Farming for Facts

Diamond, J. M. (1999). Farmer power. In Guns, germs, and steel: The fates of human societies (pp. 85-92). New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Co.

Diamond, J. M. (1999). To farm or not to farm. In Guns, germs, and steel: The fates of human societies (pp. 104-113). New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Co.

Diamond, J. M. (1999). Apples or indians. In Guns, germs, and steel: The fates of human societies (pp. 131-156). New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Co.

This week, I decided to focus my efforts upon reading Diamond more thoroughly so as to give him a fair chance over his competitor in the previous post. upon reading a few more chapters, I have come across a new term, as well as novel concept that I hadn’t considered before – plant domestication. That is just a fancy way of saying farming for crops (p. 86). Normally, when we think of farming we think of the sowing of seeds into fields and the resulting, glorious harvest that we will be able to reap once the growing season is over – and the eating of those crops of course! However, there is so much more to plant domestication than simply consumption by way of digestion. Plants can be used for many more things such as clothing and building supplies (p. 88). Along with plant domestication came animal domestication, which helped in the process of farming in two ways: one, those animals were able to create the necessary manure for crop fertilization; two, those animals helped with the work of the farm by tilling and plowing fields (p. 88).

I really appreciate that Diamond is giving historical and political backgrounds to the farming process as well [especially in a biology monograph!]. Without the need for a hunter-gatherer society, people learn to stay in place at any given time and build up food surpluses that can be used to pay taxes to those “specialists” that are otherwise preoccupied with governing and guarding the land that is being farmed (p. 90). If you think about it, biologically, it is quite the symbiotic relationship between two different social stratum of people – one that I can find myself to respect.

Returning once more to the political, I was really surprised and impressed that Diamond went further with his analysis of the agricultural revolution. He even goes so far as to quote Thomas Hobbes, one of the most famous social contract theoreticians in political philosophy (p. 104). While Diamond paraphrases Hobbes, I find that a more fuller revelation is in order to understand how politics and agriculture do meet:

In such condition, there is no place for industry; because the fruit thereof is uncertain: and consequently no culture of the earth; no navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be imported by sea; no commodious building; no instruments of moving, and removing, such things as require much force; no knowledge of the face of the earth; no account of time; no arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.* ~ Thomas Hobbes

*Please leave a comment if you’re unsure about this. We can have an excellent conversation about this for a while.

Getting off of the political beat, I also find it interesting how Diamond asserts that food production is not a discovery or an invention, but is an evolutionary process by which has naturally occurred as the result of decisions made by humans indirectly causing such an outcome (p. 105-106). However, I am going to have to disagree with Diamond on this as it is really a discovery, by which food production was discovered by humans as a new and intriguing concept by which to live. I do appreciate Diamond’s link to economics of food production in that people naturally find food with the greatest potential of reward with as little risk as possible (p. 107). Farming seems to be the answer to this particular dilemma. Moreover, a dilemma that Diamond mentions regarding the ultimate agricultural correlation between rise in food production and rise in human population throughout prehistory is noteworthy (p. 111). The answer to this problem, I feel, is incredibly elusive…although why does it even matter? We know that they are positively correlated and therefore a rise in one will affect the other, and so we can have a measurable outcome and can therefore proceed to experiment, not to find causation, but to find practical application.

However, I do find Diamond’s answers to the question of the Fertile Crescent to be quite illuminating and decisive. One, the Fertile Crescent has the largest area for the “Mediterranean” climate to take effect (p. 138); two, the Fertile Crescent enjoys the greatest variation in that climate (p. 138); three, the Fertile Crescent has the greatest range of altitudes so as to allow for the best possible adaptation to take place (p. 140); four, a wealth of mammalia to affect changes in the area (p. 141); and five, the Fertile Crescent faced little hunter-gatherer problems which resulted in the fastest advance to the food production era (p. 142). In the Fertile Crescent area specifically, people weren’t oblivious to the fact that their lifestyles needed to change, and therefore innovation was necessary to ensure the survival of humans in the area (p. 154).

Suffice it to say, Diamond has reassured me that he still has much to offer for my learning experience in biology. He has acknowledged the fact that economics, history, and politics has a role to play in the farmer’s fields.