agri something revolution

agri something revolution

Geographer Carl Sauer believed the experiments necessary to establish agriculture and settle in one place would occur in lands of plenty. Only in a land of plenty could people afford to experiment with raising plants and breed them for domestication. Plant domestication may have originated from Southeast and South Asia (and later in South America) more than 14,000 years ago with the domestication of tropical plants. In Asia, the combination of human settlements, forest margins, and fresh water streams may have given rise to the earliest planned cultivation of root crops—crops that are reproduced by cultivating either the roots or cuttings from plants.
In the first agricultural revolution, shifting cultivation was a common method of farming. One specific kind of shifting cultivation is slash-and-burn agriculture (also called milpa agriculture and patch agriculture). It consisted of the controlled use of fire in places. Trees are cut down and all existing vegetation is burned off. In slash-and-burn, farmers use tools (machetes and knives) to slash down trees and tall vegetation, and then burn the vegetation on the ground. A layer of ash from the fire settles on the ground and contributes to the soil’s fertility. Shifting cultivation conserves both forest and soil: its harvests are substantial given the environmental limitations, and it requires a lot of organization. Shifting cultivation uses substantially little energy and has been a sustained method of farming for thousands of groups. It gave ancient farmers opportunities to experiment with various plants, to learn the effects of weeding and crop care, to cope with environmental vagaries, and to discern the decreased fertility of soil after sustained farming.
Subsistence farming is becoming marginalized. Ever since colonialism (1500-1950), subsistence land use is giving way to more intensive farming and cash (or luxury) cropping. In the process, societies from South America to Southeast Asia are being...

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