OriginOfAgriculture Flashcards

1
Q

Agriculture definition

A
  • Human manipulation of plant populations and the environment as to increase yield (calories/nutrients) per unit of time and space
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2
Q

What did agriculture lead to?

A
  • Development of cities and civilizations when there was food to feed concentrations of people
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3
Q

Cultivated plants are the result of what?

A
  • Most cultivated plants did not exist 10,000 years ago

- Result of generations of human selection

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4
Q

What is Domestication?

A
  • Evolutionary process of genetically altering plants from the wild state so that their survival is dependent upon human intervention
  • Mostly by early cultivators
  • Effect of modern breeding relatively less important
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5
Q

What does domestication require?

A
  • Alteration of environment:
  • Removing competition (weeding)
  • Planting (seed or vegetative tissue)
  • Irrigating
  • Fertilizing
  • Tilling
  • Protect from frost
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6
Q

World food supply is based on what? How many plants species in total to how many domesticate crop plants?

A
  • World food supply based on very few species, very little genetic diversity within those species
  • 350,000 plant species (250,000 flowering plants)
  • Approx. 50,000 edible
  • 250-300 cultivated as food
  • 22 major domesticated crop plants
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7
Q

How did the transition from hunting/gathering to farming occur? Rapid, or slow?

A
  • Gradual transition with development of food processing and ‘proto-farming’ (cooking, fermentation, drying, soaking)
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8
Q

What is some of the first evidence for farming?

A
  • 53,000 years ago in Borneo

- Burning forests to open habitat for edible tubers, nuts, fruits

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9
Q

Why did the transition to farming occur?

A
  • No clear consensus!
  • Not necessarily a result of population growth or of sedentary lifestyle as gathering can be as effiecient as cultivation
  • Could be crowding caused by changing climate?
  • Adoption of ‘camp followers’
  • Transition did not occur as much for fishing cultures (alternate strategy)
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10
Q

‘Camp Followers’

A
  • Plants that grew from dump heaps

- May have contributed to farming

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11
Q

How could climate change have contributed to farming?

A
  • Crowding caused by changing climate
  • Drying in near east brought people and animals together near water
  • Rising sea level in SE Asia drowned ‘Sundaland’
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12
Q

Why did the transition to farming occur around the same time in many parts of the world?

A
  • No clear single answer
  • Changes in global climate (increased seasonality of rainfall, dry periods that favoured grasses/annuals and species w/ underground stems)
  • Gradual change in social structure from nomadic to sedentary precipitated by climate change?
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13
Q

When did the transition to farming occur in many parts of the world?

A
  • Approx. 10,000 years ago
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14
Q

Where did agriculture begin? As defined by V.I. Vavilov (map in text)

A
  • E NA (South of Great Lakes, near Tennesse, Kentucky)
  • Mesoamerica (Mexico)
  • SA Highlands (Peru, Columbia, Ecuador)
  • Fertile Crescent (Syria, Iran, Pakistan)
  • Yangtze and Yellow River Basins
  • New Guinea Highlands
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15
Q

For an individual crop, where is the place of domestication likely to be?

A
  • The area of highest diversity

- Some domesticated more than once independently

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16
Q

What are some changes selected for in crop plants?

A
  • Increase in size or other desired property of plant
  • Loss of protective mechanisms, thorns, bitter taste
  • Loss of natural dispersal (non-shattering grasses selected for collecting)
  • Simultaneous ripening
17
Q

How did agriculture spread?

A
  • From places of origin through migration
  • Occured faster east to west than north to south
  • Influence of latitude and geography
  • Agriculture increased total amount of food for humankind (pop. increase from 50million to 7.5 billion over 10,000 years)
18
Q

Would farmers have had a better diet compared to forager?

A
  • Not really, and had to work harder
19
Q

Have we been domesticated by our crops? How did this also affect plants?

A
  • Wheat, one wild grass in Middle East 10,000 years ago
  • Now covers 2.25 million sq. km of world surface propagated by humans and whole agricultural industires
  • But crop plants now have selected traits that make them dependent on humans (loss of natural dispersal w/ non-shattering fruit heads on grains)
  • Dependent on each other for survival and prosperity
20
Q

Current state of agriculture, and how much do family farms produce

A
  • Industrialized agriculture feeds the developed world
  • But family farms still produce 3/4 of world’s food
  • Large farms good for huge amount of 1 crop
  • Small diversified farms produce more food and more kinds per hectare overall
21
Q

Urban farming: Vertical farming with aeroponics

A
  • Growing grops, usually w/o soil or natural light in beds stacked vertically inside a controlled environment
  • Water and nutrient solution supplied by spraying
  • Use urban space in vertical dimension
  • Another way to provide food locally