Embedded Files
Pre-colonial Agriculture
Pre-colonial Agriculture
All humans living on the earth initially survived by foraging and hunting: collecting edible plant parts and killing wild animals for their meat.
Cultivating their own food over time gave humans access to more energy and more resources leading to increases in population and larger and more densely populated settlements such as villages and towns. Pace of historical change sped up.
The development and improvement of agriculture was closely tied to the development and improvement of civilization and vice-versa.
Foragers need 2 sq. km per person while farming supports more person in the same area.
Foragers and hunters move from place to place, following prey and living off a wide variety of species.
Farmers remain in one area and have to find ways to extract more energy from within the area. Farmers depend on a smaller number of species and increase output though artificial selection. Farming requires a close symbiosis between plant and animal species and humans.
Agriculture has allowed plants and animals to be dependent on humans to such an extent that they cannot survive alone: a form of symbiosis.
Humans herd and manipulate useful species and increase production to gain from them. Humans protect these and help them reproduce ensuring their survival and distribution.
Domesticated plants and animals have changed completely evolving into entirely new species e.g. teo sente which has evolved into corn and the mufon which evolved into sheep.
The dog is the oldest species to have been domesticated.
Agriculture was not a more attractive way of life to foraging, being more physically demanding, more stressful, less healthy with a narrower range of food choice and nutrition and the repetitive motions were not as good for the body. Also new diseases from domesticated animals, shortening human lifespans and increasing infant mortality rates.
Changing environmental conditions, increasing population densities, competition for resources between groups along with the depletion/migration of food resources may have forced the transition to agriculture.
Hunting and foraging strategies which manipulated the environment were a transition to the more intense manipulation that occurs during farming.
Some animals species were more suitable for domestication than others, possessing rapid growth, regular birth rates, herd mentality and a good disposition while some plant species could adapt to diverse environments, give good yields in poor soils, was able to rapidly genetically diversify and had resistance to certain fungal diseases.
The development of agriculture depended on the rate of domestication of plants and animals where plants that were more easily domesticated were available farming appeared earlier.
Some communities were able to become sedentary while maintaining a hunter-gathering lifestyle in what is called affluent foraging.
Increasing populations led to increased pressure on local resources leading to migration from larger communities to increasing smaller communities. Eventually, with migration no longer a possibility, hunter-gatherers may have been forced to establish a sedentary lifestyle and agriculture.
Migrating populations also grew more slowly due to the difficulty in moving babies, children and the elderly. Sedentary populations grew more quickly since these could be accommodated.
To improve the productivity of domesticates, removing unwanted trees or plants, planting tending and harvesting desirable plant species and tending and manipulating desirable and useful animal species.
Traditional agriculture was done by indigenous tribes on a survival basis and was subsistence in nature utilizing simple tools such as digging sticks, stone tools, etc.
One major system of farming included slash and burn agriculture. In slash and burn agriculture, the land was cleared of vegetation and then burnt. The ash from the burnt vegetation was left to nourish the soil. Farmers would then cultivate the land until yields declined. The land was then left to fallow and they would move to a new location near to their village and repeat the process. Sometimes, when all the land in the surrounding area had been cultivated and left to fallow, the village itself would be moved.
Sometimes the village would move in a circuit through the forest, eventually ending up near to where it was located over 100 years prior.
Colonial Agriculture
Colonial Agriculture
European settlers began as peasant farmers cultivating the staple crop--tobacco for sale to Europe.
Agriculture of this major crop was primarily done for commercial purposes.
Originally, settlers attempted to recreate European farming systems but this was unsuccessful and soon abandoned in favor of a series of plantation societies using slave labor to produce large quantities of tropical staples for the European market.
The English yeoman farming economy based mainly on cultivation of tobacco was facing a severe crisis. Caribbean tobacco could compete neither in quality nor in quantity with that produced in the mid-Atlantic colonies. Because tobacco farming had been basis of the economy, its end threatened the economic viability of the islands. As a result, the colonies were losing population to the mainland. Economic salvation came from what has been called in historical literature the Caribbean "sugar revolutions," a series of interrelated changes that altered the entire agriculture, demography, society, and culture of the Caribbean, thereby transforming the political and economic importance of the region.
Introduced by the Dutch when they were expelled from Brazil in 1640, the sugar plantation system arrived at an opportune time for the fledgling non-Spanish colonists with their precarious economies.
In terms of agriculture, the islands changed from small farms producing cash crops of tobacco and cotton with the labor of a few servants and slaves--often indistinguishable--to large plantations requiring vast expanses of land and enormous capital outlays to create sugarcane fields and factories.
Labour came in the form of salves imported from Africa, the East Indies and China.
Post Colonial Agriculture
Post Colonial Agriculture
In the Caribbean of the post-emancipation period, there emerged a local peasantry made up of ex-slaves who left the sugar plantations and established independent communities, called free villages, with economies based on small-scale agriculture and other informal activities such as small-scale retailing, fishing, and charcoal burning.
With export agriculture based on sugar still dominant, there developed an agricultural system characterized by a structural dualism. The features of this system are a large-scale export-oriented sector based on traditional plantation crops like sugarcane and banana along with a small-scale farming sector focusing on domestic food crops that are staples in local diets and local cuisine.
Plantation farming provides the most exports, by value, whereas peasant farming involves far more human labor.
Modern plantations own large tracts of land and specialize in one crop, commonly sugarcane, bananas, coconuts, coffee, rice, or tobacco. They are more mechanized and better managed than colonial plantations,
Individual peasant farms average less than 5 acres (2 hectares) in area, often in disconnected plots. A variety of crops are raised, including fruits such as mangoes, plantains, akee, and breadfruit; vegetables such as yams, potatoes, and okra; sugarcane; and coffee.
Tobacco has seen a recent resurgence in the Greater Antilles, especially in Cuba, Puerto Rico, Jamaica, and the Dominican Republic, mostly for cigar production. Ganja and marijuana, prepared especially for smoking, is illegal throughout the Caribbean region but is nevertheless of considerable commercial importance. Its chief producer is Jamaica, and its main destination is the United States.
Following the Green Revolution, there has been increased mechanization of agriculture and the introduction of the use of chemical fertilizers, weedicides and pesticides which saw an increase in production and also environmental impacts.
There has been an increasing drift towards non-conventional types of farming which utilize less space to produce more crops. Farming systems such as inter-cropping, hillside cropping (terracing), crop rotation, container planting, vertical farming and the like have become more predominant.
Technologies such as shadehouses, greenhouses, mechanized irrigation systems and the like have also been introduced.
As of recent years there has been an emphasis on climate smart agriculture which is geared towards minimizing risks due to climate change and involves the use of seeds from well adapted crops and varieties, reducing the impact of farming on biodiversity and increasing biodiversity in farming operations, using integrated pest management techniques which utilize cultural, chemical, physical and biological methods of pest control; improved water use and management; sustainable soil management; sustainable mechanization;
References
References
http://lifeofplant.blogspot.com/2011/12/traditional-agriculture.html
http://lifeofplant.blogspot.com/2011/10/caribbean-agriculture.html
http://www.fao.org/climate-smart-agriculture-sourcebook/production-resources/module-b1-crops/chapter-b1-2/en/
Page updated
Google Sites
Report abuse