Smil 3b

some traditional farming that persisted
why did agriculture improve so slowly?

what do we mean by improve?

• work shorter days
• less strenuous work
  
• machine might allow you to use animal or fossil fuel energy to do the work
• plants with higher yield (more labor for harvesting, more water and fertilizer)
• support a larger population
• 
  

• agricultural year based on the flooding of the Nile
• some control of floodwaters but no irrigation canals
  
• water was raised by hand only for gardens
• in Roman times provided surplus for the empire

China:
high population density and central bureaucracy (with high taxes) led to very high intensity agriculture

• canal systems to use water from a river for irrigation--half of fields were irrigated
  
• transportation of human and animal wastes for fertilizer was a key use of labor for dry farming in the north
  
• a quarter of fields were terraced
• much more technological innovation
• control of flooding of rice fields
  
• chain of buckets water pumps
• horse collar

Central America and Mexico:

• rock wall terraces and canal networks
• fields built up in shallow lakes, called chinampas
• very labor intensive but also very productive

Europe:
behind China until the 17th century

• lower population density and more animals
• also more use of green manure and fallowing
• agricultural productivity slowing increased in the middle ages
• use of horses
• heavy moldboard plows that turned the soil and provided drainage
• the big increase in productivity came in the 18th century

European settlement of North America:

• at first colonists brought medieval technology and adopted some native American practices
• rapid introduction of complex horsedrawn machines in the 19th century
• steel plow with steel moldboard (much less friction)
  
• McCormick reaper
• horsedrawn combines in areas with large dry fields, mostly the great plains
• this was the most intense substitution of animal for human labor, farmland was plentiful enough to grow food for them
  
• steam powered tractors were used a little by the end of the century but only of limited use
• making the machines and transportation of the product was increasingly dependent on coal

• intensifying traditional agriculture was more often based on human labor than animal power
• growing more food allowed large cities and more people to do other kinds of work
• nutrition tended to get worse, not better
• 19th century America reached the limits of animal power--another source of power was needed
• local fertilizer (manure and green manure) also limited the production possible
• intensification initially happened in difficult environments and areas with high population density

Subsistence compromise: don't put in the labor to grow more than to meet basic needs

• but then when there is a drought you are in trouble
• farmers defined a good life as working less, not possessing more things
• until you have an economic system that gives you other possibilities
• large families means more to share the labor, but then you need more food

Different measures:

• people you can support per hectare (ha--about 2.5 acres)
  
• productivity per person hour or number of people you can feed per farmer
  
• energy productivity
• how many seeds are the yield compared to the number you planted (in the Bible this is called increase)
• weight or bushels per acre

what does it mean to be technologically ahead