Why did humans start farming?

Factual Questions
121

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.

122

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.

I do wonder if ants that have advanced farming techniques can inform some about the human transition … a fun article.

The article also makes a comment about ant agriculture that is very reminiscent of Pollan’s points in Botany of Desire:

123

Oh, they still starved. But because of grain speculation and an ingenious system of forced debt.

124

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.

125

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.

126

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.

127

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.

128

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…

129

On that note;

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.

130

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.

131

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.

132

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.

133

This was demonstrably not the case with original Mesopotamian and Egyptian wheat farming. Those systems required and encouraged collective planning. That’s partly why those places developed civilisation.

134

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.

135

Anyway a lot of productive wheat growing areas like Egypt and the modern-day Punjab rely on irrigation too.

136

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 (behind paywall) are always of interest and also the background of other hypotheses.

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.

137

I’d say, historically, they are more the rule than the exception, in terms of amount of wheat production.

Cite?

138

The article already cited to start …

Also the history of farming in America … which was one mostly of individual homesteaders.

139

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.

140

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.