Eviroment, Agriculture and Society - CPSC 113

1/16: Lecture 1 - A Brief Review on the Complexities of Environment, Agriculture and Society

• Use natural resources not abuse them
• Society
  • Health, wealth/poverty, behavior, communities
• Nutrition, food security, food safety, climate change, and bioenergy

Coarse Goals

• Provide an intro to agriculture
• Focus on the development of critical thinking skills
• Most farmworkers are immigrants: 73%

Food Safety

1/18: Lecture 2 -

• The Scientific Method
• The Value of Science
• Critical Thinking

Scientist?

• Stereotypically a white man in a lab coat
• Female Scientist Noble Prize Winners
  • Elizabeth H. Blackburn, genetics
  • Barbara McClintock, genetics
  • May-Britt Moser, physiology
  • Dorothy Crowfoot, chemistry
  • Marie Curie, chemistry

Scientific Method

• Science isn’t simple, there are small details
• Benefits and outcomes are important in science
• Community feedback
• Science -> complex

Some Scientific Assumptions

• The world (our environment) is knowable
• Basis patterns that describe events in the mural world are uniform throughout time and space
• Where 2 equally plausible explanations for a phenomenon are possible, we should choose the simpler one
  • KISS : Keep It Simple Stupid
• Change in knowledge is inevitable because new evidence ,ay challenge prevailing theories.
• New facts can disprove existing theories, science can never provide absolute proof that a theory is correct
• Even if there is no way to secure complex and absolute truth
• Science can determine mechanisms of processes and t can help find practical solutions

Hypothesis testing

• In scientific research the hypothesis is always stayed in the null form
• The null hypothesis is accepted or rejected
• Formally H: mu - X = 0
• The control value= the values for the treatments

Dr. Carl Sagan’s “Baloney Detection Kit”

• How reliable are the sources of the claim?
• Have the claims been verified by other sources?
• What position does the majority of the scientific community hold in these issues?
• How does this claim fit with what we know about how the world works?
• Are the arguments balanced and logical?
• What do you know about the sources of funding for a particular position?
• Where was evidence for competing theories published?

Critical Thinking

• An ability to evaluate information and opinions in a systematic, purposeful, efficient manner
• Based on logic and reason, critical thinking brings context, empathy, history and values to bear in…
• Ten steps to Critical Thinking
  • What is the purpose of my thinking
  • What precise questions am I trying to answer?
  • Within what point of view am I thinking?
  • ..
  • ..
  • ..
  • What concepts or ideas are central to my thinking?
  • What conclusions am I coming to?
  • What assumptions am I making?
  • If I accept the conclusions, what are the implications?
  • What would the consequences be….
• Personal Attitudes to Think Critically
  • Skepticism and independence
  • Openmindedness and flexibility
  • Accuracy and orderliness
  • Persistence and relevance
  • Contextual sensitivity and empathy
  • Decisiveness and courage
  • Humility
• Apply Critical thinking
  • Identify and evaluate premises and conclusions in an argument
  • Acknowledge and clarify uncertainties vagueness, equivocations and contradictions
  • Distinguish between facts and values
  • ….

1/23: Lecture 3 - Early Earth Environment

• Early atmosphere was nitrogen, methane, and carbon dioxide
  • Early earth first warmed by high levels of CO2
  • The sun was weaker, but it was hotter
• Perhaps life was on comets, europa, and enceladus
  • “Building Blocks of life Found on Samples Collected from Asteroids”
    • Life from space?
• Nasa’s Kepler Project
• Anthropomorphize - to give a nonhuman thing a human form or human characteristics
  • Anthropocentric
  • 1.) regarding humans as the universe’s most important entity
  • 2.) seeing things in human terms, especially judging things according to human perceptions, values, and experiences
• The first life on earth lived of off sulfur
  • Sulphur reduction created energy consumption
• CO2 levels were higher in the past than today
  • It's very little today
• EVERYTHING IS LOOKED AT FROM A HUMAN PERSPECTIVE
• Methanogens secrete mathate (CH4) as well as CO2
  • Methane + CO2 created a powerful greenhouse effect
  • To much methagones creates a snowball ear
  • Gets colder then the methagons go down
  • Temperatures keep decreasing
  • Biology affects the earth again
• Many organisms live under antarctica
• Coal
  • Fossilized plant material preserved by burial in sediments and compacted and condensed by geological forces into carbon-rich fuel
• Life changs the earth - James Lovelock
• Gaia Hypothesis - the theory that living organisms and their inorganic surrounding have evolved together as a single living system that greatly affects the chemistry and conditions of earth’s surface
  • Gaia - Goddess of the Earth
• Dimethylsufide (DMS) may act as a governor for global climate
  • Natural source of sulphur
• What is considered evolutionary success?
• Anthropocene - declare dawn of human-influence age
  • Nuclear bombs?
  • Lunar Anthropocene

1/25: Lecture 4 - Animal Domestication

Fertile Crescent

• Animals were domesticated in this area
  • Sheep, pigs, cattle, goats

Domestication

• Adapting or taming of wild species of plants or animals to be used by humans
• Agriculture as an approach to meeting food need was a gradual process likely lasting thousands of years
• Domesticated animals are a great model for understanding genetics, adaptation to new environment etc
  • Are made to adapt for humans and cant survive in the wild

Study of Domesticated Organisms Crucial to Darwin’s Concept of Natural Resources

• Gets theory by watching what humans did

Auroch - Wild Cattle

• First appeared in europe around 25,000 years ago
• Forest animals
• Aurochs was one of Europe's most important mammal species
• Large organisms
• Magnalidians - they worshiped the aurochs

The Carta Marina

• A map that showed everything that was and you can to in the swedish peninsula
• Olaus writes about aurochs that were so strong and savage that with its horns it lifted a soldier from their horse and dash him to the ground

Cattle Domestications

• Some say cattle were domesticated about 10,000 years ago followed by sheep, goat, pigs and dogs
• There a theory that says they were domesticated for worship
• Cattles were domesticated in the near east then migrated with humans to Europe
  • it was easier to domesticate near eastern cattle than europeans cattle
  • At least 2 distinct domestication ever for Bos primigenius
    • Taurin and Zebu
    • Bos primigenius taurus
      • Angus, charolais, fighting bull, texas longhorn
    • Bos primigenius indicus
      • Boran, indo-brazilian …
  • Cattle became completely depended on humans
  • The genetic diversity mirrored the activities of humans

Domestication of Pigs

• Paintings and carvings of pigs have been found over 25,000 years ago
• Have been one of agriculture best income source and a good source of protein
• Relatives:
  • African Warthog
  • Barbarosa - SE Asia
  • Peccary
• Pigs were made in to statuettes in ancient Persia
• The pics spread across Asia, Europe and Africa
• Pigs like eating about anything so you can stay longer in one place while sheep and cattle like micing to get the best grass
• Dna data suggest
  • The time of divergence of the ancestors for the European and Chinese pigs is about 500,000 YBP
  • Pigs are domesticated more because its easier
  • European domestication was a direct consequence of the introduction of Near Eastern domestic pigs into Europe by early farmer
  • Domestication in middle east was different than in Europe
  • Once European wild boar were domesticated it worked better for European farmer
• Wild Hogs live mostly in the south; they are very feral

Chicken Domestication

• All come from Red Junglefowl - Gallus gallus murghi
• Chickens are different because human made rice and chickens come to take it so humans domesticated them
• Chickens were breed for eggs in milk until the 1900s
• Chickens were grown to grow fast

1/20: Lecture 5 - Plant Domestication

• More food = more people
  • larger population means larger intellectual population
  • Higher complex societies
• Daniel Webster “When tillage begins,other arts follow. The farmers, therefore, are the founders of human civilization.”
• All domestication happens at the same time
• Genetic Variation: not all plants are identical some break easter than other
• Domestication started out as an accident
  • Then they start selecting which ones they want to domesticate
• Instead of natural selection humans our selecting it, we override what happens in natural selections but natural selection still happens 24/7

Wheat Domestication

• 2 wild wheat collected to eat and in the process humans put them together so it creates another type
• They cross together and then humans select and make it better
• It happened until humans made bread wheat
• Wild wheat species break easily and because it has a smooth end it drops into the soil and dispurses
• The domesticated ones have a coarse end so it doesn't dig into the groups since humans want plants to stay in one place
• Sorghum contains sugar, used for fuel (?)
• Domestication in wheat led to changed in grain size, shape, and etc

Egyptian Tomb Paintings

• Chopping trees, cultivation land, along the Nile Delta agriculture
• Let the Nile flood and then put the plant seeds and let animals walk on it

Beer Archeology

• Alcohol is easier to make than bread
• Alcohol came from fruits rotting on the ground
  • Humans had it and it made them feel good so they started making it themselves
• They drank alcohol for “hydration” since it was safer than drinking most waters (waters has bacteria and etc)
• Some theories say that people were in an unaltered state of mind which is why they thought of cave drawing, art, medicine, and wtc.
• Egyptians had medicinal wine 5,100 years ago, healed mind and body

Corn Domestications

• Corn is man's earliest inventions
• Aztects made human sacrifices to the corn god
• Pellagra is a disease from a lack of nutrition when europeans used corn for everything it was created
• Diversity is important since different kinds of corn are used for different usages
• First Domestication - Popping
  • Pop-corn
  • Movie theaters didn't sell popcorn until the depression, they has popcorn venders in front
  • Caverns in Mexico were good place for corn
    • They used sand to pop the corn so that it wasn't hard
• Bat cave, New Mexico
  • Found many variation in kernel size in the caves
• Mexico is where the first Maize (CORN) was developed

Maya Civilization

• About 250 - 900 AD
• Forest Gardens are complex
  • The forest hardens were around their houses
    • Polyculture (restrictions cuz they cant make much)
      • Lets environment stay stable
• Around 900 AD the population was 500 people per square mile and more than 2000 people per square mile in the cities
• They start growing corn/maize since they needed a lot of food because of population increase
  • Had to burn down forests for the fields
• Started having malnutrition that was show in the mayan bones
• DON'T wanna burn down tropical rainforest the soil doesn't sustain it self
• Water was very important to the Maaya because of the geology of the land, depended on rainfall for survival
• Yocunte was the Mayans water supply
  • As population grew Yocunute weren't enough
  • SO the constructed Chultuns (cisterns)
• Maya civilization suffered through 100 years of low rainfall
  • 3-9 years with little to no rainfall
• Roman Waring/ Medieval Warming
  • Earth is wetter due to increase water in the atmosphere
• Vandal Minimum/Little ice age
  • Droughts are worse and more frequent
• Maya turned to religion as a defense against drought
  • Maya tradition, caves and cenotes are also home of chac, the maya god of rain, and the entrance to Xibalba, the Underworld
  • Sacrifice artifacts, animals, and humans
  • Back fires cuz their water gets polluted
    • Built water filters
• Theories for the Collapse of Maya Civilization: (1) Peasant revolt (2)

There's a people that are collecting a lot of seeds of plants just in case some comes up they want to have a “seed bank”

2/1: Lecture 5 - Native American Agriculture

Native American Plan use Timelines

• 10-8k years ago picking sunflower but not cultivating it
• 8-5k years ago found squash
• 5-3k years ago grew sumpweed

Plant Cultivated by Native Americans

• Sumpweed Maeshelder
  • 32% protein and 45% oil
  • Strong odor and skin irritant
  • By the time Europeansa colonizing sumpweed disappeared

1,000 AD - COmplex Agricultural System Based on 3 Major Crops

• First crop was Cucurbits - Squash and Pumpkins
• Beans
  • Common Bean - Phaseolus 5000 BC
• Maize (CORN)
• Excellent Cultivating Combination
  • First grow corn
  • Then put beans on the hill
    • twined around the corn
  • Then put the squash on the floor
    • It keeps ground from being dry and keeps weeds from growing

Nitrogen

• Organisms need it to make amino acids, proteins, nucleic acids and other essential organic compounds
  • Cannot be used by higher Organisms until it is changed

Nitrogen cycle

• Nitrogen fixing bacteria fix N2 into ammonia
• ….

Plants have Leghemoglobin

• Sends oxygen around
• How they make plant based meat taste like meat

Amino Acids

• Used for Protein synthesis
• Twenty Total
  • Human can synthesize 11 in their body
  • 9 amino acids must come from the diet and these are referred to as Essential Amino Acids
• Believed land was a gift to each generation
• Land tenure
  • Native americans believed land should be owned by the village not just one person
  • They migrated together as a community once they ran out of resources
  • All village member could use communal lands not under cultivation for hunting, fishing, berry picking, gathering wood etc
  • They used woodland to get protein from animals
    • Domesticated animals only replaced woodland animals starting the 19th century
  • The kand system was used to survive through many things
  • This system resulted in equal share of the land
    • Prevented land hoarding for wealth and status

2/6: Lecture 6 - Early American Agriculture

• Europeans come over thinking wilderness = scary unknown
  • “Environment of evil” wilderness & the american mind

Colonial Philosophy

• Farming is used to create a surplus to be sold at a profit
• Land is owned by individuals
• Land is a valued commodity that is bought ans sold to create profit
• Land not being farmed is wasted land and therefore native americans do not have legitimate title
• Civilized people are farmers
• European-deprived agricultural methods, cropping and raising stock
  • Wilderness = waste of land

Economic Factor

• The Europeans thought that native american farming resulted in inadequate and improper use of land, a waste of time

^^ These attitudes resulted in justification im the change in ownership from Native Americans to the colonist

Europeans Dealing with Native Americans

• Native Americans no real centralized government – Europeans tended to refer to Native Americans sharing similar cultures as tribes
• A few tribe representatives were easier to deal with than many representatives of small villages etc.
• Spanish governments recognized Native Americans land rights and dealt with them accordingly
• French never recognized the right of Native American titles. They claimed right if possession by force
• Dutch recognized native american rights
• British looked away as colonist took NA land

Agrarianism

• The belief that farmers feed everyone; they're the backbone of our society
• Thomas Jefferson Agrarianism
  • Country people are morally virtuous and superior to city dwellers
  • Ownership of land was a natural right and ade the small scale farmers the bastions of freedom and independence, the vanguard of American democracy
  • All Wealth and virtue derived from the land and family farmers
• Thanksgiving
  • Sarah Josepha Hale describes thanksgiving in a novel
    • Novel published in Boston in 1827
    • Show how well you're doing
    • Show how a man is taking care of his family
    • Have a roasted turkey
    • Sarah gives credit for the “first American Thanksgiving” to the settlers of Massachusetts Bay and not the Pilgrims
• American Agrarian Tradition = Myth

**American Farmers moved quickly from subsistence farming to commercial farming.

Philosophy of the 1800 election

• The founding fathers didn't know what they wanted the government to be
• “The future of the nation lay in its abundance of natural resources”
• Because of all the natural resources if we keep it all together and distributing it to everyone we can live in harmony

Cotton production

• Critical to the Developing United States
• First cotton grown in the US -> Coastal COtton
  • Imported from the West indies and grown in the coastal areas
  • Produces long stone fiber that are easily separated from the seeds
  • Low yielding
  • Can only be grown along south carolina and Georgia (?)
• Upland Cotton
  • Originated in Mexico
  • High Yielding
  • Adapted to wide range of environments can be grown throughout the US
  • Especially adapted to the rich solid of delta regions
• Eli Whitney - Cotton Gin (1794)
  • Before a slave could clean 1 pound of cotton lint a day
  • After 1 slave could clean 50 pounds of lint a day. The economics were now very favorable for cotton production
  • Cotton production soon spreads across the South
  • Spread slavery after cotton gin
    • Before people don't believe slavery was useful
    • After slavery was seen as moral and useful

**As agriculture grows it gets more labor intensive

Evolution of American Agriculture

Rapid growth in technology

• Midwest the plow made all the difference
• The shiny, self-polishing steel shat did not adhere to the sticky, gumbo soil of the Midwest like the cast iron shares did! This new tool revolutionized farming
• JOHN LANE invented the first steel breaking plow
• JOHN DEERE perfected the steel plow
  • Up until deere people went to a black smith to get a plow
  • He started to produce it , i
  • Prairie lands that were difficult to clear could be quickly put into agricultural production

Agricultural Tools in Early America

• Scythe
• Sickle
• cradle

Animal Power & Improved Technology

Mechanization

• Number of horses go down and number of tractors go up
• Because of mechanization wheat production didn't need as much labors; # of farms went down and # of workers went down

**Farm Production went up in the 1940

Why American Agriculture Changed

• In 1970s Richard Nixon was facing re-election
• He started corn fuels so that he gets more voters
• He starts planning to make more corn
  • Everything from cereal, to biscuits and flour used corn

2/8: Lecture 6 -