Agricultural Growth: Key to Global Economic Development - Essay Sample

Introduction

Agriculture is the back born of economic growth to nearly every country across the globe. It is among the most significant and most reliable source of revenue and stability in every nation. It is a field that covers a more extensive scope of practices such as livestock keeping, crop growing and various innovations that encompasses crop production, manufacturing, processing industries and researches done on new and continuing changes. This paper will embark on unravelling agricultural growth and development in the North American continent will much focus and zeal onto the Eastern part of that continent. Agriculture in North America is notably attributed to the regions north of the Reo Grande. This area gave rise to almost four agricultural complexes: the Southwestern U.S and the Upper Sonoran complex. The latter dealt with the infamous corn production.

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Research advancements carried out in the eastern part of North America has proved that agricultural practices have transcended far and beyond the generational scope. Over the decades, agricultural growth has held significant changes to the piles of earth ecosystem. It stems from invention of seed plants during the second millennium B.C, the initial emergence of food production economies based on local plants and the rapid and broad-scale shift to maize centred agriculture that is between A.D 800 to 1100. This paper aims to put across the archaeological findings, the sites and the various dispersal points for the agricultural practices to the areas that map the regions bordering Eastern North America. The paper as well looks at the causal factors that have explored the potential need for the domestication of animals as well. The advances that have marked methods and tendencies are incorporated in the modern technological researches carried out in this new era. They have been greatly discussed as below:

Archaeological findings through methods such as mass spectrometry[AMS] radiocarbon dating has permitted dating from very smaller samples of early cultivated crops. The results have had extraordinary findings. These findings have aided in progressive advancements in agricultural across the world. Genetic studies of modern and ancient DNA in domesticated plants and animals are constantly providing remarkable information on species distribution across the globe. The number of archaeological excavation around North America has increased by order of magnitude due to the development and construction of legislated assessment of endangered historical materials. This policy has seen greater research grants pumped into agricultural organizations. A series of domesticates have been identified through radiocarbon dating. A typically domesticated plant from then was found among others to be one by the name, Squash [ Cucurbita pepo]. Other subsequent modified species include the sunflower [Helianthus annuusvar.macrocarpus], little barley [Hordeumpusillum], may grass [phalariscaroliniana] and maize [zea mays]. Above marked the first domesticated plants.

Smith and Yarnell [2009] identified the emergence of a term they called the "crop complex" in Eastern North America as more domestication came up. This term represented long experiments with different combinations of domesticated and wild foods to find the coherence in terms of the food supply. The evidence for this primarily came from the Riverstone site in Southeastern Illinois. These findings were marked by unusual conditions of preservation, large scale archaeological excavations around this area of interest. In the same area, a variety of chenopods (chenopodiumberlandieri) were found. With time, what seemed as the normal practice of hunting and gathering came to cease, and people advanced to domestication and agriculture. This domestication initially began within the broader context of increasing manipulation and management of wild species. It's a practice that spanned for a thousand years. The single domestication did not just begin all at ago. Through interaction with other societies in various localities, the practice disseminated bringing to its widespread. This is something we call its dispersal.

The same lens that has shifted agriculture from Southwest Asia has been moved in Eastern North America. The archaeological remains from sites like Riverton have also yielded evidence of utilization of a wide range of aquatic resources including fish, snails, bivalves. They even, on the other hand, found that animals such as the white-tailed deer, turkey, raccoon, rabbits and squirrels provided the terrestrial animal protein. Among these findings at the site were the nuts of hickory, walnut and oak. They reflected the minor importance of seeds of the wild. The transition from foraging to the farming of the Neolithic period is considered one of the most essential cultural processes in recent history.

Furthermore, this research through the works of Bruce and Smith (2005) elaborates the driving factors that led to the early domestication of animals as well as agriculture. These factors range from changes in the climate population growth, human developments cognitive-wise, increase in the social complexities and differentiation, the rise and role of ideology. The most that could be taken to devolve why this began would the climate changes. This is something that can as well be taken to refer to ozone layer depletion. This was a time when the industrial revolution was taking toll across America and Europe at large. These revolutions saw the immense need of human human resources though in most cases they sought to replace precisely that. Industrial revolutions can be said to have re-energized the agricultural growth. Just like in the Asian continent where new pieces of machinery were continually being invented combine harvesters, most scientific irrigation techniques, among other fertilizer distributing machines. North America also advanced tremendously in this quest. They came up with systems of improved farming techniques.

The human population was also becoming competitive concerning the wild. The number of animals in the game also was gradually becoming depleted as the weather patterns changed. There was a reward that came with the domestication of wild animals. The conceptual idea of running into the forest to gather wild fruits which were in most cases periodic to the changing seasons proved more robust than collecting these seeds likewise and planting them in the areas of their dwellings. The other benefits for the domestication were ranging from the provision of clothing from the animal skins and hides which offered protection against tropical diseases such as pneumonia, malaria, among others. The human species also benefited from the thein such provisions as the meat, butter and fat. The one that can mostly be attested to the weight behind domestication was the significant boast when these animals showed immense behaviour change in the way and manner these animals behaved. They behaved differently from their ancestral counterparts.

An ideology is conceptually a way of reasoning whose time has come. In the north America, George Washington came up with farm rehabilitation techniques that so far changed and shaped the agricultural growth forever. Washington's post-Revolutionary War rehabilitation of Mount Vernon progressed from repairing the physical improvements of his plantation to a reconsideration of his entire mode of farming. At the end of the war, there was a triggered interest among the American educated and wealthiest to form an association of planters that would soon reform the entire agricultural scope. Mount Vernon plantation that belonged George Washington made an excellent example to most farms up to England through to a significant agricultural pioneer Arthur Young.

Agricultural reforms by Boyles(2011) was not a simple reform, however, it recognized that experimentation was anathema to all but most forward-looking farmers. This way, we can begin analyzing the importance of agriculture. Instead of putting out straight like that, Washington believed that it was the responsibility of the wealthy farmers to undertake experimentation as failures would be inevitable, and losses would have to be absorbed while new techniques were perfected. The individual farms at Mount Vernon were reasonably well equipped for Tobacco culture. They were not more adequately prepared for the grain-based system being brought into play. Washington, therefore, set about constructing three major new barn complex, one to serve both the Ferry and French's farms, a second to be built at Dogue Run and the third at the River Farm.

Although agricultural activities occur in every state in the U.S, it is mainly concentrated in the Great Plains around the Rocky Mountains; in the Eastern part is a significant producer of corn, basically known as maize. It is also a region known for producing soybean due to the best soil around the mountain, and all-time favourable climatic conditions of the place have been known for ultimate right bearing. The U.S has led development in agricultural improvements such as hybridization and the expansion in the uses of crops. Mechanization of farming with an introduction to intensive agriculture have been themes in American Agricultural space. Inventions such John Deere's steel plough, Cyrus McCormick's mechanical reaper, and the widespread success of the Fordson tractor and the combine harvester have revolutionized agriculture not just in the United States but also globally.

Agriculture in most of these parts of Eastern North America changed the archaic lifestyles of the individual communities such as Ancestral Pueblo, Hohokam and Mogollon. These folks settled top a more sedentary system which was supported by food production. These groups used a variety of agricultural techniques, i.e. crops were grown on alluvium caught behind the check dams. They as well built low walls to catch the runoff whenever there were limited rains. They constructed hillside contour terraces that helped in the conservation of soil and water. These communities went on to invent irrigation techniques that saw coming up with bordered gardens. These were through the canal systems that saw the subsistence dependence on the farms and their immediate populations. In this way, the total agricultural set up came to a new face within these regions.

References

Boyles, Justin G., et al. "Economic importance of bats in agriculture." Science 332.6025 (2011): 41-42.

Sauer, Carl O. Agricultural origins and dispersals. The American Geographical Society, 1952.

Smith, Bruce D., and Mark Nesbitt. The emergence of agriculture. New York: Scientific American Library, 1995. Bellwood, Peter S. "First farmers: the origins of agricultural societies." (2005): 1-2.

Zeder, Melinda A. "Domestication and early agriculture in the Mediterranean Basin: Origins, diffusion, and impact." Proceedings of the national Academy of Sciences 105.33 (2008): 11597-11604.