Talk:History of agriculture/Archive 1

History of agriculture

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WP credit

The article has been rewritten. The following are the last WP traces

• Pinpointing the absolute beginnings of agriculture is problematic because the transition away from purely hunter-gatherer societies in some areas began many thousands of years before the invention of writing.
• By 7000 BC sowing and harvesting reached Mesopotamia and there in the super fertile soil just north of the Persian Gulf Sumerian ingenuity systematized it and scaled it up.
• If the operative definition of agriculture includes large scale intensive cultivation of land mono-cropping organized irrigation and use of a specialized labour force the title inventors of agriculture would fall to the Sumerians starting ca.
• The ability of farmers to feed large numbers of people whose activities have nothing to do with material production was the crucial factor in the rise of standing armies.
• With such technology they managed to greatly expand the exploitable land area.
• Farming manuals were produced in every corner of the Muslim world detailing where when and how to plant and grow various crops.
• Advanced scientific techniques allowed leaders like Ibn al-Baytar to introduce new crops and breeds and strains of livestock into areas where they were previously unknown.
• Their counterparts in Europe struggled under a feudal system in which they were almost slaves serfs with little hope of improving their lot by hard work.
• These new crops included sugar cane rice citrus fruit apricots cotton artichokes aubergines and saffron.
• After 1492 the worlds agricultural patterns were shuffled in the widespread exchange of plants and animals known as the Columbian Exchange.
• Crops and animals that were previously only known in the Old World were now transplanted to the New and vice versa.

--AlekStos 15:25, 31 March 2007 (CDT)

Tone

Here and there the style becomes unencyclopædic (and Americocentric) — e.g., "Experienced gardeners may recall a meteoric rise in publicity and popularity during the 1970s of raised-bed vegetable production. What many of us didn't know was that farmers of several South and Central American societies practiced "raised-field" agriculture up to 4,000 years ago." --Peter J. King  Talk  07:14, 7 April 2007 (CDT)

change name

I suggest we change the name to Agriculture, History the goal is to get the major keyword first. Richard Jensen 00:46, 24 April 2007 (CDT)

name change

I suggest we change this to Agriculture, history so we can keep multiple articles on agriculture together. Historians and publishers in recent years strongly avoid the "History of XYZ" titles. Richard Jensen 22:15, 9 May 2007 (CDT)

Capital H?

Is the consistent title style to be 'History' or 'history' or "history of'? We currently have examples of all three. Roger Lohmann 09:34, 29 June 2008 (CDT)

I vote for Agriculture, history....lower case. Richard Jensen 15:03, 29 June 2008 (CDT)

APPROVED Version 1.0

Congratulations on another approval! D. Matt Innis 15:19, 8 July 2008 (CDT)

Discussion for Version 1.0 stopped here. Please continue further discussion under this break.

Unfinished

I think approval is premature, since this is an unfinished article. The article now treats only plants, with nothing on animal husbandry. David L Green 20:34, 8 July 2008 (CDT)

the article covers a vast territory and will never be "finished", as we will add new material all the time. Approval does NOT mean that it becomes frozen (we don't mention frozen foods either), only that it passes quality controls, and CZ urgently needs approved articles.Richard Jensen 20:56, 8 July 2008 (CDT)

The problem is not that it is just unfinished. It is also unfinished in a way that creates major imbalance. The discussion of agriculture in Europe jumps from prehistory to the Middle Ages. After the Origins section, the bulk of Asia is totally ignored, as is sub-Saharan Africa. There is no mention of the 17th century developments in technique which made it possible to over-winter cattle and led to a great increase in meat production. There are also minor defects: the use of an abbreviation, PPNB, with no explanation; an inconsistent dating system, switching between using BCE and the number of years from the present date; the occasional misspelling (e g Rennaisance for Renaissance); and occasional syntax error. If these problems do not impinge on quality, what does? --Martin Wyatt 17:24, 30 September 2013 (UTC)

Yes, it certainly doesn't look to me like the sort of article that ought to be approved. Peter Jackson 08:46, 1 October 2013 (UTC)

I have now partially remedied one of the defects I mentioned above (reference to the 17th century agricultural revolution) - partially, because I am no expert on the subject. --Martin Wyatt (talk) 16:05, 31 July 2015 (UTC)