# Why did humans start farming? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [May 29, 2017, 3:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-humans-start-farming/787632 "2017-05-29T03:34:25Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 7
**Author:** ![iiandyiiii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iiandyiiii/32/7924_2.png) [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2017, 3:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-humans-start-farming/787632/121 "2017-06-01T15:55:13Z")
In my understanding, agriculture started independently in many different places. My hypothesis for how at least some of these instances might have gotten started: A group of nomadic humans figures out the relationship between seeds and plant growth (i.e. there are always new food plants growing where they threw out their food waste, including seeds, the last time they were around a particular spot), and starts to put a little more effort into where they drop leftover seeds for the next time they come around to that spot. Sometimes they come around to one of their planting spots and find all the plants have been eaten by animals. At some point, a few mobility-impaired (elderly or disabled) members of the tribe are left behind with some supplies to guard these plantings from animals (otherwise, they might be left behind to die when it’s time to move on). Sometimes they die in the intervening seasons, but sometimes they survive and tend the crops, likely learning through trial and error some methods that boost productivity. The survivors are celebrated and praised when the body of the tribe returns. Gradually, more and more are left behind to tend crops while most of the tribe is still nomadic, as the techniques improve and production increases, to the point that true farming communities are born. Another possible factor – other groups of humans might learn that they can get enough to eat (and perhaps slaves too) by raiding and stealing from peaceful groups – this would force the otherwise peaceful groups to band together, perhaps with some level of fortifications, to protect their territory, animals, crops, and members, thus increasing community size and density. ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2017, 4:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-humans-start-farming/787632/122 "2017-06-01T16:32:33Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > Does’t have to. Ants farm without either. Doesn’t have to but human farming starts with tools and even more so begins with the multi-step planning and risking of the investment of time and resources for future gains. And FWIW HG [ants use tools](https://www.newscientist.com/article/2116641-ants-craft-tiny-sponges-to-dip-into-honey-and-carry-it-home/). I do wonder if ants that have advanced farming techniques can inform some about the human transition … [a fun article.](http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/how-ants-became-worlds-best-fungus-farmers-180962871/) > [@](#): > > … this leap coincided with dramatic changes in ancient climate. Ants appear to have developed their advanced farming systems sometime after a global cooling event began lowering temperatures worldwide around 35 million years ago. The resulting shift from the wet rain forests of their hunter-gatherer ancestors to dryer environments, the researchers write, may have sparked agricultural innovation as ants maintained the controlled conditions to keep their fungal gardens growing. … The article also makes a comment about ant agriculture that is very reminiscent of Pollan’s points in _Botany of Desire_: > [@](#): > > … Mycologists studying the same system may well view it as one in which the fungi used the ants, rather than the other way round. “It may sound kind of bad for the fungi but it’s to their benefit as well. All their needs are being tended to,” says Diana Six, a University of Montana entomologist. “I think the fungi really do manipulate the situation as well.” … ---
**Author:** ![Kobal2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kobal2/32/20_2.png) [@Kobal2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kobal2)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2017, 4:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-humans-start-farming/787632/123 "2017-06-01T16:34:32Z")
> [@even\_sven](#): > > Eh. I’m pretty happy I don’t have to worry about my whole town starving because the rains failed. Oh, they still starved. But because of grain speculation and an ingenious system of forced debt. ---
**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:** [June 2, 2017, 9:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-humans-start-farming/787632/124 "2017-06-02T21:18:23Z")
> [@DSeid](#): > > Hard of course to exactly place when proto-language began but “nothing like” is very clearly an overstatement. … Thank you for your response. My response to you was out of place. I wasn’t clear what I meant by language initially. I apologize for my tone, it’s no excuse but I had just taken on a load of new stress in my life and I didn’t handle it well. ---
**Author:** ![Hector\_St\_Clare](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/b5ac83/32.png) [@Hector\_St\_Clare](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hector_St_Clare)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2017, 2:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-humans-start-farming/787632/125 "2017-06-03T02:32:37Z")
> [@DSeid](#): > > Wheat farming allows for more nuclear household smaller stake models while rice paddy farming has to be more of a group effort. . I’ve heard that theory, but I’m very skeptical. There are highly collectivist wheat-growing cultures (Scandinavia, Russia, etc.), and there are individualistic rice growing cultures (Madagascar, for example, where I lived several years. The family group is a much stronger source of loyalty there than the state). For that matter, aren’t the rice-growing Cantonese famous for having a culture of freewheeling entrepreneurialism? As are the Igbo in Nigeria (I don’t know if they grow rice, but given the abundant rainfall in their regions I’d be surprised if they didn’t). Which seem to complicate the idea that rice cultures are naturally more collectivistic. ---
**Author:** ![Hector\_St\_Clare](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/b5ac83/32.png) [@Hector\_St\_Clare](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hector_St_Clare)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2017, 2:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-humans-start-farming/787632/126 "2017-06-03T02:39:29Z")
> [@iiandyiiii](#): > > In my understanding, agriculture started independently in many different places. My hypothesis for how at least some of these instances might have gotten started: > > A group of nomadic humans figures out the relationship between seeds and plant growth (i.e. there are always new food plants growing where they threw out their food waste, including seeds, the last time they were around a particular spot), and starts to put a little more effort into where they drop leftover seeds for the next time they come around to that spot. You can still see this process today in some agricultural cultures, where people are kind of in the process of ‘domesticating’ some wild species. In Madagascar, for example, people will collect wild yams from the forest during the ‘hungry season’ and then replace little bits of the tubers in the whole so that they can re-grow. And they have at least one species, the guinea-fowl, which they don’t breed in captivity but instead capture from the wild and raise in captivity up to the point where they can be sold. To be clear, these people aren’t ‘incipient agriculturalists’, since their ancestors both on the Indonesian and the African sides have been practicing agriculture for thousands of years. The only hunter-gatherers in Madagascar reverted to it when they moved into environments too dry for agriculture, and they live by selling what they hunt to farming or urban cultures. But it illustrates there are stages intermediate between agriculture and hunting / gathering. ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2017, 3:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-humans-start-farming/787632/127 "2017-06-03T03:23:58Z")
> [@Hector\_St\_Clare](#): > > I’ve heard that theory, but I’m very skeptical. There are highly collectivist wheat-growing cultures (Scandinavia, Russia, etc.), and there are individualistic rice growing cultures … The advantage of the study was that it relatively controlled for other factors. No one would claim that other factors do not potentially swamp the impact of past agricultural practices in particular cases. No one is claiming that wheat farmers cannot adopt collectivist practices under any circumstance or rice farmers that no circumstance would create relatively individualist rice farmers. The fact however that not only were difference large _within the same country_ but that they found differences that were just as large in people from _neighboring counties along the rice-wheat border_, who presumptively are most otherwise alike, is pretty striking. ---
**Author:** ![betterlifethroughchemistry](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/betterlifethroughchemistry/32/3094_2.png) [@betterlifethroughchemistry](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/betterlifethroughchemistry)\ **Post date:** [June 4, 2017, 5:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-humans-start-farming/787632/128 "2017-06-04T17:58:07Z")
> [@Kobal2](#): > > You need heat (so, lotsa wood that you don’t have to go gather in the freezing cold) There was a PBS homesteading reality show several years ago (I think it was called, “Frontier House”) where modern families would try to live for a summer and fall as homesteaders and prepare for winter…after a certain period of time, they would be judged by several experts who would determine whether or not they would have survived…the biggest mistake they all made was not cut enough wood…I remember one expert looking at a wood pile and making the comment to the effect that they only cut enough wood for a couple of months, and that, basically, in order to survive, people would spend any spare time they had cutting wood… ---
**Author:** ![Chimera](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/8e8cbc/32.png) [@Chimera](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chimera)\ **Post date:** [June 4, 2017, 9:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-humans-start-farming/787632/129 "2017-06-04T21:20:29Z")
On that note; > **[Schoolhouse Blizzard](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schoolhouse_Blizzard)** > > The Schoolhouse Blizzard, also known as the Schoolchildren's Blizzard, School Children's Blizzard, or Children's Blizzard, hit the U.S. plains states on January 12, 1888. The blizzard came unexpectedly on a relatively warm day, and many people were caught unaware, including children in one-room schoolhouses. > The Schoolhouse/Children's Blizzard of 1888. The blizzard was preceded by a snowstorm from January 6 through January 11, which dropped snow on the northern and central plains and was foll... If I remember one of the stories from MN, a couple went into town to get supplies when it hit. Their wood pile was in their barn, but they had forbidden the children to leave the house if it was snowing. Once the blizzard started, the children couldn’t even see the barn. Trapped in the house, they burned every stick of furniture in the place, ran out of wood and froze to death before their father was able to return. ---
**Author:** ![Hector\_St\_Clare](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/b5ac83/32.png) [@Hector\_St\_Clare](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hector_St_Clare)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2017, 2:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-humans-start-farming/787632/130 "2017-06-05T02:20:39Z")
> [@DSeid](#): > > The advantage of the study was that it relatively controlled for other factors. No one would claim that other factors do not potentially swamp the impact of past agricultural practices in particular cases. No one is claiming that wheat farmers cannot adopt collectivist practices under any circumstance or rice farmers that no circumstance would create relatively individualist rice farmers. The fact however that not only were difference large _within the same country_ but that they found differences that were just as large in people from _neighboring counties along the rice-wheat border_, who presumptively are most otherwise alike, is pretty striking. Since these comparisons were all of counties within one country (and one with a long history of centralized administration at that), they aren’t statistically independent comparisons, so six counties or however many is really meaningless. How do you know that the higher degree of collectivism in the rice counties wasn’t due to some China-specific factor? (Maybe, e.g., there was at some point a central government policy of encouraging collective efforts at irrigation in rice growing areas. If so, then these six counties are all correlated and the number of samples drops from six to one). For what it’s worth, the Igbo are apparently not rice farmers, sorry for my error above. ---
**Author:** ![Hector\_St\_Clare](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/b5ac83/32.png) [@Hector\_St\_Clare](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hector_St_Clare)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2017, 2:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-humans-start-farming/787632/131 "2017-06-05T02:22:22Z")
Also you said rice farming “has to be” a collectivist endeavor, and that doesn’t seem to be true. Some rice growing cultures are famous for being relatively individualist and capitalist-oriented. ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2017, 3:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-humans-start-farming/787632/132 "2017-06-05T03:25:57Z")
> [@Hector\_St\_Clare](#): > > Also you said rice farming “has to be” a collectivist endeavor, and that doesn’t seem to be true. Some rice growing cultures are famous for being relatively individualist and capitalist-oriented. Specifically I stated, relative to wheat farming, “rice paddy farming has to be more of a group effort.” The statement was specific to the farming practice in comparison to wheat farming. It is a simple reality of the practices: in rice paddy farming the community of neighboring farms needs to flood and drain their fields in a coordinated fashion and usually need to cooperate in a group irrigation system; wheat farming requires no such coordination between family farms or group irrigation systems. Rice paddy farming indeed _has to be_ more of a group effort. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2017, 8:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-humans-start-farming/787632/133 "2017-06-05T08:02:55Z")
> [@DSeid](#): > > wheat farming requires no such coordination between family farms or group irrigation systems. This was demonstrably not the case with original [Mesopotamian](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geography_of_Mesopotamia#Perennial_irrigation) and [Egyptian](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flooding_of_the_Nile#Basin_irrigation) wheat farming. Those systems required and encouraged collective planning. That’s partly why those places developed civilisation. ---
**Author:** ![Hector\_St\_Clare](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/b5ac83/32.png) [@Hector\_St\_Clare](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hector_St_Clare)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2017, 12:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-humans-start-farming/787632/134 "2017-06-05T12:29:51Z")
> [@DSeid](#): > > It is a simple reality of the practices: in rice paddy farming the community of neighboring farms needs to flood and drain their fields in a coordinated fashion and usually need to cooperate in a group irrigation system; wheat farming requires no such coordination between family farms or group irrigation systems. Rice paddy farming indeed _has to be_ more of a group effort. At best, you could show that it’s more efficient to do so. But people engage in inefficient practices all the time for cultural reasons. You can also coordinate wheat farming: if people in a community share or rotate the oxen, horses, tractors etc. that they’re using to plow the fields, that’s more efficient use of the animals or machines than if each household has their own that they only use for a short time per year. ---
**Author:** ![Hector\_St\_Clare](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/b5ac83/32.png) [@Hector\_St\_Clare](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hector_St_Clare)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2017, 12:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-humans-start-farming/787632/135 "2017-06-05T12:31:02Z")
Anyway a lot of productive wheat growing areas like Egypt and the modern-day Punjab rely on irrigation too. ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2017, 1:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-humans-start-farming/787632/136 "2017-06-05T13:03:00Z")
> [@MrDibble](#): > > This was demonstrably not the case with original [Mesopotamian](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geography_of_Mesopotamia#Perennial_irrigation) and [Egyptian](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flooding_of_the_Nile#Basin_irrigation) wheat farming. Those systems required and encouraged collective planning. That’s partly why those places developed civilisation. Noted that historic exceptions do in fact exist … and as the hypothesis is predicated on the method that is typically associated with the agricultural product rather than the product itself those specific methods (complex irrigation canals, basin irrigation with controlled flooding very much akin to rice paddy farming methods) would be expected to contribute to a culture with a greater sense of interdependence, than a culture that developed with wheat farming method that did not depend on such methods. To be more precise I modify the statement to “… wheat farming generally requires no such coordination between family farms or group irrigation systems.” Historically wheat farming is much more likely to rely on rainfall and to not require group irrigation methods and rice farming is much more likely to require group irrigation methods. In general also rice farming is much more labor intensive. It also must be clarified that the difference they are theorizing about are not capitalistic but a relative tendency of different cultures to think in more interrelated and holistic terms and why. The exact measures from [the study](http://science.sciencemag.org/content/344/6184/603?variant=full-text&sso=1&sso_redirect_count=1&oauth-code=9ed8c329-5429-4f3c-8fae-c9d1d9cf76e0) (behind paywall) are always of interest and also the background of other hypotheses. > [@](#): > > Over the past 20 years, psychologists have cataloged a long list of differences between East and West (1–3). Western culture is more individualistic and analytic-thinking, whereas East Asian culture is more interdependent and holistic-thinking. Analytic thought uses abstract categories and formal reasoning, such as logical laws of noncontradiction—if A is true, then “not A” is false. Holistic thought is more intuitive and sometimes even embraces contradiction—both A and “not A” can be true. > > Even though psychology has cataloged a long list of East-West differences, it still lacks an accepted explanation of what causes these differences. Building on subsistence style theory (1, 4), we offer the rice theory of culture and compare it with the modernization hypothesis (5) and the more recent pathogen prevalence theory (6). > > The modernization hypothesis argues that, as societies become wealthier, more educated, and capitalistic, they become more individualistic and analytical. World Values Surveys (7) and studies on indigenous Mayans’ transition to a market economy (5) have given some support to the modernization hypothesis. But this theory has difficulty explaining why Japan, Korea, and Hong Kong are persistently collectivistic despite per-capita gross domestic products (GDPs) higher than that of the European Union. > > The pathogen prevalence theory argues that a high prevalence of communicable diseases in some countries made it more dangerous to deal with strangers, making those cultures more insular and collectivistic (6). Studies have found that historical pathogen prevalence correlates with collectivism and lower openness to experience (6). However, pathogens are strongly correlated with heat (8). Because rice grows in hot areas, pathogens may be confounded with rice—a possibility that prior research did not control for. > > The Rice Theory > The rice theory is an extension of subsistence style theory, which argues that some forms of subsistence (such as farming) require more functional interdependence than other forms (such as herding). At the same time, ecology narrows the types of subsistence that are possible. For example, paddy rice requires a significant amount of water. Over time, societies that have to cooperate intensely become more interdependent, whereas societies that do not have to depend on each other as much become more individualistic. > > In the past, most subsistence research has compared herders and farmers, arguing that the independence and mobility of herding make herding cultures individualistic and that the stability and high labor demands of farming make farming cultures collectivistic (1). We argue that subsistence theory is incomplete because it lumps all farming together. Two of the most common subsistence crops—rice and wheat—are very different, and we argue that they lead to different cultures. … > > … Our main dependent variable was a common measure of cultural thought, the triad task (17). The triad task shows participants lists of three items, such as train, bus, and tracks. Participants decide which two items should be paired together. Two of the items can be paired because they belong to the same abstract category (train and bus belong to the category vehicles), and two because they share a functional relationship (trains run on tracks). People from Western and individualistic cultures choose more abstract (analytic) pairings, whereas East Asians and people from other collectivistic cultures choose more relational (holistic) pairings (1, 17). We report scores as a percentage of holistic choices, where 100% is completely holistic and 0% is completely analytic. > > We first tested the modernization hypothesis by testing whether people from provinces with lower GDP per capita thought more holistically. People from richer provinces actually thought more holistically: γ(25) = 0.52, P = 0.03, r = 0.46. (γ represents province-level HLM regression coefficients.) > > We then tested the pathogen prevalence theory by testing whether provinces with higher rates of disease thought more holistically. Provinces with higher disease rates actually thought less holistically: γ(18) = –0.22, P = 0.04, r = –0.44. … > > … To test whether the findings generalize beyond thought style, we tested subsamples on two measures previously used for East-West cultural differences. The first was the sociogram task (n = 515), which has participants draw a diagram of their social network, with circles to represent the self and friends (18). Researchers measure how large participants draw the self versus how large they draw their friends to get an implicit measure of individualism (or self-inflation). A prior study found that Americans draw themselves about 6 mm bigger than they draw others, Europeans draw themselves 3.5 mm bigger, and Japanese draw themselves slightly smaller (18). > > People from rice provinces were more likely than people from wheat provinces to draw themselves smaller than they drew their friends: γ(24) = –0.20, P = 0.03, r = 0.81 (fig. S2). On average, people from wheat provinces self-inflated 1.5 mm (closer to Europeans), and people from rice provinces self-inflated –0.03 mm (similar to Japanese). > > Pathogen prevalence did not predict self-inflation on the sociogram task: γ(17) = 0.003, P = 0.95, r = 0. GDP per capita also failed to predict self-inflation: γ(24) = 0.04, P = 0.81, r = 0. > > The second measure was the loyalty and nepotism task, which measures whether people draw a sharp distinction between how they treat friends versus strangers (n = 166). One defining feature of collectivistic cultures is that they draw a sharp distinction between friends and strangers (3) … People from rice provinces were more likely to show loyalty/nepotism: γ(25) = 2.45, P = 0.04, r = 0.49. In their treatment of strangers, people from rice and wheat provinces did not differ: γ(24) = –0.09, P = 0.90, r = 0. … To my read the hypothesis is so far strongly supported. What should come next to further test it, per the researchers, is comparing areas that do dry land rice farming to ones that paddy rice farm, and seeing if the same rice/wheat split is also seen in other areas that have both like India and Africa. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [June 6, 2017, 7:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-humans-start-farming/787632/137 "2017-06-06T07:33:04Z")
> [@DSeid](#): > > Noted that historic exceptions do in fact exist … I’d say, _historically_, they are more the rule than the exception, in terms of amount of wheat production. > [@](#): > > To be more precise I modify the statement to “… wheat farming generally requires no such coordination between family farms or group irrigation systems.” Historically wheat farming is much more likely to rely on rainfall Cite? ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [June 6, 2017, 10:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-humans-start-farming/787632/138 "2017-06-06T10:52:37Z")
> [@MrDibble](#): > > I… Cite? The article already cited to start … > [@Science](#): > > Paddy rice also requires an extraordinary amount of work. Agricultural anthropologists visiting premodern China observed the number of hours farmers worked and found that growing paddy rice required at least twice the number of hours as wheat (9). The difference in man-hours was not a difference only noticeable to scientists. Medieval Chinese people grew both wheat and rice, and they were aware of the huge labor difference between the two. A Chinese farming guide in the 1600s advised people, “If one is short of labor power, it is best to grow wheat” > [quoted in (10)] > . A Chinese anthropologist in the 1930s concluded that a husband and wife would not be able to farm a large enough plot of rice to support the family if they relied on only their own labor (11). Strict self-reliance might have meant starvation. > > To deal with the massive labor requirements, farmers in rice villages from India to Malaysia and Japan form cooperative labor exchanges (12). Farmers also coordinate their planting dates so that different families harvest at different times, allowing them to help in each others’ fields (12). These labor exchanges are most common during transplanting and harvesting, which need to be done in a short window of time, creating an urgent need for labor. In economic terms, paddy rice makes cooperation more valuable. This encourages rice farmers to cooperate intensely, form tight relationships based on reciprocity, and avoid behaviors that create conflict. > > In comparison, wheat is easier to grow. Wheat does not need to be irrigated, so wheat farmers can rely on rainfall, which they do not coordinate with their neighbors. Planting and harvesting wheat certainly takes work, but only half as much as rice (9). The lighter burden means farmers can look after their own plots without relying as much on their neighbors. Also [the history of farming in America](http://plainshumanities.unl.edu/encyclopedia/doc/egp.ag.001) … which was one mostly of individual homesteaders. > [@](#): > > Irrigation was not widespread in the Great Plains before the middle of the twentieth century. What little irrigation there was had to be located on gently sloping river floodplains where water, diverted from a river channel upstream, could flow across fields and eventually drain back into the main channel farther downstream. In the United States, the federal government’s policies related to land and reclamation encouraged the construction of dams and diversion projects on smaller streams; in Canada, the Canadian Pacific Railway promoted large river diversions for irrigation in the early twentieth century. But prior to the 1960s irrigation was limited by the availability of streamside locations– the only place irrigation was feasible ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [June 6, 2017, 1:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-humans-start-farming/787632/139 "2017-06-06T13:18:18Z")
> [@Kobal2](#): > > Oh, \*carême \*! > Huh. You know I’d never made the link between the religious ritual and the season/time of the year. I strongly suspect they’re linked - you know, “Good folks, god says to not eat so much right now (because unlike you I can count, and at this rate you’ll start digging into the sowing reserves soon)”. Or, possibly “yes, brothers, I know you’re starving, but it’s a good thing ! Jesus did too, everything’s FINE !” 🙂 > > Which would also explain why these days the “fast” of Lent is not exactly drastic and more symbolic than anything. And Carnaval and Purim take place when you go through those reserves which will be bad if you try to keep them any longer. This includes things that have been kept in a cold room and what we call in Spanish _semiconservas_, “stuff that’s preserved but which doesn’t really have that long a shelf life”; I don’t know what would they be called in English or French (Google isn’t being helpful). Techniques such as home pasteurizing preserves and using jars that really are air- and water-tight are relatively recent: much more than those religious rituals. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [June 6, 2017, 8:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-humans-start-farming/787632/140 "2017-06-06T20:19:14Z")
> [@DSeid](#): > > The article already cited to start … > > Also [the history of farming in America](http://plainshumanities.unl.edu/encyclopedia/doc/egp.ag.001) … which was one mostly of individual homesteaders. I meant a cite for the " Historically wheat farming is much more likely to rely on rainfall", as I’ve already made my case for that not being true - _historically_, most wheat farming was irrigated. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-humans-start-farming/787632.md?page=6) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-humans-start-farming/787632.md?page=8)