4 ms·
It feels like the argument is upside down. Civilization scaled because increased agricultural productivity allowed a smaller number of farmers to feed the rest
by yongjik 4y ago
It feels like the argument is upside down. Civilization scaled because increased agricultural productivity allowed a smaller number of farmers to feed the rest, freeing them up to do other things. These people also naturally congregated to cities because that enabled fast exchange of goods and ideas, i.e., it was more "scalable" than having everyone scattered throughout the country.
In the modern world, it also means that cities have lower ecological footprint. Moving people around is much more energy intensive than moving food. Makes more sense to do farming across the country and concentrate the produce onto a small place packed with people.
Not necessarily saying this is a great tradeoff for individuals (who wouldn't want a backyard with an apple tree?) but in a sense, the fact that we're picturing a backyard with an apple tree instead of backbreaking work in the rice paddies throughout summer is a testament to how brutally efficient the modern agriculture is.
- WinLychee 4y agoLogically that would make a lot of sense, if we were to design things in such a way that products are only shipped to their local urban areas. However, the modern day system has given rise to such absurdities as fruit grown in South America being shipped to Asia for packaging, and then shipped to North America for consumption. It's not that the entire system is amazingly efficient, it's that it's simply been possible because energy has been very cheap this last century. The food system will have to adapt one way or another (and I think we will), but it will probably end up being more human-labor intensive and local. Relating to energy, one of the coming issues we will need to solve is fertilizer supply. Modern agriculture heavily depends on natural gas (via Haber-Bosch) to juice yields alongside genetic engineering. This isn't great for long-term soil health either, we just haven't been doing it long enough to see the effects of soil depletion.
- raybb 3y agoYou might be interested in the book Against the Grain, which argues that people didn't naturally congregate into cities like we have thought for a while. From the wikipedia: > Scott then asserts that the reason why hunter-gatherer societies transformed into agro-pastoral societies was due to coercion by the state. He cites research on an archaeological site in Mesopotamia named Abu Hureyra. Scott concurs with other scholars in the field that "'[n]o hunter-gatherers occupying a productive locality with a range of wild foods able to provide for all seasons are likely to have started cultivating their caloric staples willingly.'" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Against_the_Grain:_A_Deep_History_of_the_Earliest_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Against_the_Grain:_A_Deep_Hist...