The environment-food systems characterized by agriculture have exerted transformative effects on environmental and social systems. This unit offers an overview by distinguishing four principal historical-geographic periods of environment-food systems that begin with early agriculture between 10,000 and 4,000 BC. It also introduces modern industrial agriculture and ecological modernization and alternative-food networks (such as organic and local environment-food systems) as a pair of generally distinct types that are currently predominant and actively evolving. The model of Coupled Natural-Human Systems (CNHS) is used to characterize each historical-geographic period. CNHS definitions of drivers, feedbacks, positive feedback, and negative feedback are utilized. To understand the spread of agriculture and its transformation of environments and societies basic concepts such as spatial diffusion and adaptation are used.
The development of agriculture as part of food systems in the Anthropocene began with domestication and has continued across millennia among diverse peoples inhabiting a wide variety of the earth’s environments (e.g. the Mediterranean region, the Indus River Valley; southern South America; the Congo River basin; the Island now called Sumatra, and many other highly varied landscapes). The history of agriculture also includes the present: domesticated plants and animals, as well as agricultural management, continues to change. In module 2.2 we will divide an overview of this complex history into four general periods:
Each of these categories lumps together a lot of variation with regard to the specifics of agriculture and coupled human-natural food systems, and if you have the chance to read in more detail about these phases of the Anthropocene, you'll find a significant and interesting amount of variation among different places and time periods (see the additional readings at the end of the unit).
To continue describing the environment-food systems of each of these four periods, we recall that in module 2.1 we described the long period of hunter-gatherer activities and environment-food systems, which comprised well over 90% of the history of humans as a cultural species. We also looked at plausible drivers and feedbacks in the origins of agriculture and domestication. Here in Module 2.2. We’ll pick up the thread of the environmental and social transformations represented by agricultural origins and domestication. We note that early agriculture, and perhaps a later stage of agricultural development marked the transition to the Anthropocene epoch in which humans became a dominant force in transforming earth's surface and natural systems (see module 1 regarding the Anthropocene).
After its first origins, agriculture spread worldwide through a process known as spatial diffusion. The spatial diffusion of agriculture involved individuals and groups of people gaining access to the ideas, information, and materials of agriculture and other innovations through physical relocation and social interactions. Spatial diffusion can occur through local individual-level human observation and the exchanges of goods and information as well as long-distance trade and organized activities (e.g. group-level decisions to adopt a new planting technology). A brief description and examples of spatial diffusion in early agriculture are given in Table 2.2.1. While agriculture was developed independently in each of the different world geographic areas roughly corresponding to centers of crop domestication (Module 2.1, Figure 2.NN), agriculture then spread widely out of these early centers in a way that was highly influential. Agriculture's diffusion from the Near East to Europe, for example, transformed a wide range of environments and societies. As discussed more below, the spread of crops themselves was often transformative for the environment-food systems to which these domesticates arrived. For example, all the major cuisines we know today rely on food ingredients that were made available as the result of spatial diffusion For example, foods originally from Mexico, such as tomatoes, chili peppers, and maize transformed environment-food systems globally beginning in the 1500s, spreading as far as Africa, India, and China.
The geographic spread of agriculture created both similarities and differences across space and time. On the one hand, sharing the same food crops and sometimes agricultural techniques created commonalities among environment-food systems. The current environment-food system of the country of Peru, for example, is rooted to a large degree in the connections that were forged through spatial diffusion during the Inca Empire that ruled between roughly 1400 and 1532 of the Common Era (CE). On the other hand, differences in environment-food systems also evolved over time as crops and food were subject to the human and natural system influences in each new site to which agriculture spread. One of the main reasons for these differences was the role of people in adapting agriculture to different environments and sociocultural systems.
A few concepts in addition to spatial diffusion are central to understanding the spread of agriculture and its importance, and we introduce them here. These concepts -- adaptation, agrodiversity, and niche construction -- are briefly described with examples in Table 2.2.1, and the term Anthropocene is also reviewed from the standpoint of its relation to early agriculture. The first of these, adaptation, refers broadly to the way in which humans use technical and social skills and strategies to respond to the newness or changes of environmental and/or human systems (e.g. droughts, hillier topography or increased rainfall as crops moved to new areas, climate change). Adaptation and adaptive capacity of human society are a major focus of Module 11.
Term | Definition | Examples | Synopsis of Significance |
---|---|---|---|
Spatial Diffusion | Movements of people, things, ideas, information, and technology through physical relocation and social interaction. | Spread of agriculture from the major areas of early agriculture and domestication (e.g., from Near East to Europe). | Each period of agricultural development covered in Module 2.2 relied on spatial diffusion of environment-food systems |
Adaptation | Humans use social and technical skills and strategies to respond to the newness or changes of environmental and/or human systems. | Domestication of plants and animals by the early farmers responding to changes in the environment and human systems; changes in a crop variety or farming techniques carried out by human groups as crops moved into new environments with new requirements for successful agriculture. | Adaptation is an ongoing process that has continued through the major periods of agricultural development to the present. (Also covered in Module 9.1) |
Agrodiversity | Human management of the diversity of environments in agriculture and food-growing; This definition was later expanded to included human organizational diversity in the use of the environment. | Many areas of early agriculture had high environmental diversity, such as tropical and subtropical mountains, humans developed myriad agricultural techniques to master food production in these different environments, e.g. irrigation systems, planting methods, terraced fields, special tools, and implements. | Agrodiversity is a major form of human-environment interaction. It is related to, but different, than agrobiodiversity (Covered in Module 9.2) |
Niche Construction | Agriculturalists (and hunter-gatherers) shaped food-growing environments (“niches”) through constructing fields and other kinds of activities | Hunter-gatherers shaped heavily used habitats through hunting, gathering, and habitation. These intensively used habitats created the niches that were first occupied by crops in the beginnings of agriculture, with somewhat more disturbed soils, fewer forest plants, and perhaps higher fertility from all sorts of human refuse. Later, farmers actively fertilized and tilled soils to favor domesticated annual crops or created niches within managed forests that favored "forest garden" species. | The concept of niche construction is important since it teaches us that humans are adapting not only to environments but also to environments being shaped through human influence |
Anthropocene | Distinct geologic epoch representing the present and defined by the significant level of human modifications of the earth’s environmental systems (see module 1) | Two factors commonly mentioned in the definition of the Anthropocene are the global clearing of woodlands (deforestation) in early agriculture and the spread of modern industrial agriculture. | Agriculture-related activities are considered major factors in most though not all definitions of the Anthropocene. |
The use of agrodiversity was also vital to the spread of early agriculture. Agrodiversity is described by the geographer Harold Brookfield and the anthropologist Christine Padoch as human management of the diversity of environments in agriculture and food-growing. Brookfield and Padoch use agrodiversity to describe indigenous farming practices among native peoples, but all knowledgeable farmers actively make use of agrodiversity, even if the technologies may differ greatly. Managing diverse agricultural environments was essential since early farmers produced domesticated plants and animals under new and different conditions. The third concept is that of niche construction, meaning that agriculturalists (and hunter-gatherers) shaped food-growing environments (“niches”) through constructing fields and all kinds of other activities. As a result, adaptation occurring across the wide geographic and historical evolution of environment-food systems involves responses to a range of factors that include both natural ones and those resulting from human activities.
The development of agriculture through the four periods mentioned above has resulted and continues to incur, a wide range of both environmental and social impacts that will be mentioned in the following pages of this module. Environmentally these impacts have altered the biogeophysical systems of our planet, including the land, water, atmosphere, and biodiversity of the earth. As mentioned the idea of the Anthropocene epoch---a distinct geologic epoch defined by drastic human modifications of the earth’s environmental systems---is often tied to agricultural activities. Global environmental sustainability, whether the earth’s systems are operating within limits that will enable long-term functioning, is fundamentally influenced through agriculture, as you’ll see in this module and all the ones to follow.
We will start our historical summary of environment-food systems by describing domestication and early farming (10,000 BP – 4,000 BP). Widespread environmental and social impacts occurred during this period. New agricultural ecosystems were created and spread along with the use of domesticated plants and animals. These agroecosystems contained distinctive species and populations of plants and animals including domesticates, as well as characteristic insects, mammals, soil biota, and uncultivated plants (such as weeds). In many places, agroecosystems were increasingly established in areas that previously had supported tree cover. During this period in the Near East, China, and Europe, for example, clearing for agriculture led to increased deforestation.
Jared Diamond, "The Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race [1]"
As part of this survey, we ask you to read the short and provocative article by Jared Diamond on the impacts of the diffusion of early agriculture. This should prompt a lot of thinking on your part about the way that the emergence of agriculture affected human societies that we describe further below.
Impacts of domestication and early agriculture were notable not just for natural systems but also on human systems. Both a population explosion and a technology explosion occurred in conjunction with early agriculture. The early farming societies grew in the size of their populations and the use of diverse tools and technologies, including ones that no longer needed to be transported as part of highly mobile hunter-gatherer lifestyles. The growth of population was made possible by the increased productivity of food per unit of land area. Impacts on human health and disease were also notable in this period, though they were not entirely positive. As Jared Diamond points out in the required reading above, there were negative impacts on human health traced to larger settlements and denser human populations (e.g. highly infectious “crowd diseases” such as measles and bubonic plague) and also infectious disease involving transmission from domesticated animals (measles, tuberculosis, influenza). Nutritional stress also ironically increased, with life expectancy actually decreased following domestication and the early development of agriculture.
These negative impacts on humans have led Diamond to refer to agriculture provocatively as “The Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race”. This title is purposefully provocative, and by way of understanding this "mistake", we should realize that early farmers’ switching to agriculture may have become the most viable option in many places. Agriculture becoming the principal livelihood option would have occurred as local hunted-gathered food sources were overexploited and/or required by population pressure. By the end of this period, the evolution of more complex societies also meant the development of deep class divisions. There the social phenomena of deepened class divisions must also be seen as a product, in part, of the evolution of agriculture. In addition, changing social arrangements from agriculture would tend to create a positive feedback (see the end of module 2.1), along with other factors, in maintaining and deepening the pathway of society towards a greater embrace of an agriculture-based food system.
The model of Coupled Natural-Human Systems (CNHS) can be used to reflect on the above impacts through the integrated perspective of human-environment interactions. Here we can highlight a couple of these interactions. First, widespread deforestation occurred as a result of early agriculture. In addition to changing land cover and ecosystems, it has been postulated that the extent of this deforestation at this time was significant enough to release considerable carbon dioxide (CO2) and thus to define the beginning of the Anthropocene epoch. As mentioned below other scientists argue the Anthropocene was created more recently. This scientific debate about the Anthropocene epoch has been productive in our understanding of human dynamics and impacts with respect to the environment.
Humans are presumed to have responded to deforestation by increasing their reliance on agriculture, since the removal of forest cover would have reduced the productivity of hunting-gathering activities, creating a second positive feedback that would have deepened the transition to agriculture. The second form of human-environment interaction involved the selection of a relatively small fraction of utilizable plants and animals that become the cornerstones of early agriculture. Since these plant and animal domesticates produced well relative to others, they became relied upon by early farmers, also acting as positive feedback towards the adoption of an agricultural lifestyle. The legacy of this initial selection of certain types of plants and animals demonstrates the important role of contingency and positive feedbacks, whereby initial decisions were amplified and exerted a lasting influence on the Coupled Natural-Human Systems of agriculture. The concepts of feedback are considered further in the subsequent pages and in this Module’s Summative Assessment.
The second period of our rapid historical survey encompasses independent states, societies based on small groups, world trade, and global colonial empires and covers roughly 5,000 years between 3,000 BP and 1800/1900 CE. Both positive and negative environmental and social impacts were associated with this period. We can use the coupled system model to illustrate two examples of this period’s characteristic forms of environment-society interactions. The Inca Empire in the Andes Mountains of western South America (from present-day Colombia to Argentina) offers a good example of an independent state with pronounced environmental and social impacts of its agriculture. Ruling from approximately 1400-1532 the Inca state oversaw the building and maintenance of extensive agricultural field terraces and irrigation canals (Figure 2.2.1). These terraces and canals produced sustainable landscapes in the tropical mountain environments of the Andes.
From the perspective of coupled natural-human systems (CNHS), the terraces and canals of the Inca produced sought-after foods and symbolized Inca imperial power, thus contributing further to Inca capacity to extend these sustainability-enhancing earthworks. The Inca state eventually established terraces and other large-scale agricultural and food transportation works (storage facilities, improved riverbank fields, roads, and bridges) that extended over much of the area of their empire. Environmental impacts of these terraces and other earthworks were beneficial since they stabilized mountain agricultural environments and enabled higher levels of food-growing per unit land area without major damage. Still, we need to remind ourselves that early independent states, such as the Inca, also created environmental problems and often were marked by large social inequalities between rulers and commoners. In other words, just as today, the environment-food systems of non-European peoples could and did attain high levels of sophistication while, at the same time, they were often wracked by significant issues with both environmental and social sustainability (see module 1 for definitions from the "three-legged stool" of sustainability. Similarly important for us to note is that some Inca terraces and canals continue to exist and are still used today as they are in Peru so that they still create a sustainable contribution to food systems at a local scale.
A second example of environmental and social impacts resulting from this period of agricultural diffusion and trade in world history comes from the world trade system established by global colonial empires involving major European powers between 1400 and 1800 (such as the Spanish, British, and French colonial empires). A well-known example of social and environmental impacts from this time period is the exporting of crops and livestock, along with related elements of European environment-food systems, on many areas of the world by these empires. Examples included wheat, sugar cane, alfalfa, cattle, and sheep. These crops and livestock had not originated in Europe but had already diffused there during earlier history, and were common in Europe at the time these empires were expanding. These components of new European colonial environment-food systems were mutually reinforcing, since for example the forage crop alfalfa and introduced European grasses were highly conducive to expanding the raising of cattle and sheep and making new sources of animal food products available to human populations. There were thus reinforcing (positive) feedbacks between the way that these crop species such as alfalfa and grasses were able to "remake" environments and make them more hospitable for European livestock. Sugar cane is another crop that is notorious for remaking the landscapes and social relations in the Caribbean, South America, and the United States, through plantation agriculture and slavery. The case of pasture species and livestock is considered further in this module's summative assessment.
The third major period in our broad historical summary is modern industrial agriculture, which is the predominant environment-food system today, though it coexists with a significant sector of smallholder agriculture that has incorporated modern industrial techniques to a greater and lesser extent.
Modern agriculture arose in the 1800s and 1900s through a variety of developments in agriculture and in the processing and business of foods. “Industrial” in this description refers to the major role of factory-type processes that are principally large-scale and involve the defining role of technological inputs such as large amounts of freshwater use, chemical fertilizer, pesticides, and “improved” seed that delivers high-yield responses to the other inputs. Industrial is also an appropriate term since this environment-food system has narrowed concentration on a few species of crops and livestock. “Modern” is important in this description since distinct foodways and consumption practices---many based on foods that are highly processed, relatively inexpensive, easy-to-prepare convenience items---that are integral to this environment-food system. Modern is also an important term since it’s estimated this predominant system is based on more changes in the past 100 years than occurred over several hundred and maybe even thousands of years previously.
In much of the world, the advent of the modern environment-food system was provided through the Green Revolution beginning in the 1940s and 1950s. The Green Revolution used science and technology to develop modern crops and agricultural production systems for the countries of Asia, Africa, and Latin America. While it has evolved considerably, the approach of the Green Revolution continues to be used today. The worldwide influence of the Green Revolution suggests one additional term to describe this type of environment-food system, which is “global.” The development of this system, as well as its inputs and impacts, is global in scope. The global characteristics of today’s predominant environment-food system will be evident throughout this module and the others in this course as we place emphasis on the global scale of environmental and social impacts, which relates to the concept of the Anthropocene. In fact, if we consider the bar graphs of the relative areas of wild versus managed land (crops and livestock) globally presented in module 1 (Figure 1.1.4) we can see why some experts prefer to think of modern industrial agriculture, and the related expansion of human populations, as the defining period of the Anthropocene.
A wide range and mix of environmental and social impacts are associated with modern industrial agriculture. Agricultural mechanization has coincided with a major reduction in the agricultural workforce. In the United States, for example, less than 2% of the population is estimated to be directly employed in agriculture. In the 1870s and 1880s, by contrast, this estimate was 60-80% of the U.S. population. Environmental impacts and human-environment interactions have also been strongly influenced by the widespread use of fossil fuels in modern industrial agriculture.
Fossil fuel use is the foundation for many modern agricultural technologies ranging from tractors and farm machinery (Fig. 2.2.2) to fertilizers and pesticides as well as the energy costs of processing and the large number of “food miles” typically involved in transportation. As the result, energy issues along with greenhouse gas emissions have become a major concern with modern industrial agriculture----as discussed in subsequent modules.
One example of human-environment interaction will suffice in this section since modern industrial agriculture will be examined in detail in many of the modules that follow. (Modules 6, 7, and 8, which focus on agroecology, feature excellent and far more extensive examples.) The widespread use of pesticides and the creation of pesticide-dependent crops and cropping systems are a defining characteristic of this agriculture worldwide. The development of these synthetic products for protecting crops, and potentially the increase in yields associated with solving, if temporarily, a pest problem. Meanwhile, the populations of agricultural pests continue to evolve resistance in response to these applications, an example considered further in module 8. As a result, it is essential that these modern industrial crops and cropping systems (including the use of pesticides) be constantly developed in order to gain a new advantage against the most recently evolved pests.This innovation process in agricultural technology for crops is another example of a positive feedback driving the further industrialization of agriculture.
In recent history (since 2000) significant new directions have entered the spectrum of existing environment-food systems. The future of food will depend on these newer systems, in addition to modern industrial agriculture that was introduced on the previous page. The new directions---which we refer to here as “ecological modernization” and “alternative community-based food systems”---are a response to concerns over environmental sustainability, human health, and food safety in addition to the attempt to reinvigorate rural society and address social justice issues, a concept we introduced in module 1 as "social sustainability". Each of these new directions also has its own environmental and social impacts. These impacts are introduced here and then taken up again in module 10.1 when we consider them as "global" and "local community" variants of new, alternative food system types. In both these new directions, a major role is taken by ecological methods and techniques replacing to a significant degree the use of synthetic chemicals. Substantial success can be seen in some cases: for example, organically certified lettuce and carrots with reduced use of synthetic pesticides now account for more than 10% of the land producing these crops in the United States.
Social changes---remember we use this term broadly to refer to economic impacts as well---vary widely in the environment-food systems associated with ecological modernization. Large corporations as well as a substantial number of large family-managed farms, for example, predominate in the large-scale sector of organic agriculture and organic food production and distribution, where these companies and large farms occupy a "quasi-parallel" role to their role in supporting modern industrial food production (previous page). We and other authors describe their style of adoption of organic production techniques as ecological modernization because they seek environmentally sustainable methods as relatively interchangeable replacements for synthetic chemical inputs in modern agriculture (previous page). Ecological modernization also retains modern forms of organization, for example, large scale and efficiency of cropping and shipping of food, corporate management, and sales through mass outlets such as supermarkets. Food distribution companies in this system can offer organic foods at lower prices in the case of fresh vegetables and fruits. This advantage is significant since affordability is a major issue among potential consumers of organic food, and such "corporate organic" foods may be more accessible at the present for a larger proportion of the population. Others argue that issues of cost and accessibility resulting from transitions towards organic and other more ecologically-based ways of managing agriculture merely reflect the artificially low financial, environmental, and social costs of comparable products from the modern industrial food system, for example, the carbon dioxide emitted in the manufacture of fertilizers and pesticides (see module 10). In any case, the rules, regulations, and preferences of human systems designed to foster organic agriculture (such as organic certification and labeling) may be effective in improving the natural system, though the feedbacks to human systems may be ones mostly supporting large agribusiness through positive feedback effects introduced in Module 2.1.
Take for example the case of organic produce such as lettuce and carrots where natural conditions in climatically optimum growing areas (e.g., organic vegetable-growing areas in California) favor the capacity of large corporations and family farms able to access the high-quality land, resource systems (such as water), and deal with the regulatory tasks associated with large-scale national markets. The large scale of these corporate actors becomes a positive feedback driver which strengthens the transition towards this "ecological modernization" mode of a new food production system. This case is considered further in this Module’s Summative Assessment.
“Alternative community-based food networks” is a term that is applied to various smaller though increasingly important types of environment-food systems. We use this term to focus on local environment-food systems. Proponents and activists supporting these types of environment-food systems center much of their attention on the process known as re-localization. This process brings food producers into closer contact with consumers. Local farmers' markets, where farmers sell food directly to consumers, are an example of re-localization. Local environment-food systems are seen as an alternative to the concentrated corporate control of environment-food systems. A major goal of re-localization is supporting small- and medium-scale farmers, including the majority of family-owned farms, as a means of reinvigorating rural life among a range of small businesses---not just a larger number of farms but also the corresponding number of small business that support and benefit rural areas. This interest in “alternative food systems” is committed to increasing the percentage of the “food dollar” that goes directly to farmers. This percentage is estimated currently at 8-10% in modern industrial environment-food systems where a large share of the food dollar goes to food processors and farm input suppliers. For this reason, the local food emphasis in alternative food movements is also sometimes referred to as an emphasis on short food supply chains exemplified by farmers' markets or regional sourcing of food in supermarkets and restaurants. These alternative food systems are presented further in Module 10.
Download the worksheet [4] to understand and complete the assessment. You will submit the answers from the worksheet to the Module 2 Summative Assessment in Canvas.
The first part of the worksheet presents a more detailed version of the interaction of human and natural systems at the onset of agriculture at the end of the last ice age, presented at the end of Module 2.1. This is to provide you an example in the use of these diagrams to think about changes in food systems over human history, and it is shown below here as well.
Further instructions for the assignment are given in the worksheet. You will need to fill in four questions on the worksheet, some of which have multiple parts.
Please use this completed worksheet as a guide for taking the Summative Assessment quiz. You do not need to submit your worksheet.