Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
varieties has played an equally important role in the history of the com-
modities examined here.
Given the contemporary debates over bioprospecting in the tropics,
understanding how different actors valued crop plant germplasm (e.g.,
seeds) in the past is an important, if largely unexamined question. War-
ren Dean's environmental historyof rubberdemonstrates the tremendous
strategic value that both Brazilians and Britains placed on controlling
Heveabrasiliense,buttheintrigue-filledhistoryofrubbermaybemorethe
exception than the rule. Brazilian nationalists apparently did not protest
the removal of mutant navel orange and Cavendish banana cultivars that
subsequently generated profits for U.S. agribusinesses in California and
Central America. Also, Stuart McCook found that nineteenth-century
Asian and Caribbean growers freely exchanged sugar cane varieties. My
research on bananas is somewhat less conclusive: varieties seem to have
circulated freely in the early twentieth century when both British and
United Fruit-sponsored collectors in Asia and the Pacific acquired Musa
specimens via purchase, barter, and as gifts. However, by the 1960s, ex-
changes between British breeders and their United Fruit counterparts
seem to have diminished. Interestingly, the dynamism of the plants them-
selves have complicated attempts to establish propietary rights: in all
of the industries considered here, important commercial varieties have
arisen from field mutations. The role played by Latin American states,
growers' associations, and scientific institutions in promoting and/or
regulating the movement of plant material is another important topic in
need of additional study. 68
Monovarietal production systems created problems for farmers be-
yond pathogens and herbivores. Because continuous cropping depleted
soil of nutrients, farmers had to invest additional capital, labor, or both
over time in order to maintain or increase yields. Banana and sugar pro-
ducersinCentralAmericaandCubarespondedtothisproblembyshifting
production in order to capture rents from forested soils. In some parts
of nineteenth-century Brazil, coffee growers remedied falling yields by
ordering their laborers (slave and otherwise) to clear forested hillsides.
However, in coffee zones dominated by smallholders, abandoning lands
wasnotalwaysaviableoption.Furthermore,thelengthydelay—uptofive
years—between planting coffee and reaping large harvests may have dis-
couraged shifting production. Similarly, the large investments required to
establish orchards and vineyards in California, along with a dependency
onirrigation,discouragedtheshiftingofproductionlocations.However,
generalizations about yields and the productive life spans of farms are ex-
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