# Efficiency of hunting and gathering versus agriculture **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [May 3, 2011, 3:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/efficiency-of-hunting-and-gathering-versus-agriculture/580543 "2011-05-03T03:11:52Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Blake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/a9a28c/32.png) [@Blake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blake)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2011, 10:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/efficiency-of-hunting-and-gathering-versus-agriculture/580543/61 "2011-05-03T10:30:45Z")
> [@septimus](#): > > A very key point is not that agriculture is more “efficient” than hunting-fishing-gathering, but that it allows higher population densities. > > Gathering can be very “efficient” for a group of humans in fertile terrain with no competition from other humans. Thus, the reason farming largely replaced earlier economies is simply that the non-farmers were outnumbered. Isn’t that simply begging the question? If farming is no more efficient, then how can it allow higher population densities? For example, if I can obtain 2, 500 calories in 4 hours from H/G or from farming, then farming is no more efficient. But since I \*am \*obtaining the same number of calories for effort, I can’t possibly support more children by farming than I can through H/G. And if I can obtain 2, 500 calories in 4 hours from H/G and 3, 500 from farming, then I can support more children from farming. But I am only able to do that because farming \*is \*more efficient. I honestly can’t see how farming can allow higher population densities unless it \*also \*allows more food to be produced per unit time. And Higher production per unit time is pretty much the definition of more efficient. Can you explain this apparent contradiction? ---
**Author:** ![Blake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/a9a28c/32.png) [@Blake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blake)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2011, 10:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/efficiency-of-hunting-and-gathering-versus-agriculture/580543/62 "2011-05-03T10:32:30Z")
> [@mac\_bolan00](#): > > you immediately concluded that i said fossils of coco nuciferus were found in the hawaiian islands. i didn’t say that, and i haven’t heard of such findings. Right. So coconuts are not native to Hawaii. COCONUTS ARE CULTIVATED PLANTS INTRODUCED TO HAWAII FOR CULTIVATION PURPOSES. Your original bullshit claim was that coconut cultivation in Hawaii was somehow the step before agriculture. That claim is ignorant bullshit. Coconuts were a fully fledged cultivated species when they were introduced to Hawaii. they were introduced with the specific intention of cultivation. They always have been cultivated. They were never cultivated by “just picking a nut from a tree growing in the wild” as you claim. There are no wild coconuts in Hawaii. All coconuts on the islands are feral domestic plants that escaped cultivation. ---
**Author:** ![mac\_bolan00](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b3f665/32.png) [@mac\_bolan00](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mac_bolan00)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2011, 10:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/efficiency-of-hunting-and-gathering-versus-agriculture/580543/63 "2011-05-03T10:37:50Z")
> [@Blake](#): > > Right. So coconuts are not native to Hawaii. COCONUTS ARE CULTIVATED PLANTS INTRODUCED TO HAWAII FOR CULTIVATION PURPOSES. > > Your original bullshit claim was that coconut cultivation in Hawaii was somehow the step before agriculture. a one-dimensional thinker. if coconuts can be naturally dispersed eastwards past hawaii to western south america, there’s a chance it could have gone to hawaii as well. lack of fossils is not a conclusive evidence against this. > [@](#): > > That claim is ignorant bullshit. Coconuts were a fully fledged cultivated species when they were introduced to Hawaii. they were introduced with the specific intention of cultivation. They always have been cultivated. They were never cultivated by “just picking a nut from a tree growing in the wild” as you claim. There are no wild coconuts in Hawaii. All coconuts on the islands are feral domestic plants that escaped cultivation. you cannot say that for certain (i’d like to see you prove it here.) ---
**Author:** ![Blake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/a9a28c/32.png) [@Blake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blake)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2011, 10:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/efficiency-of-hunting-and-gathering-versus-agriculture/580543/64 "2011-05-03T10:45:11Z")
> [@mac\_bolan00](#): > > if coconuts can be naturally dispersed eastwards past hawaii to western south america, there’s a chance it could have gone to hawaii as well. lack of fossils is not a conclusive evidence against this. > you cannot say that for certain (i’d like to see you prove it here.) So it is literally a textbook[argument from ignorance.](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_ignorance) What more do I have to say. :rolleyes: ---
**Author:** ![mac\_bolan00](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b3f665/32.png) [@mac\_bolan00](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mac_bolan00)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2011, 10:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/efficiency-of-hunting-and-gathering-versus-agriculture/580543/65 "2011-05-03T10:52:25Z")
wrong analogy. we are at an interregnum on the issue of wild cocos in hawaii. if the the DNA studies show hawaiian cocos are pretty much taken off from those in micronesia / bora-bora, then the argument of human dispersal is strengthened. but if it shows that they’re all one and the same from india all the way east to south america, then you can’t prove your human introduction and give stronger evidence for natural dispersion. wild and introduced rice in the US continent - check wild and introduced cocos at waikiki beach - let’s just wait. ---
**Author:** ![Blake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/a9a28c/32.png) [@Blake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blake)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2011, 10:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/efficiency-of-hunting-and-gathering-versus-agriculture/580543/66 "2011-05-03T10:55:03Z")
> [@mac\_bolan00](#): > > …then you can’t prove your human introduction.. Textbook argument from ignorance. :rolleyes: ---
**Author:** ![mac\_bolan00](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b3f665/32.png) [@mac\_bolan00](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mac_bolan00)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2011, 10:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/efficiency-of-hunting-and-gathering-versus-agriculture/580543/67 "2011-05-03T10:57:42Z")
> [@Blake](#): > > Textbook argument from ignorance. :rolleyes: so give me your elegant proof that cocos were introduced by the polynesians. ---
**Author:** ![mac\_bolan00](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b3f665/32.png) [@mac\_bolan00](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mac_bolan00)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2011, 11:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/efficiency-of-hunting-and-gathering-versus-agriculture/580543/68 "2011-05-03T11:08:28Z")
what’s “no argument” in latin? 😃 ---
**Author:** ![septimus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/septimus/32/410_2.png) [@septimus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/septimus)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2011, 11:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/efficiency-of-hunting-and-gathering-versus-agriculture/580543/69 "2011-05-03T11:15:14Z")
> [@Blake](#): > > Isn’t that simply begging the question? If farming is no more efficient, then how can it allow higher population densities? > … > I honestly can’t see how farming can allow higher population densities unless it \*also \*allows more food to be produced per unit time. And Higher production per unit time is pretty much the definition of more efficient. Production depends on labor and land. It doesn’t take much labor to gather fruit, if the population density is low enough so that competition from other humans isn’t an issue. (Now one might argue that low-density populations are inherently “inefficient,” but quibbling about semantics would be a diversion here.) ---
**Author:** ![Blake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/a9a28c/32.png) [@Blake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blake)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2011, 11:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/efficiency-of-hunting-and-gathering-versus-agriculture/580543/70 "2011-05-03T11:17:31Z")
Plants I[ntroduced to Hawai’i](http://pvs.kcc.hawaii.edu/ike/moolelo/polynesian_plants.html) by the Ancestors of the Hawaiian People Dr. Harold St. John and Kuaika Jendrusch 1. Niu ( **Coconut Palm** ; Cocos nucifera): South Pacific?; Sprouted coconut; Food, Cordage, etc. [Alien Species Pose a Severe Threat to Hawaii’s Native Plants and Animals](http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=10865&page=25) The colonization of the Hawaiian islands by humans has had a dramatic impact on the native plant and animal life of the archipelago. When the Polynesians arrived on the islands 1,200 to 1,600 years ago, they brought with them a number of plant and animal species, including taro, sugarcane, **coconut palm** , pigs, and chickens. This is supposed to be the place for factual answers. Please don;t just post ignorant rubbish you just made up. Please provide evidence that Indians cultivated rice. Please provide evidence that a rice known to Indians was cultivated and is a major commercial export of the USA. You have made some wild claims in this thread. Either retract them or provide evidence please. We are still waiting. :rolleyes: ---
**Author:** ![Blake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/a9a28c/32.png) [@Blake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blake)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2011, 11:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/efficiency-of-hunting-and-gathering-versus-agriculture/580543/71 "2011-05-03T11:31:33Z")
> [@septimus](#): > > Production depends on labor and land. It doesn’t take much labor to gather fruit, if the population density is low enough so that competition from other humans isn’t an issue. > > (Now one might argue that low-density populations are inherently “inefficient,” but quibbling about semantics would be a diversion here.) I’m still not seeing it at all. All you have done is repeat the original statement. Let’s assume that we have two identical populations of HGs on identical territory, each in direct competition with the other. 100 people on 100 square kilometres of territory. Each group is at carrying capacity at the density. The density has been 1 person/km^2 for the past 4, 000 years. So we have avoided the question of land and competition because both have identical land and they only compete with each other. One group decides one day to adopt farming. The HG group can obtain 2, 500 calories each day in that manner at that density. The farming group is agricultural and can obtain 2, 500 calories each day in that manner at that density. Yet you would have us believe that the agricultural group can somehow support a higher population density? Correct? But I can’t see any way that it can ever support a higher density. If there are already 100 people in the farming group, and a woman gives birth, then one person is going to starve to death. The group is already at maximal efficiency, you can’t produce any more food to feed the child. And of course the same applied to the HG group. In each case every person over 100 is going to see one person starve to death In each case the people are unable to produce more than 2, 500 calories each day. That is the productivity limit of the land. 2.500 calories/day/km is the maximum production potential of either system So how can the farming group somehow come to outnumber the HG group? I really do not see this at all. If farming produces exactly the same amount of food/day/km as hunting, then it will always support exactly the same number of people. As soon as the area holds 101 people someone will starve to death. So it can’t support higher population densities. And if farming can support higher population densities then it \*must \*be able to produce more food each day. It must be able to produce at least enough food to support 101 people each day, otherwise it could not support a higher population density. I can’t see what relevance competition has to anything. If the maximum efficiency of a production system is 2, 500 calories, then that is the maximal efficiency. And if the efficiency of farming somehow becomes 2, 600 calories at higher population densities then 2, 500 calories was not the maximal efficiency of farming. The maximal efficiency was 2, 600 calories and farming is more efficient than H/G. ---
**Author:** ![kanicbird](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/5f8ce5/32.png) [@kanicbird](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kanicbird)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2011, 12:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/efficiency-of-hunting-and-gathering-versus-agriculture/580543/72 "2011-05-03T12:24:03Z")
An interesting study is the lobster farming in the NE US. While other sea resources are being devastated by overfishing, lobster fishing has not seen any real reductions. This is because the traps are inefficient, most lobsters get out and the feeding ones prevent others from joining. In the same way, with a abundant natural resource area, inefficient hunting can be very sustainable, increase hunting efficiency and you effectively end hunting gathering as a productive lifestyle and turn it into a substistance living. This was also shown in Les Strouse Beyond Survival, where a fishing tribe now has to fish much longer and journey deeper into the ocean on small boats just to get by now due to commercial fishing. > [@Lemur866](#): > > Mac, I don’t mean to pick on you, but do you happen to remember how back in Kindergarten they taught you the story of the first Thanksgiving? And how the Indians saved the Pilgrims by teaching them to grow maize? > > How do you think that could have happened if the Indians weren’t farmers? I’ve heard the thanksgiving story from the Native American side, and it was somewhat different then they European American side. The pilgrims devastated the hunting grounds and was causing hardships for the hunter gatherer natives. Not sure which side is the correct one, but usually the victors write the history. ---
**Author:** ![Blake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/a9a28c/32.png) [@Blake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blake)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2011, 2:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/efficiency-of-hunting-and-gathering-versus-agriculture/580543/73 "2011-05-03T14:20:45Z")
> [@kanicbird](#): > > In the same way, with a abundant natural resource area, inefficient hunting can be very sustainable, increase hunting efficiency and you effectively end hunting gathering as a productive lifestyle and turn it into a substistance living. Considering that HGs exterminated a great many species, a better way of putting it is that only inefficient hunting can be sustained. > [@](#): > > I’ve heard the thanksgiving story from the Native American side, and it was somewhat different then they European American side. The pilgrims devastated the hunting grounds and was causing hardships for the hunter gatherer natives. > > Not sure which side is the correct one, but usually the victors write the history. Points to consider: 1. The traditional Indians had no writing, so any story you heard from them could only really have been rumour. 2. Indian society had been devastated by disease, so it’s unlikely that this specific oral tradition of that time survived. So it was almost certainly rumour invented several generations after the event. 3. The Indians and Europeans weren’t separate populations. Many Indians married Europeans. In fact most, probably all, of the surviving Indians from that region would have European heritage. So there isn’t a European account and an Indian account. There is the account of one group of Europeans and Indians and the account of another and one group of Indians and Europeans. 4. Because Indian society had been devastated by disease the land was well underpopulated. So if the Europeans had devastated hunting grounds it must have been due to some specific practice rather than hunting generally. There is some interesting evidence that European reluctance to burn caused a serious decrease in game, but that took many decades. 5. Europeans of the day did not report any shortage of game, quite the opposite. It’s hard to imagine that the newcomers could hunt successfully while the people who grew up there had difficulty finding prey. Personally I would take any such stories with grain of salt, pending convincing evidence that they actually existed prior to 1950. ---
**Author:** ![aruvqan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aruvqan/32/2891_2.png) [@aruvqan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aruvqan)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2011, 2:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/efficiency-of-hunting-and-gathering-versus-agriculture/580543/74 "2011-05-03T14:28:44Z")
> [@mac\_bolan00](#): > > > [@](#): > > > > Originally Posted by aruvqan View Post > > Guys - > > > > WHITE rice = NON new world crop. It was INTRODUCED by us pasty white colonials. > > > > WILD rice - native to north america. Used as a resource by native americans. > > > > Stop being fucking idiots. > > i thought that’s what i was suggesting. (i’m still a fucking idiot though.) @ Mac - not necessarily you, I just noticed a bunch going back and forth at each other and it reminds me of my youngest batch of godkids squabbling. Is So !!1!1 Is NOT !!11!1 :dubious::rolleyes: ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2011, 3:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/efficiency-of-hunting-and-gathering-versus-agriculture/580543/75 "2011-05-03T15:08:22Z")
> [@Blake](#): > > Points to consider: > > 1. The traditional Indians had no writing, so any story you heard from them could only really have been rumour. As you note yourself, the Indian and European populations mixed, and the Europeans wrote down the words of the Indians. They didn’t write down words about the hunting grounds being devastated though. > [@](#): > > 1. Indian society had been devastated by disease, so it’s unlikely that this specific oral tradition of that time survived. So it was almost certainly rumour invented several generations after the event. The Indians in New England had been hit heavily by disease, seriously decreasing their population, but they weren’t wiped out. There is a comprehensive history of the events of the time. The Thanksgiving story is embellished, but not entirely fictional. > [@](#): > > 1. The Indians and Europeans weren’t separate populations. Many Indians married Europeans. In fact most, probably all, of the surviving Indians from that region would have European heritage. So there isn’t a European account and an Indian account. There is the account of one group of Europeans and Indians and the account of another and one group of Indians and Europeans. We are discussing a very short time frame. The level of mixing went up and down over a few decades before Europeans had near total dominance of the region. But in the first years of the Plymouth colony the populations stayed very seperate acting only as trading partners. Some of the Indians in the area are also almost entirely non-Indian (quirk in US law). > [@](#): > > 1. Because Indian society had been devastated by disease the land was well underpopulated. So if the Europeans had devastated hunting grounds it must have been due to some specific practice rather than hunting generally. There is some interesting evidence that European reluctance to burn caused a serious decrease in game, but that took many decades. > > 2. Europeans of the day did not report any shortage of game, quite the opposite. It’s hard to imagine that the newcomers could hunt successfully while the people who grew up there had difficulty finding prey. Absolutely. There is no evidence of a lack of game in the area at that time, or devastation of the environment by Europeans. There wouldn’t likely be since the local Indians were farmers, who generally hunt and gather as well. There was a high level of gathering shellfish for instance. The survival of the Europeans and the Indians was dependent on growing corn though. The Indians taught the European settlers to grow corn. Incidentally, I live on this land, and there is more than enough game now to support the population at that time. > [@](#): > > Personally I would take any such stories with grain of salt, pending convincing evidence that they actually existed prior to 1950. The existence of fictional accounts doesn’t disqualify the well documented and researched history of the time. It does disqualify any idea that the settlers devastated Indian hunting grounds. They were too busy devastating Indians. ---
**Author:** ![Quercus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/7ab992/32.png) [@Quercus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quercus)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2011, 3:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/efficiency-of-hunting-and-gathering-versus-agriculture/580543/76 "2011-05-03T15:24:22Z")
> [@Blake](#): > > Anyway, back to the OP. > > The answer is an unambiguous “No, H/G is not more efficient than farming by any metric.” > In terms of labour, HGs spend 8-16 hours a day performing tasks essential to survival. The oft-quoted figure of 2-4 hours a day is the time spent in obtaining food. It does not include the time spent making tools or the vast amounts of time spent walking from one locale to another amongst many other essential tasks. The other point to realise about HG populations is that in most of them starvation was routine. In most of them starvation was an annual event, and in almost all of them there was severe and unpredictable decadal starvation caused by droughts, prolonged winters etc. > > If HGs were actually able to obtain all the food they needed in just a few hours a day, you have to ask why the population did not increase. Clearly something was regulating the population. You could posit that people were watching their children starve to death because they could not be bothered to work an extra hour each day to get food for their crying infant, but that seems unlikely. Or you could accept that populations were constrained by regular periods in which there was simply no food to be had, which is what we know to be true. Almost all HG societies regulated their populations through enforced infanticide, so actual starvation was not all that common, but the underlying reason for that control was a lack of food. > > In contrast, a farmer in the conditions under which agriculture developed has to spend about 10 minutes day to obtain the calories needed to survive. Even up to the 16th century most farmers only needed to work an hour a day to obtain food for themselves and their families. The vast majority of their labour was spent in producing food to pay taxes to church and state, performing civil labour such as cleaning streams or building roads and other activities that did not produce food. And even then farmers only worked on average about 8 hours a day total. Remember, in most parts to the world farmers did nothing associated with food production for 4-6 months during the winter/dry season. They worked long hours during sowing, then did very little during the growing season then worked like hell during harvest then once again did very little. > > Farming is incredibly efficient under many conditions, which is precisely why it is able to support civilisations. It allows any adult to produce far, far more food than they need very easily. It is that surplus of food that can be fed to soldiers, priests, clerks, judges and so forth to actually \*produce \*a civilisation. > > It is only when the state apparatus starts demanding the bulk of food and labour that the life of a farmer becomes laborious. While we know that this is inevitable, the earliest farmers making the transition did not know that. Nor did they know that in many regions soils would become played out over time and productivity would decline, or that as populations increased local game populations would become exhausted and farmers would start suffering form protein deficiency. All those things meant that farming became more labour intensive and less healthy over the course of generations, but none it has any bearing on the original question. Blake, since you’ve been demanding cites, can you provide some for any of these? And can you give some justification for counting a HG’s time repairing weapons and walking as ‘food gathering’, but not counting a farmer’s time building roads, repairing irrigation channels, or other cooperative activity that sustains the society and allows farming as ‘food production’? Also, there’s pretty good historical documentation of famines among farming societies (do you know any Irish?), so merely asserting that HG societies are starvation-limited doesn’t really make any kind of argument about the difference between them. ---
**Author:** ![Captain\_Amazing](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@Captain\_Amazing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Amazing)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2011, 4:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/efficiency-of-hunting-and-gathering-versus-agriculture/580543/77 "2011-05-03T16:17:21Z")
> [@mac\_bolan00](#): > > wild and introduced rice in the US continent - check > wild and introduced cocos at waikiki beach - let’s just wait. Well, “rice” and “wild rice” are two different plants. Two different genuses entirely. So that’s different than domestic coconuts and wild coconuts, which are the same plant. And while it’s possible that some wild coconut could have been taken by the waves to Hawaii, there were other plants (like taro and breadfruit) and animals (like dogs and pigs) that couldn’t have gotten to Hawaii naturally and that we know were brought there by people. So, we know that by the time the Polynesians had gotten to Hawaii, they had domesticated plants and animals and were farmers. ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2011, 7:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/efficiency-of-hunting-and-gathering-versus-agriculture/580543/78 "2011-05-03T19:46:20Z")
> [@TriPolar](#): > > Incidentally, I live on this land, and there is more than enough game now to support the population at that time. Clarification: In that statement I was referring to the agricultural population at the time, not HGs. ---
**Author:** ![Odesio](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/odesio/32/20003_2.png) [@Odesio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Odesio)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2011, 8:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/efficiency-of-hunting-and-gathering-versus-agriculture/580543/79 "2011-05-03T20:26:03Z")
> [@septimus](#): > > Gathering can be very “efficient” for a group of humans in fertile terrain with no competition from other humans. Thus, the reason farming largely replaced earlier economies is simply that the non-farmers were outnumbered. One theory for why agriculture became the dominant form of food production is that humans simply became too good and hunting. Being so good at hunting enabled populations to expand, which, in turn, meant that more food was necessary to maintain the population. Eventually you reach a point where you’ve depleted game to the point where alternatives need to be found. > [@](#): > > Rather than speak of “efficiency” one might want to deal with a nebulous “contentment.” Hunter-gatherers may have had a generally content life-style. Note that today’s humans often hope to retire or go on vacation … so that they can go hunting, gathering, and fishing! Imagine if you’ve hunted and gathered your entire life. Og suddenly says “Screw this! Let’s just stay in one place all year and grow our food.” Would you just agree with him? Or would you think it’s a silly idea because your people have always hunted and gathered? Of course the line between farmers and hunters & gatherers might be a bit more blurry than we think. Most H&G groups didn’t just roam around aimlessly. They came back to the same areas every few seasons. Many of them would identify where the good plants grow and would sometimes make it easier for those plants to grow. (i.e. killing trees blocking sunlight, removing other harmful plants, etc., etc.) This isn’t farming this is cultivating (at least in anthropology class it was called cultivating). It isn’t farming because people aren’t dealing with a domesticated plant or animal they are dealing with a wild plant or animal. ---
**Author:** ![septimus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/septimus/32/410_2.png) [@septimus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/septimus)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2011, 10:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/efficiency-of-hunting-and-gathering-versus-agriculture/580543/80 "2011-05-03T22:40:49Z")
> [@Blake](#): > > … Yet you would have us believe that the agricultural group can somehow support a higher population density? Correct? > … > In each case the people are unable to produce more than 2, 500 calories each day. That is the productivity limit of the land. 2.500 calories/day/km is the maximum production potential of either system So how can the farming group somehow come to outnumber the HG group? > > I really do not see this at all. If farming produces exactly the same amount of food/day/km as hunting, then it will always support exactly the same number of people. As soon as the area holds 101 people someone will starve to death. So it can’t support higher population densities. > > And if farming can support higher population densities then it \*must \*be able to produce more food each day. It must be able to produce at least enough food to support 101 people each day, otherwise it could not support a higher population density… 😕 😕 I have to wonder what you think I’m claiming. We all agree a given amount of land supports more people once they turn to farming, right? I think I made a point that is only tangential to the topic question, and you’re drawing inferences I never intended. Please ignore any mention by me of “efficiency” if you choose to reread my remark and guess what I intended. 😃 [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/efficiency-of-hunting-and-gathering-versus-agriculture/580543.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/efficiency-of-hunting-and-gathering-versus-agriculture/580543.md?page=5)