The impact of food production: Short-term strategies and long-term consequences

This chapter describes long-term consequences of short-term agricultural strategies. Food production is comprised of four sets of activities, all of which must be present for a society to be fully agricultural. These four activities are plant cultivation or animal husbandry, harvesting, storage, and control of propagation. The successful introduction of agricultural economies had several significant implications. Ancient Greece is an area of considerable interest to any student of the past because of the greatness of its peoples and the strong influence they had on the formation of western civilization. Mesopotamia, the land of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, is the scene of the earliest and in many ways the most seminal ancient civilization. In plant cultivation, natural vegetation is usually suppressed or removed, the biology of the topsoil is changed by hoeing or plowing, water is drained off or supplied, and weeds or predatory animals are controlled.