May 2013 (UTC)
I've not done anything major before so this is very tentative.
Agriculture, also called farming or husbandry, is the cultivation of life forms to support human life. Beginning over 10,000 years ago, humans in different continents discovered different species they could domesticate, and they developed different cultural practices adapted to the seasons, climates, soils, rainfall, and available pasture where they lived. Initially agriculture just provided food and clothing, but in different areas humans soon expanded its scope to provide human helpers (dogs, horses, etc.), recreation (alcohol and other drugs), raw materials (hemp, lumber, resin, leather), ornamentation (flowers, etc.) This expansion continues today.
The development of agriculture provided the food surpluses which enabled humans to specialize, and thus was the key enabler in the rise of urban civilization. The fact that humans and animals lived closely together also led to a number of diseases jumping from domestic animals to humans.
Farming means human control not only by domesticating the species of plant or animal, but by modifying the environment in which the species grows: for plants by modifying the soil or other growing medium by tillage, fertilization and amendments and controlling the amount of water provided by irrigation or drainage and for animals by controlling the food, water, and predators.
In the developed world the drive for more control has meant the replacement of human labor by engineering of machines, environments, and genomes, leading to such innovations as genetically modified organisms,concentrated agricultural feeding operations (CAFO’s), precision agriculture, and robotic agriculture. On the other end of the continuum movements for organic farming, sustainable agriculture, locavore/farmers markets have become prominent in many countries.
As an economic system, agriculture and systems of land tenure are intertwined. Examples include the communal landholding of some Native American tribes and some African entities; the collective farms of the USSR, the latifundia and plantation agriculture of ancient Rome, Spanish America, and the Southern US, the kibbutz of Israel, the family owned and operated farms still dominant in the US, the leased lands of Ulster, and the large land purchases in some African nations by nations like China, etc.
Bill Harshaw ( talk) 22:00, 6 May 2013 (UTC)
There's a problem with the history sections here in that they focus on agriculture in the Middle East and Europe, whereas agriculture was really developed in several different areas. The History of Agriculture article handles the problem by devoting separate sections to each area, though there's still inconsistency with the series of "Agriculture in..." set of articles. Bill Harshaw ( talk) 21:34, 14 May 2013 (UTC)
Does wikipedia have any general rules on including statistical tables? Any bot to automatically flag tables which need updating? As for the current table, I think it's too easy to misread the table--sugarcane is first only because it's the cane, not the refined sugar. Ranking crops by value or acreage rather than tonnage would make more sense. Bill Harshaw ( talk) 21:20, 27 May 2013 (UTC)
Generally I can see a lot of improvement, & it looks pretty good.
-more later. Done down to "Genetic engineering". Johnbod ( talk) 13:32, 3 September 2013 (UTC)
Johnbod ( talk) 20:53, 8 September 2013 (UTC)
Just passing by here, but the section on the Greco-Roman world seems a little cockeyed. Ancient Greek Agriculture (Routledge, 1995), p. 45, takes note of the "more advanced agricultural technology of the Romans". The main agricultural writers of antiquity (in terms of extant treatises devoted solely to agriculture) are Roman: Cato the Elder, Varro, and Columella, with a lot of information from Pliny the Elder about agricultural techniques such as mineral soil amendments and other fertilizers, crop rotation, grafting, and selective breeding. Unfortunately, Roman agriculture isn't a sufficient article, but see for instance the top image of the early harvesting machine invented in Roman Gaul. The body of knowledge that produced the aqueducts also advanced irrigation techniques, and there's an entire book on Roman farming implements. There's a sweet little intro to Roman farming here. The extent of the Roman Empire spread food crops throughout Europe, and the Romans grew a wide variety of produce (see sections on grains and legumes, produce, farmers' markets and the annona or bread dole). Viticulture was a major economic activity, and there's a new book called The Roman Agricultural Economy. Sicily, Egypt and the North African provinces were exporting "breadbaskets", and in fact one key to the Empire's prosperity and success was the attention to the food supply and large-scale agriculture ( latifundia). See for instance grain supply to the city of Rome, but grain was shipped around the Mediterranean, and was always a logistical concern of the Roman military. See also Deforestation during the Roman period. The article implies that there wasn't much difference in the scale and productivity of agriculture between the Roman Imperial world and medieval Europe, but that may not be entirely accurate. (One erroneous piece of trivia: horses were not used for agriculture, at least not by the Romans, so i doubt by the Greeks either. Oxen did heavy farm work, and mules.) I'm not suggesting that more than a couple of sentences be spent on Rome, but I'm am just indicating the diversity and scope of Roman agriculture. It's a bit puzzling to see Plato and Aristotle turn up as significant figures in the history of agriculture to the exclusion of Roman farmers. Cynwolfe ( talk) 02:55, 25 September 2013 (UTC)
![]() | This
edit request has been answered. Set the |answered= or |ans= parameter to no to reactivate your request. |
Please change this link http://www.nationalaglawcenter.org/assets/crs/RL32677.pdf to this http://www.nationalaglawcenter.org/wp-content/uploads/assets/crs/RL32677.pdf
The links have been updated. Thanks!
Erumley ( talk) 18:00, 26 September 2013 (UTC)
Noodleki, while I appreciate your enthusiasm, please stop with your massive changes to the history section of the Agriculture article. This section (and its subsections) has been carefully crafted through extensive talk page discussion, using high quality sources, in an attempt to take the article to GA and possibly FA status. By replacing it with the information that was previously in the History of agriculture article, you are destroying the flow, sourcing and comprehensiveness of the section. The history section of the Agriculture article is much better than the History of agriculture article previously was - that much we agree on. That is because I have worked extensively on the Agriculture article as a whole, while no-one has put such effort into the History of agriculture article. The solution in this situation is to improve the History of agriculture article, not replace major sections of the Agriculture article with what is in many cases unsourced trivia. You have been bold, I have reverted, now please discuss, per WP:BRD. Dana boomer ( talk) 00:48, 16 January 2014 (UTC)
Please read a few pages from here, and this essay. I'm not talking about the invention of agriculture, which is obviously the centre stage. However, by about 3,000BC, with the onset of intensive agriculture, irrigation, plows and so forth, very little changed until the modern era. This is a statement of fact. That's not to say things didn't happen, but the basic nature of a subsistence economy was always there. I think you misunderstand what subsistence economy is. It doesn't mean that everyone is desperately cramming what they find in their mouth with no time to build a pyramid or two, it means that the vast majority of population engage in agriculture, which was the case until the early 19th century.
To be constructive, let me delineate stuff that is really needed. A paragraph clearly explaining significance - that BAR allowed the breaking of malthusian trap, pop explosion and industrialization, through rational, empirical and later scientific methodologies. The process of enclosure, Norfolk system of rotation, early mechanisation (seed drill, iron plough, threshing machine, steam power are the essentials), the first artificial fertilizers (1840s). A para on the creation of a truly global market in late 1800s, with steamships and rail. This is really the bare minimum. As I mentioned earlier a whole section on the Green revolution is just crazy. Why is there a separate history article, if the material on this page is more in depth?
If you want the earlier sections left as they are, then that's fine. I'm also open to modifying or shortening the text and adding more refs. Noodleki ( talk) 11:49, 16 January 2014 (UTC)
(undent)Noodleki, stop making changes like this one. You replaced a completely sourced section on the Columbian exchange with a completely unsourced one, and added a ton of other unreferenced material. This article is going for GA, that means it needs to be sourced. I just said I was going to be working on expanding the material you wanted expanding, and I will use some of your sources, but please stop jumping in and adding unreferenced material all over the place. Dana boomer ( talk) 23:13, 16 January 2014 (UTC)
(undent)Noodleki, you are still adding in poorly sourced or unsourced, redundant, undue weight information. Please see above for why many of your sources are not acceptable. I have made numerous changes and additions to the article to attempt to address your points, without receiving a response from you. Please discuss here. Your edits are beginning to become disruptive, as you are continually reducing the quality of the article sourcing, not improving it. Dana boomer ( talk) 23:08, 18 January 2014 (UTC)
I don't know how I can make this clearer. If the entire Middle Ages section was removed the broad historical outline would remain. Remember that graph. Flat and then boom. Bakewell is generally regarded as one of BAR's major figures, being the major figure behind improvements in selective breeding, according to absolutely everyone. I dunno why you think he was a great publicist - as a matter of fact very little is known about him. Global trade, I can only repeat what I said before - the trade in food in 19th century basically only affected England after the tariffs went down, from North American crops to Australian refrigerated meat. It is completely misleading to refer to a general expansion. East Asia - I assume you mean railways in India - this had no impact on global trade at all, Latin America was also little. TRade within borders? a) thats not what the paragraph is addressing and b) Hang on, wot an excellent idea! An extra paragraph on how improved transport networks, (canals, macadam roads and later rail) created a big internal market for food in late 18th century, removing local scarcity problems for ever.
Mentioning Ransomes is important - it provides scope and context. Instead of some guy invented an implement, it shows how that implement was actually used by landowners and how companies competed to improve the process - a crucial element in the game. Meikle's implement was also of great importance and was followed by a similar continual prcess of improvement.
If anything the article attaches undue weight to the green revolution. This was just an export of preexisting techniques to Asia and elsewhere - rather than being transformative in itself. Text on changes in climate in middle ages can be removed or drastically cut, as can info on what crops they grew, and overly detailed stuff on the manorial system and mulboard ploughs. Noodleki ( talk) 16:11, 19 January 2014 (UTC)
I noticed the GA-nomination and was pleasantly surprised to see a top-level topic nominated. Overall, it looks like a very good article.
But why does only Europe gets any treatment for the period from the 1st to the 16th centuries? It doesn't seem as if there is any definition of agriculture that is specifically "medieval" or that it would be important than, say, development in the Americas or East Asia.
Peter Isotalo 15:57, 21 January 2014 (UTC)
AioftheStorm ( talk) 16:13, 21 January 2014 (UTC)
Prior content in this article duplicated one or more previously published sources. Copied or closely paraphrased material has been rewritten or removed and must not be restored, unless it is duly released under a compatible license. (For more information, please see "using copyrighted works from others" if you are not the copyright holder of this material, or "donating copyrighted materials" if you are.) For legal reasons, we cannot accept copyrighted text or images borrowed from other web sites or published material; such additions will be deleted. Contributors may use copyrighted publications as a source of information, but not as a source of sentences or phrases. Accordingly, the material may be rewritten, but only if it does not infringe on the copyright of the original or plagiarize from that source. Please see our guideline on non-free text for how to properly implement limited quotations of copyrighted text. Wikipedia takes copyright violations very seriously, and persistent violators will be blocked from editing. While we appreciate contributions, we must require all contributors to understand and comply with these policies. Thank you. Diannaa ( talk) 19:07, 4 April 2014 (UTC)
In section 2.6 "Modern developments" we find the following sentences:
"Many farms began to be enclosed by yeomen who improved the use of their land. This process of land reform accelerated in the 18th century with special acts of Parliament to expedite the legal process.[48] The consolidation of large, privately owned holdings, encouraged the improvement of productivity through experimentation by enterprising landowners."
There is only one source cited here, but it is a good source; the problem is of course that the actual content of that source has been lost in this passage of section 2.6! I want to also mention that these sentences might actually be making claims contrary to the data on this topic. For one thing, to my understanding it is accepted that low technological agriculture has a greater efficiency per hectare on small holdings than on large consolidated estates (I point you to, for example, P. Rosset, “Small is Bountiful,” The Ecologist 29 (1999): 207).
The process of enclosure is here, in a few light and general words, are it seems to me presented in an incredibly optimistic and unrealistic light. The great social unheaval caused, for example, by the Acts of Enclosure are swept under the rug. To claim without evidence that this "encouraged the improvement of productivity" seems very iffy. I would argue it would not do justice to scholarly work of the past 150 years to present the development of agriculture in this smooth and tidy light. Even Marx devoted a chapter to this topic in his chapter on what he termed, 'primitive accumulation'. More to the point, the issue of actual land repurposing as a result of the enclosures is not discussed at all. Sheep farming is very different than produce and grain production. As I understand the Enclosures (and which you will probably find in citation [48]!), in many cases in the UK, smallholdings with very diverse plantings were consolidated into giant sheep-farms while people were driven from their lands. Is Section 2.6 of this Wiki article implicitly condone that? At the very least, let's bolster this paragraph, make it more studied, and make claims citing more than one source.
152.3.171.133 (
talk)
21:35, 8 May 2014 (UTC)
The first sentence of the article has been disputed it currently reads
with the underlined section being the controversy. Agriculture and husbandry, I would agree are different concepts but almost every definition of agriculture I can find says it is farming. See
Dictionary.com which says "the science, art, or occupation concerned with cultivating land, raising crops, and feeding, breeding, and raising livestock; farming"
. The source there also seems to use farming as a synonym for agriculture in places. I have approved the latest edit and notified relevant editors of this section of the talk page.
SPACKlick (
talk)
11:12, 16 September 2014 (UTC)
References
Section Agriculture#History should contain only the lede of article History of agriculture. Fgnievinski ( talk) 01:56, 21 July 2015 (UTC)
I found this article in a frankly horrifying state. I've been working on it and I think it's fair to say it's up to "terrible", which is better than "horrifying". But it has a long way to go. Anyone from here want to help? CometEncke ( talk) 00:00, 20 February 2016 (UTC)
The article should also state examples of civilizations that have vanished due to irrigation and agriculture like the Indus Valley and Akkadians. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 186.179.143.173 ( talk) 03:13, 17 October 2016 (UTC)
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