APR 17

23. APR 17: Unit 6: The Future of Food

Assigned Work

• Montgomery, David. Chapter 1: "Good Old Dirt" Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations(pp. 1-9); (9)
• Diamond, Jarred. "Agriculture's Mixed Blessings" (180-191) (11)

In-class

• Documentary Reports

• Undercover at Smithfield
• Briefly noted - Neighbor to a Pig Farm
• EO

Montgomery Chapter 1, "Good Old Dirt"

• David Montgomery's on what's new in soil science. Montgomery's wiki page

• At the start of agriculture 98% of food producers supported a small ruling elite that controlled food distribution. Now only 1% of the population work in agricultural food production.

• David Montgomery wants to tell a history of soil and of human use of soil. Historical failures, but also interested in sustainability.

• Major theses: The history of agriculture shows us a pattern of failure that has doomed major civilizations. We can learn from this pattern of failure or repeat it. Avoiding the pattern will require attention to sustainable soil.

Diamond, Ch. 10, "Agriculture's Mixed Blessings"

• Old "progressivist" view
• Ants practice agriculture and something like animal husbandry [1]
• Details about the spread of agriculture - not like other great ideas (hand ax designs). Spread slowly, failed alot.
• Advantages of hunter gatherer lifestyle

• Short work week, more leisure - as long as you have enough Mongongo nuts!
• Better nutrition (in some comparisons)
• No impact from crop failures
• But, in recent research, not Diamond’s: hunter-gatherers’ lifestyle was very violent and competitive.

• 185: Paleopathology and medical anthropology: what you tell from feces, mummies, old bones and cookware Am. Indians who changed to ag.

• Health evidence from early adoption of agriculture
• Height (Ice age h-ger’s 5’10”, early ag-er’s 5’ 3”), nutrition, cavities, anemia, tb, syphillis, mortality (5% past 50 v 1%)
• Mono-crop dependency a risk in early ag.
• Population concentration promotes diseases and pathogen spread.
• Low carb, varied nutrients
• Class structures emerge after agriculture: diff outcomes dep. on class
• Sexual inequality: agriculture requires labor, women do that, but also produce more humans for labor. They become part of the productivity of the farm. Pregnant every 2 years instead of 4 for h-ger’s.

• Other differences that sustained agriculture

• Increased population density made hunt/gather politically vulnerable (10 malnourished farmers can still dominate 1 h-ger.
• Hunt/gather requires lots of room
• Agriculture created society that could produce sophisticated art (churches).
• Grants that agriculture led to lots of great things, but also to large populations, which affects the equation about quality of life.