the evolution in agriculture practices from the stone age through mediaval period till the colonial?
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Sounds like an interesting essay\n\nhere is a good outline of stuff to consider\n\nhttp://www.oup.com/uk/orc/bin/9780199261246/01student/routes/11agri/
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Archaeologists have found 80,000-year-old corn pollen below Mexico City. Because this pollen is almost exactly the same as modern popcorn pollen, researchers believe that "cave people" most likely had popcorn.\n\nPopcorn probably grew first in Mexico, though it was also used in China and India hundreds of years before Columbus reached the Americas. \n\nHere are some great sites regarding the history, planting, types, why it pops, etc.:  \n\nhttp://www.rossonhousemuseum.org/body_popcorn_history.html\nhttp://www.factmonster.com/spot/popcorn1.html\nhttp://www.popcorn.org/encyclopedia/eppophis.cfm\nhttp://www.popcorn.org/encyclopedia/epanhist.cfm\nhttp://www.ipm.iastate.edu/ipm/hortnews/2000/7-21-2000/popcorn.html\nhttp://www2.kenyon.edu/Projects/Farmschool/food/corntyp.htm\nhttp://maize.agron.iastate.edu/popcorn.html\n\nGET BUSY!
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Often agriculture is seen as the real root of civilisation. That is right if we mean that urban culture is the measure and quality. But there is also culture in societies of hunters, gatherer, fishermen, herds and so on. If culture is a question of voting urban cultures always win. If it is a question of quality and sustainability rural cultures win. Still real agriculture is only 100 to 200 years of age. Before that the methods were the same far back to the beginning of agriculture.\n\nThe map of culture and agriculture of the past would be very different from today and even from my childhood in the forties. Then 80 - 90 % of people were living in the countryside. Now it is the other way around that people live in cities. Farther back before the land hunger in 19th century agriculture used the best places in nature without much of draining water in the planned way. The local climate was harder and wetter and naturally agriculture was risky.\n\nThen it was the best and secure way to live in villages being like collectives since it was a way of life to share and help each other. With feudalism and kingdoms the nobility wanted to share by taxation and the kings preferred individual owners as tax objects, while feudal masters wanted slaves but mostly got tenants. It was a process of thousands of year and with different pace depending on landscape and climate.\n\nAgriculture came in waves and looks sometimes as short mission while gathering, hunting and keeping animals were the secure and traditional ways of living. We do not see much of rituals showing the traditional industries including mineralogy and metallurgy that also cultivate earth. Once agriculture become stable the population increased and gave the base for bigger villages and more of specialised workers. For long it was the big farms and nobility that kept specialists.\n\nThe cattle people settled in the best places near a well but higher than wet and misty meadows and we sufficient wind for the draw. Many of our place names have an ending that tells about milking place or some kind of coral for keeping the animals during the night. They suppose that change of climate during Iron Age forced people to keep the animals indoors and harvest hey and leaf for the winter.\n\nCattle-people or mainly cattle-breeders needed normally 25 - 50 square kilometres for a settlement that used the nature for all materials needed in household. A measure of the width was that a young girl should drive a heifer from sunrise to sunset around the land they claimed. That was the practical measure that a settlement should be able to get their animals home for night.\n\nIt is inevitable that they looked also for hunting possibilities; fishing water; a place for the cabbage garden; hey meadow and perhaps a little cornfield giving the beer. We have to understand that kind of folklands before the time of planned villages that came with kings and taxation. Before that it seem s to have been collective villages of farmers and others with noble traders producing things for sale besides their agriculture.\n\nAgriculture would need much smaller space but could not live without all the raw materials they needed from nature. Still effective agriculture could feed cities.\n\nThis is naturally about the conditions on Dal when I tell about the mediaeval order until 17th century:
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Are you asking about indigenuous/Native Americans or those who came from other countries? \nBoth groups(at different times) initially started with gathering, hunting, fishing and later on, farming.
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I cant imagine food has changed much over the past hundred years, really depends on what region you are talking about -
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Not very long. The north was far more industrialized the the agrarian south. What the person above said is true as well.
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Agriculture\n\nAbout two-thirds of all Indians derive their livelihood directly from agriculture, a proportion that is not much smaller than it was at the beginning of the 20th century. The area cultivated, however, has risen steadily and is now considerablymore than half of the nation's total area, a proportion matchedby few countries in the world. Inthe more fertile regions, such as the Indo-Gangetic Plain or the deltas of the eastern coast, the proportion of cultivated to total land often exceeds 90 percent.\n\n\nAlthough the average farm size is only about five acres (two hectares) and is declining, that figure masks the markedly skewed distribution of landholdings. More than half of all farms are less than three acres in size, while much of the remainder is controlled by a small number of relatively affluent peasants and landlords. Most cultivators own farms that provide little more than a bare subsistence for their families. Further, nearly one-third of all agricultural households own no land at all and, along with many submarginal landowners, must work for the larger landholders or must supplement their earnings from some subsidiary occupation, often the one traditionally associated with their caste.\n\nAgricultural technology has been undergoing rapid change inIndia. Government-sponsored, large-scale canal irrigation projects, begun by the British in the mid-19th century, were greatly extended after independence, but there has been a shift in emphasis toward deep wells (called tube wells in India), often privately owned, from which water is raised either by electric or diesel pumps. Important in several parts of India, especially the southeast, is “tank” irrigation, in which water is drawn from small reservoirs created along the coursesof minor streams.\n\nThe demand for chemical fertilizers also has been steadily increasing, although since the late 1960s the introduction of new hybrid, high-yielding varieties of seeds (HYVs), mainly for wheat and secondarily for  rice, has brought about the most dramatic increases in production, especially in Punjab (where their adoption is virtually universal), Haryāna, western Uttar Pradesh, and Gujarāt. So great has been the success of the so-called Green Revolution that India was able to build up buffer  grain stocks sufficient for the country to weather several years of disastrously bad monsoons with virtually no imports or starvation and even managed to become, in some years, a modest net food exporter. During the same period, the production of coarse grains and pulses, which were less in demand than rice and wheat, either did not increase significantly or decreased. Hence, the total per capita grain production has been notably less than that suggested by many protagonists of the Green Revolution, and the threat of major food scarcity has not been eliminated.\n\nMost Indian farms grow little besides food crops, especially cereal grains, and these account for more than three-fifths of the area under cultivation. Foremost among the grains, in terms of both area sown and total yield, is rice, the crop of choice in almost all areas with more than 40 inches (1,000 millimetres) of average annual precipitation, as well as in someirrigated areas. Wheat ranks second in both area sown and total yield, and, because of the use of HYVs, leads all grains in yield per acre. Wheat is grown mainly on the fertile soils of northern and northwestern India in areas with 15 to 40 inchesof average annual precipitation, often with supplementary irrigation. Unlike rice, which is mainly grown during the kharif (summer) season, wheat is primarily a rabi (cool-season) crop. Other important cereals, in descending order of sown acreage, are sorghum (called jowar in India), pearl millet (or bajra), corn (maize), and finger millet (or ragi). All of these typically are grown on relatively infertile soils unsuitable for rice or wheat, while corn cultivation is also favoured in hilly and mountainous reg
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...worlds oldest profession
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Humanity, pre-history.
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The Inca Empire used terrace farming.\n\nFor more information:\n\nhttp://www.socialstudiesforkids.com/articles/geography/terracefarming.htm
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Farming.\n\nSmall farms: everything.  The work literally never ends.  Tilling, planting, fertilizing, watering, harvesting, selling, repeat as many times per season as the climate and crops permit. \n\nIn rural Utah, watering is the critical factor, as everything is run on irrigation systems.  People move pipe or repair pipe quite a bit.  For really small farms, they'll usually grow a few acres of alfalfa for their own animals and to share.  So, there are three or so crops a year of that, which includes bailing and stacking the hay.  \n\nIf the farm has animals, they come first.  Always.  My first job was working on a small horse ranch in Utah, where we'd first attend to the animals needs, then go paint a barn, repair a machine, cut thistle in the pasture, burn weeds in the irrigation ditches, or whatever else was pressing.\n\nLarge farms: they're more like corporations than old-style farming.  People would have jobs broken down, computers run and manage everything, planes do the fertilizing, the tractors automate much of the work.
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In simple terms farming provided lots more food for a lot less work. This increased the population of humanity that the world could sustain.\n\nFarming was started accidentally by gathering. When food and berries were eaten, the waste would always be thrown away in the same field by some tribes. When they returned to the site the next year they found their waste had grown into plants- since the gatherer had subconciously selected the best fruits the best food eventually came to be found in these fields (especially if the same field was also the cat-holes or latrines site). Farming was born- as a pleasant surprise to those who discovered it rather than an ingenious invention.
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Suggest you read 'Guns, Germs and Steel', by Jared Diamond.\n\nFrom an anthropological point of view, social stratification arose only when societies invented agriculture.  Hunter gatherers live(d) mostly in small bands with almost no social heirarchy. This was because everybody needed to be 'hands on' in hunting and collecting food for survival.\nOnce sociteies settled into more or less intensive agriculture, there was often enough surplus food to support people who did other things, for example chiefs and craftsmen, priests etc.  This was the origin of a stratified society.\nSo, it isn't completely necessary - as long as everybody can do everything for themselves/their own family.  However, with the population densities in most parts of the world that we have today, it IS necessary - because it wouldn't be possible for all of us to produce all our own food and all the other 'goodies' we expect to be able to enjoy.  We need specialists and specialisms mean social stratification.
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Around 600,000 years old. Maybe even older.
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I believe the switch slowly started to occur around the time that agriculture began (around 10,000 years ago).  Even though women likely started planting seeds, men were needed for large scale farming; capturing livestock and tending to large tracts of farm land.\n\nWith this innovation came population increases.  With larger populations to feed, more animals and farmland were needed.  So the farmers started moving in to their neighbors hunting grounds (the neighbors were likely hunter/gatherers).  The neighbors put up a fight and men were needed for fighters. So men were needed to do heavy farm work and fight the natives.\n\nOnce the neighbors lands were captured, the neighbors were either executed or enslaved.  With slavery you need men to control the new workforce.\n\nSo what resulted was this: Farmers, Solders, and Slavedrivers (or Police if you prefer).\n\nThen came religion and the priests................how could have women strapped with kids compete with all of this? In fact women were likely encouraged to have more children so there would be more workers (male babies were preferred of course).  Midwives and women practicing birth control (like the rhythm method) were chastised...............\n\n\nwhat is the person before my answer talking about?\n\nand to suppertrooper, human history only covers a short instance of human existence,  things have changed a lot since we have started recording our history, and besides that there exist today several Matriarchal cultures in the world, some of these cultures exist in the Himalaya mountains where wives (the bosses) have several husbands!\n\nand to shepen, you wrote, "The theory that all societies started matriarchal and were conquered by patriarchal societies has actually fallen by the wayside."  Nobody here is saying that "ALL" cultures were originally matriarchal.  But it is true that many that are patriarchal today were matriarchal before agriculture.  And where is it documented that these theories have fallen by the wayside?
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agriculture used to be back bone of indian economy it is no more so for various oblivious reasons.  agriculture is like any other industry as there is uncertenity looming over like any other industry here nature plays vital role and for other industries the deman and policy of government plays role so other industrys fate is man made and for agriculture it is both nature/god and man made a farmer if properly study the pattern of production it is possible for him to understand the cycle of change in environment and can plan his production in fact earlier farmers where more scientific and specific for they had understood what to grow when and next to what for insects attacking one plant used to be food for some other so this kind of loss use to be negligent next come the excess production this is easy to tackle as it is pure marketing both perishible and non preishable products can be either stored properly or converted into other eatery and then be sold in market for example onion or potato or tomato it is common scene in india where villagers throw it on streets and make big news it is ridiculus grow products in controlled environment not necessary to be in closed or artificial environment and then either sell it to contries who need it either directly as it is or by converting it for ex chips/wafers when it comes to potato or onion sauce or juice when it comes to tomato there are export promotion councils who are ably administering the situation one can take help and run it like any other industry\nactually the subsidies given to farmers are more than required which is why they are playing like this is what i feel a situation should araise where in industrialists take up farming as business and sell it thru chain of retail outlets so that things become alright and even farmer will have less grouse but unfortunate thing for hm will be he will virtually become employee of the chain owner which he mostly prefers to rather than working hard and manage his own farm \nas comparision to other industry here the product is food items vis-a-vis materialist products like auto etc \nthere production is done with macheneries and here it is natural \nthere the variants are like power, raw material, market demand,  finance and involvement of both management and working force\nhere it is just nature timely water is required apart from right seeds and harvesting process apart from involvement of farmer.\nnature can be made predictable if right practices are followed
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The short answer is that soil erosion will tend to reduce harvests in areas where soil is lost and increase harvests where soil is deposited.\n\nIt isn't a coincidence that the earliest civilisations all grew up along rivers: The Nile, The Tigris, The Euphrates. All those rivers flood annually and deposit large amounts of highly fertile soil eroded from further upstream. That erosion allowed those river valleys to produce the largest agricultural harvests in the world.\n\nEven today much of our agriculture is dependent on soil erosion. We stll farm the banks of many major rivers such as the Misissipi and Amazon because the depisited soils make those areas highly fertile\n\nIn contrast the mountainous headwaters of those same rivers are highly unproductive because the soil gets washed away every year. As a result the soils are very thin and the land is totally unsuitable for plant agriculture.