Perspective | March 26, 2024
How Food and Farming Will Determine the Fate of Planet Earth
by Jonathan Foley, Ph.D.
Agriculture has disrupted the planet more than anything we have ever done, including burning fossil fuels. A sustainable future depends on recognizing this fact – and radically changing how we farm and eat.
More than any other invention in human history, agriculture has radically transformed civilization and our relationship with the natural world.
How did this happen?
Early humans didn’t farm to get food; they were hunter-gatherers living off whatever they could find around them. Often, this was a harsh existence, with rampant starvation, malnutrition, and short life expectancies. But then, from meager beginnings roughly 12,000 years ago, early forms of agriculture appeared around the world – most notably in Mesopotamia (an ancient region that surrounded the Tigris and Euphrates rivers), India, and China. Over the coming millennia, farming slowly spread, transforming landscapes, ecosystems, economies, and cultures.
For most of history, people boosted their food production mainly by using more land. More farmland meant more food. By the twentieth century, people had cleared massive areas of farmland worldwide to meet the rising food demands of fast-growing communities, forming the extensive “breadbasket” regions we know today.
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