One of the things I've been trying to pin down is the relationship between food productivity and civilization. I've been reading around the subject a lot an I feel that there is a strong relationship but it's hard to actually quantify.
Ancient Rome had the advantage of fertile, easy to work soils and their food productivity was good for the times. Aqueducts to provide irrigation, crop rotation and water mills all added to the Roman productivity. As they expanded they captured slaves who became the main workers of the farms but when that expansion came to a stop they could not maintain a slave workforce large enough to feed the empire and had to motivate workers to tend the land with freedom and improved conditions. Food prices increased, the economy failed, there was no money to pay the army and Rome fell, a process that took centuries to eventuate but at its heart food productivity and inflation caused by devaluing the coinage were factors in the fall. While this is a gross simplification of the fall or the Roman Empire, I do believe there is a relationship between the food productivity and the civilisation it was able to support.
In the subsequent middle ages in medieval Europe Mediterranean farming practices inherited from the fallen empire yielded poor results in the heavier wetter soil of northern Europe. Food productivity was low and the feudal system was the resultant civilisation, where each manor, castle or ward fed itself and there was none left over to trade. Travel was limited, wealth was mostly measured in livestock and land and the institution of serfdom arose.
In the late middle ages improvements in ploughs and the breeding of large draft horses (as a side effect of breeding large warhorses) that could pull the new heavy ploughs led to increased food productivity. This increase in productivity was also helped by the medieval warm period (900-1300) which was a largely European phenomenon not global warming and was not as warm as the last fifty years have been.
Surplus food led to towns with markets where the surplus could be traded and the rise of trade and monetary wealth. Towns promoted trade and brought the benefits of technological advancements from other parts of the world to Europe. From this grew the seeds of the Renaissance period. Could the Renaissance have happened without the improvements in productivity that created surplus food so that a class of artisans and inventors could live and work in the expanding towns and cities? Probably not but improvements in food productivity alone was unlikely to be the only factor leading to the Renaissance. It may have been one of the important enablers though.
This is the thread of logic and events that I am pursuing to try and pin down the relationship that I feel is there. Most of my research so far has been centered around Europe. I want to also look at Asia and the Americas and the relationship that civilisation has with food productivity in those cultures as well. That will be a blog for another day.
A.I. Marin.
References:
Ferguson, W.K. (1962). Europe in Transition 1300-1520. London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd
Heaton, H. (1948). Economic History of Europe, Revised Edition. New York. Harper & Brothers.
Christ, K. (1984). The Romans. Berkeley. University of California Press.
Butler, C. (2007) Agricultural Revolution in Medieval Europe. At http://www.flowofhistory.com/units/west/10/FC63
Diaz, Henry F.; Hughes, M. (1994). The Medieval warm period. Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers.
Bradley, R.S. (2003). Climate of the Last Millennium. Climate System Research Center.
Backer, P. Part 1 – Medieval European history. History of Technology. San Jose State University. Retrieved 24 April 2013.
Newman, Paul B. (2001). Daily Life in the Middle Ages. McFarland. pp. 88–89.
Janick, Jules (2008). Islamic Influences on Western Agriculture. Purdue University.
Bartlett, B. (2005). How Excessive Government Killed Ancient Rome.
