WEEK 5 — SUBSISTENCE

Subsistence system

• The set of practices used by members of a society to acquire food

Carrying Capacity

• The number of calories that can be extracted from a unit of land to support a human population

Thomas Malthus

• Wrote against the prevailing Enlightenment belief in limitless progresses

• Believed that population growth would always stand in the way

• Population grows geometrically, whereas resources grow arithmetically, leading to to poverty and misery in the lowest classes, which checks the population

Ester Boserup

• Wrote against Malthusian pessimism

• Noted necessity is the mother of invention

• In times of pressure, people step up their game and find ways to increase production, usually switching to more labour-intensive alternatives

Diet of gathered plants

• Typically varied, nutrient dense, and includes aquatic plants

Diet of hunted foods

• Highly varied

Forager FOODWAYS

• Gathered plants

• Hunted foods

• Gathered foods usually provide most of the calories

Forager SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

• Live in small flexible bands

• Band organization lowers social density

• Men: hunt

• Women: gather

  • Some tasks are open to everyone

  • E.g. Hadza people

• Are egalitarian

Forager ENVIRONMENT

• Nomadic

• Some have seasonal base camps

  • E.g. Inuit peoples

• Bands have some rights over their home territory

• Land is so scarce that only a small percentage of people can still forage these days

Domestication of Plants and Animals

• Multiple strand theories take into account climate change, environment, population, technology, social organization, and diet

• Broadly spectrum foraging?

• Status competition?

Consequences of Domestication

• Property

• Landscape

• Population

• Diet

• Environment → if u salt land un-farmable

• Disease → malaria, stagnant pools of water, human and animal waste

• Labour → hard work

Horticultural FOODWAYS

• Sedentary

• Live in small villages and often continue to engage in foraging

• Plant small scale farms using hand tools

• E.g. Kaluli of Papua New Guinea

Horticultural SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

• Gendered division of labour, but it varies

  • E.g. Yanomami, Jivaro

• Are sedentary and often still forage

• There is often a levelling mechanism to prevent accumulation

Horticulturists ENVIRONMENT

Slash and burn cultivation → Soil is fertilized by ash → Land is left fallow (empty) → Conditions mimic controlled forest fires → Leads to erosion if not fallowed

Pastoralist FOODWAYS

• A way of life that revolves around herding

• More common in areas that do not support agriculture

• Animals provide milk, butter, yogurt, cheese, blood and sometimes meat

• They often trade with neighbouring groups

Pastoralists SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

• Nomadic

• Men & boys: Herding

• Women & girls: other tasks

• Families try to maintain sizeable herds

• E.g. Basseri of Southern Iran

Pastoralists ENVIRONMENT

• Transhumance is moving seasonally

• Grazing

• Try to use every part of the animal

Pessimism

• Tendency to see the worst aspect of things or believe that the worst will happen; lack of hope or confidence in the future

Egalitarian

• Equality of all people regardless of anything

Nomadic

• Lives by travelling place to place

Sedentary

• Lives in the same place of ground every year

Herding

• the act of bringing individual animals together into a group (herd), maintaining the group, and moving the group from place to place — or any combination of those

Transhumance

• Moving seasonally back and forth over long distances

Grazing

• Helps biodiversity of native plants when done responsibly

• Allowing animals to roam across land

Intensive Agricultural FOODWAYS

• Short fallow period

• Requires more preparation and maintenance but provides greater yields

• Independently invented 6 times

  • E.g. Aztecs

• Lower nutritional quality

• Depletes soil

• Sophisticated look

  • E.g. Tigris Mesopotamia

Intensive Agriculture SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

• Large populations result in more complex social, economic, and political systems

• Hierarchical occupational specialization

• Creation of nobility and peasantry

• Centralized government backed by political and religious authority

Intensive Agriculture ENVIRONMENT

• Large-scale — more about maximizing production than conserving resources

• Draught animals are used

• Rice, maize, wheat, barley, sorghum, and millet — common staples

• E.g. Different types of rice suit different ecologies, and the land may be terraced to meet irrigation needs

Industrial FOODWAYS

• Food is produced by mechanized industry

• The Industrial Revolution changed the way people worked

• Agriculture is dependent on technology and chemical inputs

• Monoculture is vulnerable to pests and depletes soil

  • E.g. Green Revolution in India

Industrial SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

• CAFOs

• Relies on the poorly paid labour of undocumented immigrants with few rights

• Most fresh produce travels almost 2500km before making it to the table

• Processed foods are cheap and plentiful but less nutritious

CAFOs

• Maximize profit and require antibiotic animal feed

Industrial ENVIRONMENT

• Pollution

• Manure lagoons

• Pesticides

Pollution

• Caused by animal waste and chemical inputs

Manure Lagoons

• Holding tanks release harmful gases and contaminate groundwater and waterways

Pesticide

• Exposure causes dizziness, headaches, nausea, skin, and eye problems in the short term

  • Labourers

  • Bystanders

Long-term pesticides

• Exposures causes respiratory issues, memory disorders, miscarriages, birth defects, and cancer