Culture and the Environment Final

Types of Pastoralism

Settle pastoralism (agro pastoralism) Transhumance or semi sedentary Mobile pastoralism

Swidden

Slash and Burn. adds nutrients to the soil. helps with pests in some places. opens up land for more vegetation.

Supra household institutions

households accomplis most agricultural work but supra household institutions play a key role. Festive labor party mobilize unusual amounts of labor simultaneously. Reciprocal work (wuk).

Netting

households play a crucial role in intensive farming. They are involved in coresidence, reproduction, production, property transmission, and storage. Sustainable farming greatly influenced by social aspects.

Why doesn't Unilineal Evolutionism make sense?

how can "older version" civilizations stall in terms of evolution? why does "more evolved" even mean? There is no end point, there is just constant evolution.

what is heterosis really the discovery of?

how to capture value from the government and from the academy

Origin of Food Production Theory involving ideas

hunter gatherers wanted to be farmers but lacked means/resources. They did not know how to farm.

Optimal Foraging Theory

hunters go after non optimal animals (smaller would be better, low risk, larger numbers, more dependable, etc) but men place a great value on getting large animals.

Why do Bushmen hunt (behavioral ecology)?

hunting is costly signaling for sexual selection

investment vigor

non replantability creates a seed market that is profitable for companies to invest in extensive breeding trials producing more and less vigorous varieties.

Engels

supported Marx. argued that there was too much food and farmers were going broke because the prices of food were too low. farmers consolidated which means rural areas have a continuously dropping population.

Robert Hitchcock

looked at variation just within the Ju/'oansi

replanting F2 seeds

lose hybrid vigor

Effects of legibility

loss of intercropping (Richards) Destabilizes agroecology

Agriculture's affect on the DTT

low infant mortality/low fertility -> high infant mortality/high fertility

enclosure acts in london

made common lands privately owned.

Sharanahua Case Study

Peru. Women go from house to house and pick a man to hunt for her (man is not her husband)

growth of food production

arithmetically

Hegel

dialectic struggle of ideas; ideas drive things

Garret Hardin

"the worst thing we can do is send food, atomic bombs would be kinder"

Key Points about Funnels

- non local sources and institutions as compared to intensification - occurs in capitalist and non capitalist economies - under capitalism, interacting interests of capital, state, and science - weakly coupled to subsistence need, usually interested in disposing agricultural excess - technology fetishism - hybrid seeds - gov. builds fertilizer plants - able to evade responsibility for costs because costs tend to be indirect

Population density of hunter gatherers

0.5/mi^2

How can you make seeds a commodity?

GMO terminator seeds hybrid seeds fertilizer

Grain Gluts of 1920s and early 30s

1. success of collaborative breeding programs 2. replacement of animal traction with tractors 3. government subsidies to protect farmers from overproduction

Golden Man

18 year old prince or princess interred with warrior's equipment with rich funerary goods including 4000 gold ornaments. Adopted as one of the national symbols of modern Kazakhstan, all of this wealth could have resulted from pastoral lifestyle.

Irish Potato Famine

1843-1850. Population 8 million: 1 million emigrated, 1 million starved. Exported 500,00 hogs to England during this time

India famine

1876-1879. Thought to be caused by el nino famines. Indian population grows faster than food. Finance minster said attempts to mitigate famine and sanitation only "enhance evils resulting from overpopulation." India exported a record 358,000 tons of wheat to UK during famine.

Africa is Known for Shifting Cultivation

18th century West Africa had an incredibly high population density. Population was fed by a thriving agriculture that was based on the production of millet and new world crops such as maize and sweet potatoes. (Whydah). They did not waste an inch of the land but fertility was maintained by rotating crops.

Betty Meggers

1954. Law of environment limitation of culture. Famous problem of fit. There shouldn't have been advanced culture in the Mayan lowlands

Fertility rates have dropped naturally starting when?

1960 (except for sub saharan Africa)

Binford

1980 H-G organization (Nunamit vs. Kung). Hi ET, more abundant and widespread resources; lower ET, spatial temporal incongruities. Foragers move consumers to resource; collectors vice versa (Nunamuit)

History of selling labor (Bushmen)

19th century work in ivory trades: hunters, guides, messengers, bearers, and servants. Worked as trackers and soldiers in regional conflicts

When will food outstrip population?

2030

Great Leap Forward (1958)

37% drop in rice crop. Communist states misunderstood agricultural set up and production methods. Mao convinces people to eat up their stores. Encourages over planting of land based off of socialist theory of people (Lisenco), initiated war against sparrows because they ate some of the crops (increase in pest population)

Wuk

5-20 neighborhood partcipants, no compensation, become more important on frontier. allows market/non market flexibility.

The Essay

6 editions (varied in length). Tough talking realism as opposed to overly optimistic enlightenment dreaming. sound science over unproven theory. Don't worry be happy because of the natural laws involved.

Ujaama (Tanzania)

Agrarian society's problems with state may be based on political economic philosophy being incompatible with productive organization of agrarian society and the state's willingness to wreck social institutions in pursuit of that philosophy (Scott). State needs to read (measure and monitor) productive activities. States are trying to make the countryside legible to their own forms of measurement. Legibility + High modernism = disaster.

Origins of pastoralism

Agricultural and pastoral practices originated roughly at the same time. Pastoral communities may have originated as agriculturalists who lost their land and turned to full time herding or h-gs began trapping wild game.

Amazon and monoculture

Amazon now has been increasingly turning into large fields, monoculture. moving away from patchy areas which is leading to a whole new mono climate. Big push towards roads, especially in Brazil (roads increase land value, cultivation, decrease patchiness). Settlement schemes (sell land cheap to settlers in order to get people to move into the amazon, cultivation of plots spreading outward which is leading deforestation).

Wet rice farming in terms of Boserup

An exception because even though input and output both increase, it is relatively efficient

Lewis Binford

Before/at the end of the Pleistocene, the majority of the human population was living in optimal zones along the coast but the overflow of the coastal regions put pressure on creating alternative ways of food production --> agriculture (demographic)

The Bet

Between Ehrlich and Simon. Bet on prices of 5 metals over ten years. Ehrlich blamed loss on the depression

Julian Steward and Cultural Ecology

Bringing environmental causes back in. Key is organization of work. Cultural practices explained as adaptive strategies. Independent variables: environment and technology. Cultural Core (institutions most directly related to food and environment) shape social organization of work, which shapes other parts of culture. Organization properties (where men live, what kids do) are a reflection of the environment. Material conditions drive the whole system

Britain vs US

Britain is an example of outer directed agro capitalism and US is example of inner directed national integration of manufacturing into industrial agriculture

Tanzania: Feedback Loop of State Intervention

Bureaucratic intervention in production and social institutions caused outputs to drop and people to rebel which called for even greater control over production and related social institutions.

!Kung

Bushman language. Characterized as foragers.

Ed Wilmsen and revisionists

Bushmen were not at all happy, they suffered from being forced out of their rightful land. Not persistent and well adapted, rather they are a case of marginalized underclass scraping by in a poor environment with few economic opportunties

Why do Bushmen hunt and gather?

Cultural Ecology and Marxist Observers (who believe they are a capitalist society) say it is because they can. Farming is harder work and possibly worse for you; foraging is efficient in terms of energy and time. They did because they were more affluent that way.

Mary Shelley

Daughter of Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin. Wrote Frankenstein

KhoiRichard B. Lee

Did research near Dobe, Botswana during early 1960s. Kalahari contains the oldest cultures which mean that those cultures are unchanging

Jared Diamond (Guns, Germs, and Steel) - Domestication

Differences in progress results from availability of resources, ecology, modes of production, geographical prerequisites, and 'luck' Focuses on what makes people successful (especially Europeans) Criticized for Eurocentric views, racism, and not acknowledging the complexities and resiliency of unlucky groups

Hunter gatherers

Diverse. Many dependent on aquatic resources at fairly high population densities. Many were complex. Bushmen didn't have political/social stratification

What acts the material embodiments of social structure, power, and wealth?

Domesticated Animals

Julius Nyerere of Tanzania

Draconian: forced collective agriculture. 1973 started making widespread resettling compulsory because they weren't getting enough people to move into large farming communities. Relocated 70% of rural Tanzanian population. Tanzania was divided into a neighborhood settlement pattern that was conductive to production and people from any of the neighborhoods could come to the mar muos if they wanted. Most people were mixed agropastoralists. blamed west for how badly Ujaama went.

Marx on Industrial Agriculture

Early work saw much more benefit in some forms of agricultural industrialization. Later work was more critical towards ag. industrialization. Anticipates later work on externalizing the costs of food production (3rd party pays for part of mess of costs for a power plant).

Nisbett (geography of thought)

East Asians mode of thought shaped by collective nature of rice cultivation, genetic changes around time of adoption of rice farming

Political Ecology

Emerges in 1980s. Hatchet critique of apolitical environmental problems and apolitical cultural ecology. differences in costs and benefits of environmental interactions are not shared equally. need to use different scales of analysis: local, but also regional and global.

Two contradictory movements of the evolution of economy

Enriching but at the same time impoverishing. Appropriating in relation to nature but expropriating in relation to man.

Robert Braidwood Theory on the Origin of Agriculture

Environmental change/population pressure (demography) was not a big part of the story. Food production revolution is the result of increasing cultural differentiation and specialization of human communities. The people of the area have gotten to know the plants and animals so well that their culture has become ready to "achieve" domestication

What model does not work with land use?

Environmental determinism; just because land is suitable for subsistence practices doesn't mean it will be used for them

Population and Environment in Machakos (Case Study in Kenya)

Example of high population and intensive farming. takes time for sustainable systems to develop Europeans began to colonize Africa in the 20th century and moved into only a handful of places (highland areas of Kenya) land was important for mobile pastoralists but since they moved, British assumed land was for the taking British put mobile populations onto reserves

Marx

Focused on how capitalism worked. Divisions within society based on political economy. Look at struggles between opposite ideas. Materials drive things. Looked closely at social classes. Material condition control leads to social classes which then lead to ideas. Stressing conflicting interests and inequalities in society. Urban vs. 3rd World

Marx General Theory

Forces of production --> relations of production --> legal politics Classes with distinct interests in capitalist society; One controlling the forces of production and another stopped of means of production so they are forced to sell their labor

Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin

Founding father of feminism. Writer/intellectual. Girls should be intellectuals and policy makers, not raised for a decorative role in society. Gave birth to her first child and died a few weeks later due to complications.

Bantu

Herders. Herero, Tswana. Khoisan language phylum.

Demographic Transition Theory

High infant mortality/high fertility -> low infant mortality/low fertility

Chagnon explanation of Yanomamo conflict

Hobbesian view (innate hostility). small scale conflict was an adaptive, indigenous trend. served social roles without killing that many people

Effects of Cultivation

Increases fertility (shorter birth spacing) sedentary lifestyle morbidity and mortality

Godwin

Institutions are to blame. Anarchist. Solve societal problems by using reason. Envisioned an ideal society as a utopian, anarchist society. Argued that through reason and using our mind we could get over the need for sleep and overcome sexual passion and eventually get rid of crime, war, and government. Utopian. Proposed idea of equality during the Industrial revolution (1760s). In 1801 he was supportive of Malthus, in 1820 he was bitter.

How has food production really increased?

Intensification (internal change in production). Industrialization (external energy)

Harris and Diwale explanation of Yanomamo

Kasava was their main crop (nutrient poor). Needed nutrient dense food. Needed large buffer areas between villages in order to avoid game depletion and these were maintained by keeping population low.

Tiv at Asamu (conflict)

Kofyar and Tiv moving into the same area. Tiv practice shifting cultivation. Tiv extensive farmers: let fire and fallow do al to of the work (rest and fish). Kofyar are intensive farmers and so are working all the time. Tiv concerned with having higher marginal input costs due to Kofyar settling on their land. Tiv intimidate Kofyar : steal yams (but leave vines), have villages on main road, take and cook Kofyar chicken, plant perennial kasava along yan crop field. Conflict due to Tiv wanted to avoid intensification and land loss.

New Demographic Theory by Rosenberg

Large HG territories needed a safety net; decreasing territories creates need for more predictable, controllable resources

Du/da

Live in bands of varying sizes, typically a few dozen. Mobile. No accumulation. Nonhierarchal. No ownership. Women didn't have contraceptives. Low fertility. Long birth intervals. Lacatational amenorrhea

The Herero

Mainly Namibia, also South Africa, Botswana. Women wear hats that are meant to emulate the horns of cows. Deeply involved in pastoralism. Cows are a major source of wealth and symbolism. Chased out by Germans (previously colonized South East Africa) during dry season into the deserts and many ended up going to concentration camps (first genocide of the 20th century). In herero concentration camps, German geneticist Eugene Fischer first investigated the science of race mixing , experimenting on both the herero and the half german children born to herero women. They dress in outfits that look like turn of the century German clothing when dressing for special events.

Who did Cambodia take inspiration from for agricultural set up?

Mao and the GLF

Engels

Materials drive things. Malthus sees overpopulation in civilization as a natural man explained human misery caused by the external laws of nature, thus diverting attention from the misery created by class exploitation

Jari Project, 1960s

Mining, cultivation, power plant Power plant too big to make in Brazil so they made it in China and shipped it to Brazil (huge failure)

Owens Valley Pauites

More concentrated, predictable resources. Larger bands, more sedentary, modify environment (hunter gatherer irrigation). Communal land tenure, property rights

Transhumance or semi sedentary

More mobile. Follows a cyclical pattern of seasonal migrations. Summer: cool highland valleys, areas of greater altitude. Winter: warmer lowland valleys, close to water sources and fires. Occupy the same two locations in which they often have regular encampments or permanent housing structures. usually follow precise routes that are repeated each year. toward resources, away from risks, for economic motives like trade. Often do small horticulture at their summer encampments or trade animals/animal products for grain. Dependence on livestock ranges 50%.

Why are pastoralists mobile?

Movement allows use of a variety of pastures, water points, and other resources such as salt licks for livestock. Allows for adaption to seasonal changes. Also allows product trade and interaction with sedentary populations (join kin for seasonal gatherings) Allows them to not be affected by adverse or irregular climatic conditions.

Nitrogen Fixation

N2 into ammonia or nitrate. bacteria in the routes of legumes can fix atmospheric nitrogen to nitrates.

Nitrogen Funnel

NPK mentality, guano island act that gave the US rights over guano islands, relations between state and capital (navy protection granted to those moving fertilizer to US)

Yanomamo case study

Napolean Chagnon worked there in early 60s. Slash and burn farmers. Mobile, often fission. Low population densities. Very few women due to female infanticide. High levels of conflict within group. War leading cause of death among men. Indigenous explanation of conflict: fighting over women due to the women shortage. Adaptive: way of dealing with protein shortage.

Leslie White

Neoevolutionism (move from history of society to what society is all about). Returned attention to social evolution. Axis of social evolution (overall energy capture per capita, efficiency of capture, laws of cultural development).

Intensification

New inputs: fertility (herding, composting, fertilizer), tillage (hoes, plows, draft animals, tractors), weeding (mulching, hand weeding, herbicides), insects/animals (indigenous controls, insecticides). Effects: longer work hours, decreasing marginal returns. efficiency drops. output per cultivated area rises but output per area/time rises. increases marginal costs for land preparation, fertilizing, weeding, and pest management.

Fertilizer

Nitrogen fixing cyanobacteria. N is a key in agricultural productivity. N is abundant but mostly in a nonreactive form that crops can't use. need to be fixed. pond scum is encouraged to grow on rice patty because it is a natural fertilizer. individual farmers perfect their own natural fertilizer that is "just right" for their land

Sustainable (Kofyar)

Often defined in overly general terms (ability to meet current needs without compromising future generations' ability to meet theirs), conflicts between aims of environmental protection and economic development, anthropologists insist on social equity considerations and attention to livelihoods and ability to withstand setbacks (resilience). Environment stability (soil fertility managed through manuring, no drawdown water table). Economic stability (due to flexibilities in subsistence/cash crop production, reliable "affordable" inputs, use of, but limited dependence on external inputs, no landless class)

Condorcet

Optimistics. Analyzed how population could outrace food production but believed that conservation, prevention of waste, female education, voluntary family planning would allow us to overcome the negative affects of overpopulation. science can provide

Why practice pastoralism?

Owning livestock minimizes the risks associated with hunting and gathering and droughts that affect agriculture. Highly efficient way of living in arid/semi arid landscapes. Adapt their herding systems based on the variability of the environment. Enhances biological diversity through soil fertilization and ecosystems can regenerate between occupation

I =

P x A x T

Bushmen

Population density < 0.5/mi. Live mainly off wild resources lie mongongo nut, melons, but some also live on cattle stations set up by Bantu as commercial enterprises. settlement: bands, numbering in dozens but variable, frequent moves. Workload: 2 hrs/day

Intensification on the Frontier (Kofyar)

Population density rises. skill replaces scale. added hours on dense, complex cropping calendar. land preparation with hoes. fertilizing: animal manure, fertilizer. High weeding, mulching, and staking. Hours/yr rise to 1500 hrs/year, work year lengthened, slack times filled in. Cash crops.

Boserup Model

Population growth drives intensification and higher production at the cost of lower efficiency. Highly simplified model of how agriculture works. Social demands for agricultural output, produce more food than what they need for social reasons. economics are also a cause. Effects: intensification, degradation (because people are poor), conflict, lower efficiency. Very much a cause and effect model

What drives conflict?

Population pressure.

Marx on Food Production

Problem with agrarian society. Although stock in trade was analysis of how social relations articulated with production in industrial society, he knew little of the same relationships among peasant farmers. In 1852, he described an agrarian countryside as "formed by the simple additions of homologous magnitudes, much as potatoes in a sack form a sack of potatoes" Early work wanted to abolish the family.

core cultural institutions

household type, band/tribes, settlement pattern, rituals, and primitive warfare; all are adaptations to the environment

Malthus assumptions about farming

Productivity of land is inelastic, raise output by brining more land under cultivation and increasing labor. Premiums may be given for running up fresh land and replacing manufactures with agriculture and grazing with tillage. Every endeavor should be used to weaken and destroy institutions relating to corporations which cause labors of agriculture to be worse paid than labors of trade and manufactures. Population is a function of agricultural output. Intensification and Industrialization increase output

Intensive inputs

locally mobilized inputs (household, wok, mar muos)

Roger Chennels

San Lawyer. Kagga Kamma was where he first met San. Represents San pro bono. Bushmen of Kagga Kamma were not acting, they were relocating till they won their land back

What is pastoralism?

Subsistence system based primarily on domesticated animal production (meat, milk, hide, blood). Dependence on livestock that graze on communally managed or open access pastures. Organization of the community life is based on the needs of the herds. Move with herd based on seasonality and water availability.

Swidden vs. Intensification

Swidden systems are preferred where possible; relatively efficient (output:input, primary input being labor) because they capitalize on fire and fallow, are often relative productive (esp. because of secondary benefits of fallows, hunting); require a large land base

Who followed Great Leap Forward model?

Tanzania

Great Basin, Nevada Shoshone Indians

Technology (bow, club, net). Hunter gatherers and their subsistence activities could be taken care of by a small group of people. Resources were scattered --> lived as small, mobile families with impermanent camps. Family groups except winter encampments and hunts (larger groups). Land tenure adjusts to "core" practices.

Who did the Dengue regime emulate (in Ethiopia) in terms of forced cultivation?

Ujaama

Lewis Henry Morgan

Unilineal Evolutionism (evolutionary progress that moves in a linear fashion and different communities around the world show us different stages of evolution)

Mao

Wanted to change to larger scale production of white rice patties. Mao wanted people to work in communal groups and work brigades. He believed household production methods were bad. Went into agrarian societies looking for rich "Koolaks" and excited male heads of the household

Where is pastoralism practiced?

Where rainfall and temperature are subject to a high degree of variability. Areas with low population densities.

Ju/'oansi

Work 17 hrs/week but were robust and long lived. Chosen to represent all hunter gatherer lifestyles.

What caused Malthus to write about Popualtions?

Worked as a pastor in Oakwood which was a very poor town divided by open and closed parishes.

example of agricultural preventive check

acreage reduction setasides (government pays farmers not to plant crops; spread with the introduction of hybrid seeds)

Primitive war (indigenous/adaptive)

adaptive because primitive war is often not very bloody. social ends accomplished by means other than violence.

sub therapeutic use of antibiotics

added to animal feed --> antibiotic resistant bacteria

Theory of Induced Innovation (Binswanger, Ruttan, Havami)

agricultural research and development adapt to factor prices. start re breeding plants (made them smaller) so that their energy would be used for seed production rather than growth, making production cheaper. Japan had land saving, fertilizer intensive wheats. US had labor saving machine.

Fitzgerald

agriculture being made rational and legible to the state.

fallow farming

allow plots of land to rejuvenate for periods of time

Downstream costs of industrial food production that is externalized with government approval

animal mistreatment, air, water, biotic communities contaminated, communicable diseases, obesogens, suppression of information about industrial agriculture

MRSA

antibiotic resistant bacteria that has killed more people than AIDS and propagated through hog CAFOs. used to be contracted in hospitals, now it is locally contracted (sports teams)

Conflict in the Demographic Republic of Congo

area of lots of mining. fighting over the mining of cotan (not a resource they needed to sustain themselves, an economic resource)

Mobile Pastoralism predicted model

assumption based on the links between climate and soil to provide where mobile pastoralism would be the most successful. too optimistic, some of the land too arid during summer months. Political factors aren't taken into consideration

technology fetishism

attributing value to the technology rather than to the relations among people that give it its value

Upstream costs of industrial food production

basic research (hybrids, pesticides, confinement technology, GMOs) supporting continued flow of energy (guano, oil, gas)

why did agriculture develop?

because it provided benefits to the elite

Why do Bushmen hunt (behavioral and historical ecology)?

because they are excluded from more lucrative livelihoods. they are a rural south African underclass they have a history of economic disenfranchisement.

Costly signaling/handicap principle

behaviors that handicap an individual may be selected for because of the information they transmit. Informs potential mates that the individual can afford the cost (ex. Peacock feathers are a huge energy cost). Informs predators that individual is very fit and not worth chasing (ex. Antelop stetting - kick their legs in the air as they run and jump away in order to tell the predator that they have so much energy/fitness that they can afford to waste energy). Observers evolve to recognize the honest signals by their cost honest signals vs. cheap signals like peacocks with lighter feathers)

high modernism

belief that mastery of nature and desirability of rational design of social order commensurate with the scientific understanding of natural laws

Where does pastoralism fit into social theory?

between hunter gatherers and agriculturalists. disprove the unilineal theory of evolution. mobile, control resources, and modify their environments (they are an intermediate).

what did surplus fertilizer bomb factories lead to?

breeding fertilizer intensive maize which increased water and pest problems which gave rise to pesticides

Swidden and deforestation.

can cause deforestation if spatial scale and arrangement and time scale for recovery is not right. causing deforestation in the Amazon even though that forest is well suited for swidden.

Capitalism and Agriculture

capitalism has difficulty penetrating agricultural production but since ag. is the biggest form of production, it will get in. capital develops new commodities which become required farm inputs, tailor nature of farm products to match the demands of a few major purchasers of farm outputs who have the power to determine the price paid. production risks retained by the farmer.

Marx on Creation of Wealth

capitalism runs on surplus extracted from labor and nature (not jus take ones stuff from labor)

Primitive war (exogenous/maladaptive)

caused by the expansion of "civilized societies"

Howard and monocropping

caused loss of soil fertility which lead to its corrective, growing use of chemical fertilizers

Evolution since becoming agricutluralists

change in genes that deal with lactose genes for cooperative behavior selected for as rice cultivation was spreading. main reason people started cultivating was to get drunk asian glow caused by spread of cultivation in the last few thousand years

how does capital capture value from the public?

cite overproduction as a public good and use publicly funded research to buy and sell seeds. agricultural technologies also capture value from public funding

Little Leap Forward (1950s)

closed grain markets, state take over of grain and trade, state telling people how much to produce, peasants put into mutual aid teams (attack on cultural and social organization), passport intervention used to prevent people from fleeing.

Settle Pastoralism (agro pastoralism)

coexistence of both agricultural and grazing activities. more than 50% farming. 10-50% of food from livestock. Keeping animals in one place most or all of the year. Fixed settlements. Provision livestock fodder (like hay). Take advantage of open pastures seasonally. Includes dairy farming, raising beef cattle, and raising sheep and alpacas for wool. Ex. Farmers of Simien Mountains of Ethiopia

Swidden in Rio Negro

colombian venezuelan amazon. soil charcoal dated to 4000 BC. works well due to the patchiness which makes it easy pollinators to pollinate which helps with forest recovery. people are also managing the fallows (leaving stumps, fertilizing)

commodification

commercialization of a good, removing good from societal context, making it salable, producing for exchange value

Intercropping

common in both extensive and intensive farming. form of intensification. not industrial.

Great Leap Forward

comparing rice cultivation at that time to Becker's research on wheat. built on Stalin and Lenin's failed agricultural policies.

most important domesticate in the new world

corn

Alcohol as origin of agriculture (katz and voight)

corn domesticated for the sweetener it produces for making beer. Alcohol is not just recreational, fermented alcohol beverages used in sacred rituals, it is economically significant (mar muos and kofyar diet)

Key step in commodification of seed

creation of seeds that could not be replanted. F1 generations all identical and so farmer looks at the seeds as a brand rather than a plant, seed brand becomes indispensable.

wet cultivation

crop is grown in a field that is bounded and holds water; part of the season the crop needs standing water on it. water controlled with dykes. require sophisticated hydraulic systems

preindustrial agriculture

crop is the seed - entirely use value seed improved by population improvement - retain genetic diversity but increase frequency of desirable traits by mass phenotypic selection

Feasting as origin of agriculture (Hayden)

cultivation starts in order to allow people to have different/special foods for feasts. Feasts throughout the past were a huge part of socioeconomic life. Non demographic

how is culture measure?

culture evolves through increasing efficiency of energy capture from the environment. different populations can be ranked sequentially based off of this

Zambia: chitemene agriculture

cut a larger area than they burn because trees don't have large enough mass to bring in enough fodder to kill the bugs

underground burning.

cut trees, bury them, then burn. this way nutrients are not lost in the air.

Batak agriculture

cut, dry, burn

Downstream costs for nitrogen pesticides

dead zones kill algae blooms which kill the enviornment

secondary metabolites

deal with insects. given us a lot of medicines, spices, and hallucinogens

Social Organization of Pastoralists (relationship to agriculturalists)

depends on status of trade and land use/dispute. can be competitive, symbiotic or predatory.

Key Themes in socialist economies

direct state intervention into agriculture contrived applications of Marxian social analyses of industrial society. ignorance of ecology of small farms drive to make landscape legible

Charles Trevelyan

director of relief during Irish Potato Famine. Was Malthus's student. Thought god was killing the Irish

appropriationism

discontinues but persistent undermining of discrete elements of agricultural production and their transformation into industrial activities.

Fordism

division of labor industrial deskilling credited with modern assembly line more efficient way of production replacing experts with more ignorant, less politically powerful people

Domestication of Plants (Fritz)

domesticated for reasons other than food: cotton, pumpkin used for storage

Female infanticide

driven by Yanomamo's male superiority complex that is a result of the constant presence of war in their lives.

what did surplus grain lead to?

dumping on third world economies which led to ethanol, CAFOs, and fast food nation

hog CAFO model

early 1970s fully enclosed metal barns feed silos exhaust fans manure lagoons breeding facilities (gestation barns) - sows give litter after litter before giving worn out. farrowing crates - keep big lying on her side most of the time so that piglets can nurse growout facilities - pigs are raised to market weight with increasing speed fed them corn (very inefficient)

positive checks

early death. kill people before famine has to. includes societal ills such as pestilence, plague, sickly seasons, epidemics, etc.

Essential characteristic of life in the Kalahari

eclecticism ("scrambling"). Can't be divided into concrete categories of just foragers or just pastoralists. They do what they can to get by (pilfering, taking wage work, coming by livestock)

Non malthusian causes of deforesting

economic reason. people deforest land to own it. cattle change the compaction of the soil in the Amazon so that the native seeds can no longer grow in their soil, bulldozing completely thrashes the roots.

Boserup

economics of agrarian change under population pressure. intensification (high input of mostly local resources, fallow shortening). industrialization (use of off farm resources)

Tractors

emerged in 1920s. families that didn't use it for production had low crop yields but if they did then the cost of maintaining the tractor took away from the budget for living. bank gave credit to people with tractors but it just led to even greater debt

environmental determinism

environment directly shapes culture through the effects of resources on activities and through effects on personality

Result of moving pastoralists to reservations

erosion and environmental degradation. for decades after Kenya was decolonized, people talked about how the Machakos district must have reached its carrying capacity.

primary metabolites

ex. chlorophyll carry out basic functions of life

Kagga Kamma Game Reserve

family of Bushmen hired. Deeply upsets Graham Boynton

Why are cows so inefficient?

long gestation and lactation higher metabolism rates less of the body is edible grain to meat ratio is high

1933 Nat Poultry Improvement Plan

federal government in depression sponsors Big Science. research on disease control, breeding, husbandry in confinement systems. creating industry for "broilers" vs layers WWII chicken not rationed like beef; War food administration contracts. Delmarva Peninsula to produce chicken

Utterly Dismal Theorem

feeding the hungry will only increase starvation in the future because the hungry will have more babies and even more babies will die

Funk Seed's trio idea

fertilizer responsive hybrids, heavy fertilizing, close planting

mar muos

festive labor party. 30-150 participants. Compensated with beer.

Ferguson's theory for Yanomamo conflict

fight in order to gain access to Western tools. game is the primary driver (most villages in area around the Yanomamo don't have problems with hunting. only places that have major problems are really big Yanomamo villages). big villages are a social pathology that arise due to the spreading tentacles of wester civilization

conflict

food shortage is the prime drive [in developing countries]; it usually corrects the population-resource imbalance without much bloodshed

Foraging vs. Agriculture

foraging is energetically preferable, agriculture developed out of necessity

Graham Boynton

found family of bushmen at the Kagga Kamma Game Reserve pretending to be old school bushmen to be deeply offensive. He then went to Tsodilo Hills (more rural Bushman; Ju/'oansi) and he finds an old man and then younger kids drinking at a bar

growth of unchecked population

geometrically

buttress roots

go out instead of down in order to support the tree

Commodification

goods produced for exchange value not use value.

Problems facing pastoralists

government intervention (pastoralist land taken over by agriculture and large scale commercial farms). Limited mobility (livestock becomes more susceptible to disease, environmental degradation). cattle raiding and warfare (herd animals are easy to steal, modern weapons have turned it into highly organized crime and war)

EDCs

have long delayed effects like effects in later life. several mechanisms through which they contribute to obesity

what is the most ethical type of production?

highly industrialized agricultural production, because it is most productive.

Kofyar Culture and Agriculture

historic case of Boserupian demographic and agricultural change. Flesh out nature of intensive cultivation. Show the resources that run intensive farming - mainly labor and social. Shown non Boserupian variables at work. Example of Development from below.

what domesticated animals are not dependent on humans for survival?

horses, donkeys, pigs

Costly Signaling applied to Human Hunters

hunting is the way to get the girl. Data inconclusive. Eric Aldren Smith says that costly signaling theory has explained some cases but further study necessary. Getting big game and getting more access to females is transferred into the culture and cultural behaviors.

heterosis

hybrid vigor a result from crossing inbred parents. creation of not only better plants but new kinds of diversity

Taylorism

importance of experts to tell others how to produce (college educated) workers who are given more breaks work more efficiently men who work in factories are unable to understand the science behind their work people want to quantify everything in agriculture

Food Production per Capita since Malthus's time

increased. developing countries are the one producing the most food per capita

Nigeria swidden agriculture

individual tree burning

Franz Haber

industrial N fixation 1909 father of gas warfare (Zyklon B) which probably killed his relatives in hitler germany

Modern pastoralism

industrial owned ranching conglomerations

how can people control means of production?

influencing/controlling the government which sets the rules. government sets the rules because it employs university professors

Industrial inputs

inputs mobilized from off farm (or by use of technology from off farm).

WW2 and government sponsored research

insecticides - intensive research to protect troops overseas (DDT) herbicides - a week after pearl harbor, plant hormone researchers start working on developing chemicals to destroy the crops feeding the enemy

shrimp farms

intensive (vietnam) - high density in small pools which require a lot of feeds, pesticides, and antibiotics. several diseases (2 kinds of virus) end up invading and causing it to crash. Extensive shrimp farms are more sustainable and ecologically efficient, make less of an immediate profit but are less likely to crash

Postwar public investments (chicken)

investment in nutrition, disease control, and confinement technologies by LGUs and federal government. 1940 took 250 man-hours to raise 1000 birds, down to 48 man hours by 1955. Distinctly American system of production arises in the former south (fully integrated operations start in early 50s, common by the end of 50s, 90% of production by early 60s) control of all operations except foundational breeding. self exploitation of the small household. integrater pushes risk onto small contract farmers (hire farmers to build chicken coop and take care of and raise chickens and then deliver a certain number of chickens on a certain date or pay compensation for not delivering)

participatory plant breeding

involves users more closely in crop development or seed supply. has potential in situations where formal breeding and seed supply systems are unable to fulfill the needs of all users. valuable for minor crops or in situations of dramatic change or crisis were formal systems are not involved or functioning. Where formal seed systems fail to supply planting material on time, of suitable quality, at accessible prices, or of suitable quality, farmers prefer their own sources (farm saved seed, exchanges, purchases). Decentralization may be valuable for any situation where the environment for crop growth is highly variable or differs significantly from those anticipated and tested by formal breeding.

preventive checks

kept babies from being born: prenatal population regulation. Ineffective due to passions and lack of moral restraint in the lower class

Bushmen problems in the last decade and how they adapted

kicked out of central Kalahari due to Diamond mining in 1980s. Kicked out of central Kalahari Game Reserve, Botswana makes a lot of money off of ecotourism so they kicked Bushmen out. Bushmen ended up in resettlement camps (very poor, disease, alcoholism)

Kofyar Labor and Households

labor demands are small but continuous, highly skilled. production limited more by land than labor. 5.1 is the mean household size. Low rate of polygyny. Mostly uclear, young married couples move out as soon as possible. Swidden farmers had much larger households.

Where does heterosis and seed research take place?

land grant colleges and agricultural experiment stations

Conditions favoring development from below

local ecological situation time ability to develop/adapt own social institutions ability to balance production for use/exchange value ability to benefit from long term investments in farm

Capital makes money how?

makes money by boosting production through technology. it helps if it can get state to pay for the technological development. mandatory to de couple farm output from food needs and rig system for unlimited production so that farmer will have to buy any new input if it wants to increase production, even if there is plenty of food. converts discrete units of farm production into a technological commodity

Marx

materialists (as opposed to idealistic) and dialectical (compared to complementary things). Ex. classes in an industrial society - one controls the means of production and the other sells labor. focused on capitalism (said it was a hideous practice due to its instability and inequality).

Koolak

means fist. used to describe "rich" peasants. Russian believed if industrialists had to lose their jobs than Koolak's had to lose their land (Marxist balance; presence of rich peasants and poor peasants).

Muos

millet beer ties Kofyar agricultural system together Drought resistant early crop for food security

Malthusian Deforestation

modern era of deforestation began in 1970s (Hecht and Cockburn). Rainforest population at that time was 70-90% lower than 1492. Amazon is a classic example of depopulation: there are far fewer people in the Amazon now and yet deforestation is a greater problem than it was; malthusianism doesn't work.

intensive nitrogen use affects ecology of field

monocultures become more economically problematic post WWII. higher plant population and luxuriant growth provided the ideal conditions for insect, disease, and weed buildup which encouraged the use of insecticides, fungicides, and herbicides.

Asian white rice cultivation

most important single food production in the world because it feeds the most individuals of a species. example of intensive cultivation. limits classic theories of intensification mainly intensive wet rice cultivation

Mobile Pastoralism

move herds to available pastures within boundaries of specific territories, follow seasonal migratory patterns that vary annually, opportunistic, don't create permanent settlements, free range grazing without stables, self sufficient but still interact with agriculturalists. more than 50% comes from livestock. Mobile pastoralists move strategically (no longer nomads)

Shifting cultivation

moving from land to land; shift from fallow land

Primitive war (indigenous/maladaptive)

needs to be stopped by civilized societies. Pinker believes man is violent. Hobbesian "warre" Conflict is the natural state/ it is inherent. Colonial powers took their belief that war was indigenous to wage war against indigenous peoples. Peace comes from invasion and forcing change.

Kloppenburg

new relationships between government, science, and capital

Discrete input funnels

nitrogen, pesticides, seed production, genetic modification

How is population restrained?

not just by preventive checks/moral restraint. Birth spacing built into the human population (ex. lactational amenhorreah), contraception and abortion, delayed reproduction, celibacy institutions, education of women, various anti natalist policies (ex. china's one child policy)

industrial agricultural funnel

political, legal, spatial, economic components all work to deliver a new industrialized input

Guthman

obesity rise after 1980. BMI = weight/ (height)^2. Since 1980 people in the US are on average 28 pounds fatter than they were before. cheap foods aren't just the result of subsidies, there is always a greater amount of labor that goes into producing fresh food. poor people are in food deserts is not supported by data. larger problem is with the energy balance model (calorie intake/calorie expended). not enough evidence that says people are eating significantly more since the 1980s. environmental obesogen model

Why do men hunt large game?

offspring don't tend to benefit (ex. Hadza and Ache distribute meat to rest of community). Lot's of free riding - it wouldn't be seen if the men were getting meat solely for their families and the women were doing their share of the work by taking care of children

Dismal Theorem

only palliatives are possible, can't keep positive checks from befalling the lowest orders

how do you increase agriculture (Malthus)?

open up more land and put more people behind more plows. Make agriculture more appealing to people. More land/more people are only palliative because fixed laws of nature indicate that we get positive checks

environmental obesogens

organo phosphate, dieldrin, and other chemicals are endocrine disruptors (including synthetic estrogens). stimulate production and replication of fat cells. Kids that are exposed to PCBs and DDE (break down product of DDT) in utero are more obese. Populations exposed to pesticides had more hypothyroidism.

Bushmen in the 17th century

owned livestock (sheep and/or cattle) but ended up losing them to animal epidemic called rinderpest. So, they were not always simply foragers.

planting rice nursery

packed way more densely than is efficient but since it is a nursery the rice patties just need to grow to adolescence and then they are transferred.

Border Zones (pastoralism)

pastoralists often live geographically distant from political and economic centers, disconnected. Many groups spread against national borders. sometimes move their herds across international borders to graze or trade, creating governmental tension

Pharaonic Projects: Fordlandia, 1930s.

people are to blame for the state of the Amazon. People construct wasteful monuments to the elites and try and capture the wealth of the Amazon. Fordlandia = Henry Ford's perfect society based in the fertile Amazon

Precapitalist society

people controlled means of production. Produced for use value

Environmental security malthusianism

people fighting over secure access to environmental resources

Most deaths come from Malthusian Processes

people getting sick, conflict (not starving)

Tsembaga Maring (PNG)

pigs usually killed during rituals pertaining to conflict, not ever just for meat. Roy Rappaport study farm energies and strategies of Tsembaga (pigs). Pork consumption and war regulation attracts enormous attention because of ascendancy of cultural ecology paradigm (even primitive religion explainable as cultural ecological institution). Fighters who eat pork without drinking on water fight a shorter time. Winners plan rum bin (thank you that awards allies with pork). Rumbin taken up after ancestors (which turns out when pigs overpopulate). War system limited violence and was linked homeostatically with pig population. adaptive value of ritual

epiphytes

plants that grow on plants, get nutrients from other plants

Multi story forest

poor soils but can have 500 tons of living mat and 50k species in 1 ha. trees have shallow roots and spend a lot of time getting nutrient out of the air and leaf litter. buttress roots. epiphytes. insect diversity. primary metabolites and secondary metabolites. need for light pronounced.

Flip side of Malthus idea

population growth drives economic growth improving life for the majority.

Social Organization of Pastoralists (within groups)

power is livestock = security, food, mobility, and ability to trade. wealth and status dependent of size of one's herd. men herd livestock, women engage in food production and processing

Origin of Food Production Theory by Grant Allen

primitive man gave those buried something, such as seeds, and these people then noticed that plants grew were the dead and the seeds were buried. The plants were considered a way of the dead thanking the primitive people and so they killed many people in order to bury them and gift them so they could receive their thanks.

Precapitalist

producing for use value; foil for understanding economical/social classes produced by the industrial revolution in europe

Households on the Frontier change (Kofyar)

production limited more by labor than land. On average, households double in size within 10 years. Polgyny rates sky rocket. Nuclear family households replaced by multi family households. Young marrieds urged to stay at home.

population pressure (production)

promotes more productive agricultural systems although at cost of harder and less efficient work

Hardin and the Tragedy of the Commons

property held in common will lead to environmental degradation; it will be overgrazed. There is no incentive for a herder to limit the number of animals he puts on shared land. Collectively grazed pastures are not openly accessible to all and pastoral land regenerates between occupations. Pastoralists have social institutions in place, they can just move their cattle onto someone else's land

Wustl Environment Law clinic case against premium standard

representing group of farmers and NGO in norther missouri. premium standard is owner of CAFOs that were responsible for air pollution in that area. Truman state students trained to monitor orders with grant from Missouri Attorney General. Premium standard's lobbyists said that the company was concerned about the program and the TS president canceled the students' work

Future of Pastoralism

resilience: adapt to stress and change. pastoralism will continue for the near future in poor nations especially in central asia because it is generally an efficient, low energy form of subsistence for semi arid regions.

How did colonists spread conflict?

resistance, native native under European direction, internecine (mutually disruptive) war over western goods or displacement

State Institutions (Herbst)

resources that are easily exploited from concentrated areas do not need strong state institutions. Widespread resources need strong state control (ex. bureaucratic infrastructure crop/tree rich Uganda, Ghana)

population improvement

retain genetic diversity but increase the frequency of desirable traits by mass phenotypic selection

Integrated rice production system

rice grown in bunded fields surrounded by canals. Mulberry trees surround banks; leaves fed to silkworms. silkworms produce cash crop of silk. dropping and molting fed to fish in ponds, canals, and patties. Fish eat weeds, insect larvae, produce fertile muck, and are a food source

rice patty

rice the crop, land the rice is grown on, or individual rice itself

Rachel Carson and monocropping

said it fueled the exploding population of pests and its corrective, massive application of insecticide

Fallow management

succession manipulated (end cultivation cycle with fallow enhancing crops, plant trees as fodder). fertilized. fallows are planted rotationally. used as a toilet.

How are animals domesticated?

selective breeding (unintentional and unobserved). Select for certain animals to improve quality of resources (wool). Only breed the docile, less dangerous and threatening animals which leads to loss of agility, speed, size of natural weapons (horns).

Modern Bushmen pastoralists

sell their labor as a commodity to Khoe and Herero. Mafista herding: livestock belong to the pastoralist but they are taken care of by the Bushmen for little to no money. To get livestock on loan, Bushmen have to put up their own possessions.

Hanunoo agriculture

shifting cultivation. studied by conklin

Production of inbred lines

smaller and smaller crop.

decomposition

society decomposes into separate classes. those who control means of production and those who have to sell their labor to those people.

prostrate civil society

society that does not have a large enough grassroots society to fight off changes from the outside

Salmon farms

sport fishing, big role in cuisines, oily fish, salmon farming grows rapidly in 1980s and 90s. create salmon anemia and sea lice. are fed other fish and chicken scraps. salmon flesh contains omega 3 fatty acids but their diet in farms causes those levels to decrease and for toxin levels to increase

How did factory farming start?

started with poultry before cheap grain was key in cows. Chicken meat was a byproduct of egg production, chickens not bred for meat or raised for large scale meat production; eggs were seasonal and birds slaughtered after spring hatch

Key Themes in capitalist economies

struggle to breakthrough agriculture's inherent obstacles. breakthroughs come in separate waves leads to industrialization rather than intensification waves led by technological developments capital and state work together shapes how we think about agriculture (American technophilia)

managing regrowth by burning

stumps for resprouting and coppicing. may protect the trees. large trees cut down with a saw/axe and then the stumps resprout

obstacles to farm production being turned into factory level production

takes a lot of space produces its own seed highly seasonal unpredictable risk bio systems have variability requires skilled labor (industrial production favors deskilling)

basic forces of production

technology, land, and resources; shape economic/political relationships between people

Solway and Lee

there are differences in the world of the Bushmen and we need to stop generalizing them. Bushmen living in Dobe (which had many more economic connections with the outside world) are very different from those living further south.

Lee's take on Bushmen

though they were happy. didn't have a lot of things to begin with but could provide for themselves without having to do too much work

DES

toxin given to mothers to reduce the risk of miscarriage, children got reproductive cancers (gene not changed but expression was)

Social Organization of Pastoralists (relationship with other pastoralists)

trade and information sharing (learn how to control landscape from each other), temporary associations and alliances, marriage dowries (livestock), festivals and meetings (Naadam in Mongolia)

Fallows

uncultivated. sometimes people pick up and move because the land is starting to dry and insects are repopulating; leaving allows land to rest. Restores soil fertility, reduces pests, allows land to produce more fodder for you to burn down the line. Patchy, allow ecological diversity. Turns landscape into supermarket for many animals (benefits hunters). Ex. Tiv and Lisu grass fallow in Thailand.

Biotech (McGloughlin)

unless we accept starvation or placing parks and the Amazon Basin under the plow, there is no alternative to applying biotechnology to agriculture. Biotehc increases yields. This is ironic because one of the main causes of deforestation in the Amazon is the planting of Biotech crops. Brazil is the second biggest planter of GM crops.

fallow plants

valuable resources. used for making medicinal plants, livestock food, construction, utilitarian purposes, food. important example of indigenous production unrecognized by colonial and development authorities. Ex. New Guinea Wopkaimin (40 species), Thailand, Philippines, Huastec Indians.

examples of eating unethically

vegetarians, local food eaters, and organic food eaters.

who laid the foundation for NPK mentality?

von Liebig

Gordon Childe Theory of Origin of Food Production

we went from a more dispersed population (during the Pleistocene) to a more concentrated population due to dry and hot conditions. In the concentrated areas around water sources, plants seen growing near the water and mud. Once people start cultivating grains, it sets up the conditions that allow them to domesticate animals. Semi demographic theory/mostly materialistic/environmental

domestication

when a taxon diverges from its original gene and establishes a symbiotic relationship with an animal feeding on it

Food production without domestication

wild grass produced by enhancing its natural growth. Farming wild animals (salmon/fish farms) Soy is genetically modified Papaya, squash, zucchini, pumpkin may be genetically modified

Green revolution (conflict)

with India approaching food shortages, green revolution stepped in to prevent conflict in the countryside and to prevent communism from spreading to India

Gender and Hunting

women play limited roles in hunting around the world and they are never the ones that hunt instead of men. Pygmy women (central african republic) are net hunters (more than men) and use bows and arrows. Cree women in Canada do trapping and occasionally hunt moose and caribou. Ache women of Paraguay help men search and transport although men dominate. Some Ju/'oansi women are good trackers and help in hunting.

The Essay

written in London after Malthus left Oakwood Mentions Condorcet and Godwin

Conklin

wrote that shifting cultivation was a form that had a lot of indigenous wisdom built into it when others assumed it was very wasteful