Tobacco, and the economic system of mercantilism, factored into the grievances of the colonists leading to the American Revolutionary War. Introduction The most important cash crop in Colonial America was tobacco, first cultivated by the English at their Jamestown Colony of Virginia in 1610 CE by the merchant John Rolfe (l. 1585-1622 CE). Tobacco grew[…]
Tobacco, along with the “three sisters” (beans, maize, and squash), was among the most significant crops cultivated by Native Americans. Introduction The history of tobacco use in the Americas goes back over 1,000 years when natives of the region chewed or smoked the leaves of the plant now known as Nicotiana rustica (primarily in the[…]
The fields cover the remains of hundreds of stone age farms. By Jenny SnookHistorian Overview The Ceide Fields, near Ballycastle, Co. Mayo, on the western coast of Ireland, are recognised as one of the oldest and largest Stone Age farming sites in the world, dating back to c. 3700 BCE. The walls that have been discovered so[…]
A neolithic farm in Scotland that may be the oldest in northern Europe. / Photo by Drewcorser, Wikimedia Commons Twelve thousand years ago everybody lived as hunters and gatherers. But by 5,000 years ago most people lived as farmers. By Dr. Darren Curnoe / 10.18.2017 Associate Professor Biological Anthropology and Archaeological Science UNSW Australia Twelve thousand years ago[…]
This copy of a medieval manuscript illustration shows a peasant using a very modest version of the heavy plow. Larger plows would be equipped with wheels and would require twice as many oxen and a substantial crew. Medieval fields were characteristically very long and narrow because peasants wanted to plow the longest furrows possible before[…]
Early agrarian women—like these murdered in what is now western France some 6500 years ago—may have been critical manual laborers in their societies. Didier Descouens/Wikimedia Commons Prehistoric women shouldered a major share of the hoeing, digging, and hauling in early agricultural societies. By Michael Price / 11.29.2017 Forget about emotional labor. Women living 7000 years ago[…]
Certain technological developments singlehandedly pushed the growth of population across the whole of the continent. By Dimitris Romeo Havlidis / 03.14.2015 The Importance of Agriculture Even since the dawn of the first human settlements in 5000 BC, agriculture has played a vital role in the development of every civilisation; over 6000 years later, this remains the case[…]
A view of the millstones and oven of a bakery (Pistrinium) in the Roman town of Pompeii which was buried in volcanic ash following the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 CE. The millstones have square sockets in which wooden beams would have been placed and harnessed to mules in order to turn the stones and so grind the grain[…]
Olive trees on the Greek island of Anaxos. Cereals / Wikimedia Commons The prosperity of the majority of Greek city-states was based on agriculture and the ability to produce the necessary surplus. By Mark Cartwright / 07.25.2016 Historian The prosperity of the majority of Greek city-states was based on agriculture and the ability to produce the necessary surplus which[…]
Give a man a ploughshare, and he’ll turn it into a sword. Zenodot Verlagsgesellschaft mbH An elite class began to monopolise resources and were able to command the labour of others to do things. By Dr. Simon Powers / 08.06.2014 Postdoctoral Researcher Université de Lausanne For hundreds of thousands of years humans lived in hunter-gatherer societies,[…]
The owner of this skull had a nasty run in with an axe. Christian Meyer These massacres entail killing on a relative scale seen today only in the most war-torn countries. By Dr. Rick Schulting / 08.07.2015 Lecturer in Scientific and Prehistoric Archaeology University of Oxford The discovery of 26 bodies with lethal injuries in a 7,000[…]
The decoration of choice by Europe’s farming-friendly forefathers. Solange Rigaud, Author provided Studying beads, shells and animal teeth – ornaments which carried deep cultural meaning to prehistoric man – reveals that northern Europeans resisted the spread of agriculture for centuries. By Dr. Solange Rigaud / 04.09.2015 Researcher at the Center for International Research in the Humanities and Social Sciences New York University[…]
Photograph originally published in Horace Edward Stockbridge’s Land Teaching (Southern Ruralist Company, 1910). / Wikimedia Commons By Dr. John Buescher Historian Children today may be struck by ways in which their own lives contrast with those of farm children’s in earlier times. One difference is the extent to which girls and boys, from a very[…]
Coffee’s usefulness doesn’t have to end here. Yanadhorn/Shutterstock.com Plenty of cafes these days will let you take home some used coffee grounds, to put on your garden. It’s a versatile material with loads of potential uses – as long as you treat it properly first. By Dr. Tien Huynh / 01.31.2018 Senior Lecturer in the School of Sciences RMIT University Did you[…]
Beans have travelled a long way to make your cup of coffee. Jack Fussell/Flickr, CC BY-NC-ND By Don Brushett / 11.02.2014 Research Associate Southern Cross University The vast majority of the brewed coffee we drink in Australia comes from the arabica species (Coffea arabica), despite 30% of world coffee production being the “robusta” variety (Coffea canephora). Coffee is[…]
The Growroom exhibited at Copenhagen Opera House. Photo by Alona Vibe From Space10 / 02.14.2017 Introduction The design for The Growroom, an urban farm pavilion that looks into how cities can feed themselves through food producing architecture, is now open source and available for anyone to use. SPACE10 envision a future, where we grow our own[…]
Edited by Matthew A. McIntosh / 02.24.2018 Historian Brewminate Editor-in-Chief The Agriculture Market Landscape Introduction The agricultural market landscape is the economic system that produces, distributes, and consumes agricultural products and services. Agriculture, in many ways, has been the fundamental economic industry throughout history. The production and exchange of food laid the groundwork for all[…]
Farmers’ Institute at Badger, Minnesota, in Roseau County, June 9, 1904 / Minnesota Historical Society By Dr. R.L. Cartwright / 06.27.2013 American Historian In the 1880s, Minnesota farmers saw the need for education but resisted “book farming,” or learning how to farm by reading instructional text. Farmers’ institutes, lecture series that traveled to rural communities[…]
Years of plowing and planting left soil depleted and weak. As a result, clouds of dust fell like brown snow over the Great Plains. Edited by Matthew A. McIntosh / 02.24.2018 Historian Brewminate Editor-in-Chief Farmers faced tough times. While most Americans enjoyed relative prosperity for most of the 1920s, the Great Depression for the American[…]
Ancient Egyptian plowing farmer scene from the burial chamber of Sennedjem / The Yorck Project via Wikimedia Commons By Dr. Jason Collins / 10.21.2013 Evolutionary Biologist Relative to their hunter-gatherer counterparts, early Neolithic farmers were short, had poor dental health due to malnutrition, bone lesions suggestive of disease and stunted spines from the back-breaking labour. This comparison[…]
Barley continues to be the staple diet of people living in this Dolpo Valley of Nepal, a harsh environment at 13,000 feet above sea level. Research suggests that ancient barley cultivation moved into China after being farmed in high altitude regions such as this along the southern edge of the Tibetan Plateau. (Photo: Wikipedia Commons)[…]
Tiny samples taken from ancient European skulls, in a process shown here, yielded enough DNA for researchers to determine that farmers and foragers interbred in three different regions from 8,000 to nearly 4,000 years ago. Genetic evidence shows interbreeding after agriculture arrived from what’s now Turkey. By Bruce Bower / 11.10.2017 Thousands of years ago,[…]
Former farm staff, Zotero Citlacoatl, and Las Milpitas volunteers in the greenhouse, learning about heritage fruit tree propagation. The fig and pomegranate tree cuttings pictured grew out over the spring and were given to program participants and community partners. / Photo © Groundwork Promotions The Tucson, Arizona, food bank isn’t just giving away packaged foods. It’s[…]
By Cory Doctorow / 01.05.2017 There’s really nothing not to love about vertical farms — multi-story hydroponic operations, usually sited in dense urban areas — they borrow their best tech from the space program, they’re water-conserving, they don’t have runoff, they’re energy efficient, and they’re super land-efficient, meaning we don’t need to turn forests or[…]
By Dr. Paul Brians Emeritus Professor of English Washington State University Why did the ice age end? We wish we knew. Scientists are struggling with this issue. Part of it for sure has to do with long-term fluctuations in the output of the sun which we still understand little about. A large meteor collision generating[…]
Spring forward, fall back … why? / Shutterstock By Dr. Laura Grant / 11.02.2016 Assistant Professor of Economics McKenna College Today the sun is shining during my commute home from work. But this weekend, public service announcements will remind us to “fall back,” ending daylight saving time (DST) by setting our clocks an hour earlier[…]
USDA / Creative Commons The documentary Occupy the Farm shows the positive impact universities could have if they leveraged their resources to create more farms and farmers. By Chelsey Simpson / 10.07.2016 On Earth Day 2012, a group of University of California, Berkeley, students, former students, and other community members marched to the padlocked gates[…]
All things must die. But when? / Shutterstock By Dr. Simon Cotton / 09.15.2016 Senior Lecturer in Chemistry University of Birmingham A hotel in Reykjavík has on display a McDonald’s burger and fries, seemingly undecomposed after 2,512 days – and counting. It was bought on October 30, 2009, the day that the last McDonald’s in[…]
By Chris Kolbu The science and practices required to coax the very best out of coffee beans are, by now, better understood than ever and widely adopted across the specialty coffee industry. However, what is known about and done to the coffee before its harvest hasn’t been explored in nearly as much detail. The most[…]
Photo by Jetvic/iStock A unique community-owned broadband cooperative will free dozens of tiny towns and farms from reliance on slower corporate providers. By Ben DeJarnette / 08.03.2016 Seven years ago, Winthrop, Minnesota, population 1,400, decided it needed an internet upgrade. Most local residents were served by companies like Mediacom, which Consumer Reports consistently ranked among the[…]