Marcel Mazoyer, Laurence Roudart

A History of World Agriculture (eBook, ePUB)

From the Neolithic Age to the Current Crisis

• Format: ePub

Produktbeschreibung

Only once we understand the long history of human efforts to draw sustenance from the land can we grasp the nature of the crisis that faces humankind today, as hundreds of millions of people are faced with famine or flight from the land. From Neolithic times through the earliest civilizations of the ancient Near East, in savannahs, river valleys and the terraces created by the Incas in the Andean mountains, an increasing range of agricultural techniques have developed in response to very different conditions. These developments are recounted in this book, with detailed attention to the ways in which plants, animals, soil, climate, and society have interacted.
Mazoyer and Roudart's A History of World Agriculture is a path-breaking and panoramic work, beginning with the emergence of agriculture after thousands of years in which human societies had depended on hunting and gathering, showing how agricultural techniques developed in the different regions of the world, and how this extraordinary wealth of knowledge, tradition and natural variety is endangered today by global capitialism, as it forces the unequal agrarian heritages of the world to conform to the norms of profit.
During the twentieth century, mechanization, motorization and specialization have brought to a halt the pattern of cultural and environmental responses that characterized the global history of agriculture until then. Today a small number of corporations have the capacity to impose the farming methods on the planet that they find most profitable. Mazoyer and Roudart propose an alternative global strategy that can safegaurd the economies of the poor countries, reinvigorate the global economy, and create a livable future for mankind.

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Produktdetails

• Verlag: Monthly Review Press
• Erscheinungstermin: 1. Juni 2006
• Englisch
• ISBN-13: 9781583674901
• Artikelnr.: 48572226

Autorenporträt

Marcel Mazoyer, Laurence Roudart

Inhaltsangabe

Introduction * Evolution, Agriculture, History *The Neolithic Agricultural
Revolution * Systems of Slash-and-Burn Agriculture in Forest Environments:
Deforestation and the Formation of Post-Forest Agrarian Systems * The
Evolution of Hydraulic Agrarian Systems in the Nile Valley * The Inca
Agrarian System: A Mountain Agrarian System * Agrarian Systems Based on
Fallowing and Animal-Drawn Cultivation with the Ard in the Temperate
Regions: The Agricultural Revolution in Antiquity * Agrarian Systems Based
on Fallowing and Animal-Drawn Cultivation with the Plow in the Cold
Temperate Regions: The Agricultural Revolution of the Middle Ages in
Northwestern Europe * Agrarian Systems without Fallowing in the Temperate
Regions: The First Agricultural Revolution of Modern Times * The
Mechanization of Animal-Drawn Cultivation and the Transportation
Revolution: The First World Crisis of Agricultural Overproduction * The
Second Agricultural Revolution of Modern Times: Motorization,
Mechanization, Synthetic Fertilizers, Seed Selection, and Specialization *
Agrarian Crisis and General Crisis * Conclusion