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Farming, Worst Mistake Ever?
The development of farming throughout the years has forever changed the world. People went from hunting and gathering which was very labor intensive to growing their food which in comparison is way less difficult. In the article “worst mistake ever”, the author Jared Diamond states that the adoption of agriculture then came with the “gross social and sexual inequality, the disease and despotism that curse our existence” (worst mistake ever). Jared Diamond makes some interesting points on why farming ruined the world but I disagree with his view about farming because farming, whether you like or not, forever changed the world for the good. One effect of the development of farming is the improved work to product ratio. Hunting and gathering was a method that involved a lot of work for a limited food supply. Farming on the other hand involves less labor intensive activities and “yields far more tons per acre than roots and berries” (Worst Mistake Ever). On this aspect of the development of farming, I do agree with Jared Diamond because pf the fact that having more food in general helps a civilization thrive but to have less work involved to, that is even better.
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I completely disagree with Jared Diamond. I disagree with him because his view on hunting and gathering isn’t a for sure thing either. If you were a hunter and gatherer you couldn’t guarantee that you will catch or find anything on a certain day. “Also the berries hunters and gatherers catch can sometimes be bad or not meant for eating” (Worst Mistake Ever). If you were just hunting and gathering and something went wrong with what you find (or don’t find), you have nothing to fall back on. As oppose to farming, if a crop fails the people can fall back to hunting and gathering and still
Wendell Berry writes in his book, “What are people for?” a thesis that modern culture is destroying the agricultural culture. He feels that technology is seen and used as the easy way to produce food faster and more efficiently. With this modern way of farming comes the idea that we need to work smarter not harder which is not always true. The goal is comfort and leisure and Berry feels that this is the reason for the down fall of the agricultural culture. He believes that hard work and pride in workmanship is more important than material goods and money. This was by no means a perfect society. The people had often been violent wand wasteful in the use of land of each other. Its present ills have already taken root in it. Even with these faults, this society appreciated the hard work of farming compared to the easy way of living today.
Hunting and gathering is probably a preferable lifestyle compared to a farmer, but it seems a bit over the top to blame absolutely every problem in our society on agriculture. It’s a common argument, but Jared Diamond's theory does seem to be quite an over-simplification. For example, he argues that inequality between sexes could be caused by agricultural because women were made beasts of burden and given greater pressure to work on the fields. However, the root cause of that isn’t agriculture, it’s sexism and stereotyping, because without an outdated sexist mindset no one would treat women differently in the agricultural department, and it is an oversimplification to ignore this. Furthermore, because of farming and globalization people now are given even more opportunity for a diverse diet. Although early farmers had access to only one or a few crops versus hunter-gatherers who had an entire forest of varied food, people nowadays have many more options than both hunter-gatherers and early farmers combined. A grocery store has ten times as many diverse and varying food items as a forest does, providing food from all corners of the world not just a single location or country, allowing people to create a perfectly balanced diet if they so choose. In conclusion, I agree with Jared Diamond's thesis on certain grounds, but I mostly disagree that the introduction of agriculture was the “worst mistake in human
Diamond addresses his narrative by discussing the general overview on why the rise of food production had such a significant impact on the
"By increasing the fertility of the land, it increases its abundance. The improvements of agriculture too introduce many sorts of vegetable foods, which, requiring less land and not more labor than corn, come cheaply to the market."
I assumed that a farming lifestyle would be an easier lifestyle than the lifestyle of hunter gatherers for many reasons. For example, you would not have to be constantly changing locations and you can control the food and animals you domesticate to get a steady source of food. Diamond challenged this assumption by him saying that life was actually harder in early farming communities than in hunter gatherer bands. It was not until farming became more established and more productive that life in farming communities became easier.
Farming was extremely important because less and less people were growing their own food. Urbanization meant that food production in rural areas was integral to the economy. It wasn't long before agriculture was industrialized, allowing for a huge population growth. This made the work monumentally simpler, and rather than having dozens of farmhands for a few acres, a farmer could use the same number of men for hundreds of acres of farmland. This meant that urban population grew and grew, while rural population only shrank. Heads turned from agriculture and artisanry to factories. For the first time in history, agriculture was no longer the main focus of the
In the article, [Expletive Deleted] Jared Diamond, Corriea’s review wasn’t the best review. He shows a different viewpoint on mankind, and I take Diamond’s side. Let’s start off with Corriea’s review. Corriea doesn’t really like the book because, “At worst, it develops an argument about human inequality based on a determinist logic that reduces social relations such as poverty, state violence, and persistent social domination, to inexorable outcomes of geography and environment” (1). Corriea believes that the points Jared Diamond make just cause a bigger argument and doesn’t really focus on other issues except human inequality.
Diamond states that the reason hunter-gatherer groups became agriculturists was simply because it was easier to create more food for your individual group if it was grown, this statement does have validity. Everyone would be responsible for themselves and would be expected to help out. There wouldn’t be the constant grumbling that there are so many people being lazy and living off of handouts like there are in the modern world today.
The growth in land also contributed to overproduction, which was another factor contributing to the farmer's hardships. The expansion of farmland combined with the mechanical advances in agricultural technology greatly increased production in the west.
Agriculture plays an enormous part in having a functioning society. The farming fields in the
...made farming more profitable and easier to run as a business. “The tractor was modern compared to the horse. The farmer did not have to pay as many hired men. There was more leisure time. But the tractor changed the social structure of rural life. The key position that farming held in American life vanished” (Carlson).
So overall, Agriculture is playing a very important role in changing the lifestyle of different people. Agriculture might have made everything easy for us but it still has its cons. We see the effects of agriculture and how it affects the lives of other species and the environment.
To understand why is agriculture important in the world of today, then first of all we must know what agriculture is? Agriculture is the basic material production of society, the use of land for agriculture and livestock, mining plants and animals as raw materials and labor to produce mainly food and some raw materials for industry. Agriculture is a major industry, covering many disciplines: planting, breeding and processing of agricultural products; in the broadest sense, also including forestry and fisheries. Agriculture is an important economic sector in the economy of many countries, especially in the past century , when the industry has not yet developed. Since the dawn of history, agriculture has been one of the importance means of producing
Farming has been an occupation since 8,500 B.C. On that year in the Fertile Crescent farming first began when people grew plants instead of picking them in the wild. Then nearly 5,000 years later oxen, horses, pigs, and dogs were domesticated. During the middle ages, the nobles divide their land into three fields. The reasoning for this was to plant two and leave one to recover. This was the start of crop rotation which is a big part of farming today. Burning down forest and then moving to another area is a farming technique used by the Mayans called Slash and burn. Mayan farmers also were able to drain swampy areas to farm them buy building canals. In 1701 Jethro Tull invented the seed drill and a horse drawn how that tilled the land. In Denmark they would plant turnips in the previously unplanted field. The turnips help restore the nutrients in the ground thus crop rotation is born. In England people began moving there fields closer to each other for a more efficient way of planting. Later in the 18th century selective breeding was introduce which made bigger, stronger, and more milk producing livestock. In the mid 1800’s a steam plough was invented. By the 1950 tractors, milking machines, and combines were used by almost farmers. The latest f...