In the last two centuries, agriculture has been an outstanding, if somewhat neglected, success story. Agriculture has fed an ever-growing population with an increasing variety of products at falling ...prices, even as it has released a growing number of workers to the rest of the economy. This book, a comprehensive history of world agriculture during this period, explains how these feats were accomplished.
Feeding the Worldsynthesizes two hundred years of agricultural development throughout the world, providing all essential data and extensive references to the literature. It covers, systematically, all the factors that have affected agricultural performance: environment, accumulation of inputs, technical progress, institutional change, commercialization, agricultural policies, and more. The last chapter discusses the contribution of agriculture to modern economic growth. The book is global in its reach and analysis, and represents a grand synthesis of an enormous topic.
An Economist Best History Book 2017
"History as it should be written."-Barry Cunliffe,
Guardian "Scott hits the nail squarely on
the head by exposing the staggering price our ancestors paid for
...civilization and political order."-Walter Scheidel, Financial
Times Why did humans abandon hunting and gathering
for sedentary communities dependent on livestock and cereal grains,
and governed by precursors of today's states? Most people believe
that plant and animal domestication allowed humans, finally, to
settle down and form agricultural villages, towns, and states,
which made possible civilization, law, public order, and a
presumably secure way of living. But archaeological and historical
evidence challenges this narrative. The first agrarian states, says
James C. Scott, were born of accumulations of domestications: first
fire, then plants, livestock, subjects of the state, captives, and
finally women in the patriarchal family-all of which can be viewed
as a way of gaining control over reproduction. Scott explores why
we avoided sedentism and plow agriculture, the advantages of mobile
subsistence, the unforeseeable disease epidemics arising from
crowding plants, animals, and grain, and why all early states are
based on millets and cereal grains and unfree labor. He also
discusses the "barbarians" who long evaded state control, as a way
of understanding continuing tension between states and nonsubject
peoples.
In 1949, Romania's fledgling communist regime unleashed a radical and brutal campaign to collectivize agriculture in this largely agrarian country, following the Soviet model. Peasants under Siege ...provides the first comprehensive look at the far-reaching social engineering process that ensued. Gail Kligman and Katherine Verdery examine how collectivization assaulted the very foundations of rural life, transforming village communities that were organized around kinship and status hierarchies into segments of large bureaucratic organizations, forged by the language of "class warfare" yet saturated with vindictive personal struggles.
Industrial agriculture is responsible for widespread environmental
degradation and undermines the pursuit of human well-being. With a
projected global population of 10 billion by 2050, it is urgent ...for
humanity to achieve a more sustainable approach to farming and food
systems. This concise text offers an overview of the key issues in
sustainable food production for all readers interested in the
ecology and environmental impacts of agriculture. It details the
ecological foundations of farming and food systems, showing how
knowledge from the natural and social sciences can be used to
create sustainable alternatives to the industrial production
methods used today. Beginning with a discussion of the role of
agriculture in human development, the primer examines how
twentieth-century farming methods are environmentally and socially
unsustainable, contributing to global change and perpetuating
inequalities. The authors explain the principles of environmental
sustainability and explore how these principles can be put into
practice in agrifood systems. They emphasize the importance of
human well-being and insist on the centrality of social and
environmental equity and justice. Sustainable Food
Production is a compelling guide to how we can improve our
ability to feed each other today and preserve the ability of our
planet to do so tomorrow. Appropriate for a range of courses in the
natural and social sciences, it provides a comprehensive yet
accessible framework for achieving agricultural sustainability in
the Anthropocene.
Black, White, and Green Alkon, Alison Hope; Cowen, Deborah; Heynen, Nik ...
11/2012, Letnik:
13
eBook
Farmers markets are much more than places to buy produce. According to advocates for sustainable food systems, they are also places to "vote with your fork" for environmental protection, vibrant ...communities, and strong local economies. Farmers markets have become essential to the movement for food-system reform and are a shining example of a growing green economy where consumers can shop their way to social change. Black, White, and Green brings new energy to this topic by exploring dimensions of race and class as they relate to farmers markets and the green economy. With a focus on two Bay Area markets-one in the primarily white neighborhood of North Berkeley, and the other in largely black West Oakland-Alison Hope Alkon investigates the possibilities for social and environmental change embodied by farmers markets and the green economy. Drawing on ethnographic and historical sources, Alkon describes the meanings that farmers market managers, vendors, and consumers attribute to the buying and selling of local organic food, and the ways that those meanings are raced and classed. She mobilizes this research to understand how the green economy fosters visions of social change that are compatible with economic growth while marginalizing those that are not. Black, White, and Green is one of the first books to carefully theorize the green economy, to examine the racial dynamics of food politics, and to approach issues of food access from an environmental-justice perspective. In a practical sense, Alkon offers an empathetic critique of a newly popular strategy for social change, highlighting both its strengths and limitations.
The New Food Activismexplores how food activism can be pushed toward deeper and more complex engagement with social, racial, and economic justice and toward advocating for broader and more ...transformational shifts in the food system. Topics examined include struggles against pesticides and GMOs, efforts to improve workers' pay and conditions throughout the food system, and ways to push food activism beyond its typical reliance on individualism, consumerism, and private property. The authors challenge and advance existing discourse on consumer trends, food movements, and the intersection of food with racial and economic inequalities.
Agricultural Involution: The Processes of Ecological Change in Indonesia is one of the most famous of the early works of Clifford Geertz. It principal thesis is that many centuries of intensifying ...wet-rice cultivation in Indonesia had produced greater social complexity without significant technological or political change, a process Geertz terms "involution".Written for a US-funded project on the local developments and following the modernization theory of Walt Whitman Rostow, Geertz examines in this book the agricultural system in Indonesia and its two dominant forms of agriculture, swidden and sawah. In addition to researching its agricultural systems, the book turns to an examination of their historical development. Of particular note is Geertz's discussion of what he famously describes as the process of "agricultural involution" in Java, where both the external economic demands of the Dutch rulers and the internal pressures due to population growth led to intensification rather than change.
As large-scale industrial agriculture comes under increasing scrutiny because of its petroleum- and petrochemical-based input costs and environmentally objectionable consequences, increasing ...attention has been focused on sustainable, local, and agro-ecological techniques in food production. Cuba was forced by historical circumstances to be one of the pioneers in the massive application of these techniques.
After the demise of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, Cuba was left without access to external support needed to carry on with industrial agriculture. The economic crisis led the country to reconsider their former models of resource management. Cuba retooled its agricultural programs to focus on urban agriculture--sustainable, ecologically sound farming close to densely populated areas. Food now takes far less time to get to the people, who are now better nourished because they have easier access to whole foods. Moreover, urban farming has become a source of national pride--Cuba has one of the best urban agriculture programs in the world, with a thousand-fold increase in urban agricultural output since 1994.
Sinan Koont has spent the last several years researching urban agriculture in Cuba, including field work at many sustainable farms on the island. He tells the story of why and how Cuba was able to turn to urban food production on a large scale with minimal use of chemicals, petroleum, and machinery, and of the successes it achieved--along with the continuing difficulties it still faces in reducing its need for food imports.
