Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
neo-colonial luxury which cannot be afforded by the majority of the inhabitants of the third
world, because they do not have enough land, water or biomass to go around. The only im-
mediate prospect of redressing such inequity is to promote large-scale migration of Chinese
and South Asian peasants to the less congested farmlands of North America, Australasia
and Europe, where they could take up the niche currently occupied by a superfluity of live-
stock - a scenario which advocates of globalization and the free market ought to be totally
in favour of.
A more tempered approach will be to increase research and experimentation into organic
agriculture in both the north and in the south, in the hope that the third world, in contrast
to Europe, will undergo its biological 'agricultural revolution' after having undergone its
chemical 'green revolution', since it failed to do so before. The world is waiting for an or-
ganic answer to Justus von Liebig, Fritz Haber and Carl Bosch.
1 The Ecologist (1976), 'Must an Ecological Society be a Vegetarian One', The Ecologist , Vol 6:10, Dceember 1976.
2 Ernle, Lord (1912), English Farming Past and Present , Longmans.
3 Ibid.
4 USDA (1998), 'Record US Wheat Yields, Large Stocks Pressure Prices', Agricultural Outlook , Economic Research
Service, USDA, August 1998, http://www.ers.usda.gov/publications/agoutlook/aug1998/ao253b.pdf
5 Postan, M (1975), The Medieval Economy and Society , Pelican, p 65.
6 Beckett, J V (1990), The Agricultural Revolution , Blackwell. A similar phenomenon may have taken place in the
early years of the 20th century in the United States, when corn harvests reliant upon the inherited fertility of virgin grass-
lands began to decline - the Oklahoma dustbowl being the most graphic example. According to Colin Tudge 'US cereal
production waned somewhat in the 1920s and 30s until more livestock were introduced'. Tudge, C (2003), So Shall We
Reap , Penguin Allen Lane.
7 Ernle (1912), op cit .
8 It has been argued that in some situations phosphorus was the limiting factor, a matter dealt with shortly, see New-
man op cit. 13.
9 Allen, R (2008), 'The Nitrogen Hypothesis and the English Agricultural Revolution: A Biological Analysis', The
Journal of Economic History , Vol 68, No 1, 2008. Allen says 1 to 3 per cent, but for convenience here I call it 2 per cent.
10 Allen (2008), ibid . See also Chorley, G P H (1981), 'The Agricultural Revolution in Northern Europe, 1750-1880:
Nitrogen, Legumes and Crop Productivity', Economic History Review , Vol 34 pt 1 pp 71-93; and Clark, G, 'The Econom-
ics of Exhaustion: The Postan Thesis and the Agricultural Revolution', Journal of Economic History , Vol 52 Pt 1, 1992.
11 Marx, K (1894), Das Kapital , Volume 3, 'The Transformation of Profit into Ground Rent'.
12 Cited in Girardet, H (2000), Cities, People, Planet , Liverpool Schumacher lectures, April 2000. See also Foster, J
B and Magdoff, D (1998), 'Liebig, Marx and the Depletion of Soil Ferility', Monthly Review , 1 July 1998.
13 Newman, E J (1997), 'Phosphorus Balance of Contrasting Farming Systems, Past and Present. Can Food be Sus-
tainable', Journal of Applied Ecology , 34, pp 1334-7, 1997.
14 Harvey, Graham (2002), The Forgiveness of Nature , Vintage, p 179.
15 Caird, James (1967) English Agriculture in 1850-51 , 2nd edition, Kelley, NY, p 206; cited in Harvey, ibid.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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