Progress Report

Having reached the halfway point of the term, I thought it'd be nice to take a step back and have a look at what we've covered here so far. 

The objective that I set out at the beginning of this blogging experience was to examine the environmental impacts of global food production through time. To do this, it was first necessary to understand the origins of agriculture (e.g. Bar Yosef, 1998; Price & Bar Yosef, 2011; Zeder, 2011)  and the environmental impacts associated with the Neolithic Revolution (e.g. Zeder, 2008; Zhou et al., 2011). We are now going to fast-forward several millennia to quickly examine the environmental impacts of the industrial revolution with respect to agriculture. After that, the remainder of the posts will deal with what has been referred to as the Great Acceleration of the Anthropocene (Steffen et al., 2007). We will examine how agricultural production has boomed over the past century to meet the needs of a rapidly growing global population and how this expansion has altered the environment.

During our very first lecture in Global Environmental Change, Professor Mackay showed us a Wordle he had made on the Internationalisation of Science and Technology. For those of you who are unfamiliar with Wordles, they work by assigning different sizes to words from a certain text to denote their importance. Larger words are those that showed up repeatedly throughout the text, while smaller words were those that didn't show up as much. I created the above Wordle using the entirety of the text in Picnics Past and Present to date. The words that showed up the most were food, agriculture, environmental, and diet. 

To evaluate the progress of this blog's content and how it's keeping in line with these objectives, I'll repeat the same exercise in the new year. I'm very interested to see how the picture will change!

I'll be back as promised to introduce the industrial revolution in terms of global food production. Thanks for reading, and have a lovely weekend!

The Paleolithic Diet

A short aside from the origins of agriculture... have you ever heard of the palaeolithic diet, more commonly referred to as the paleo diet?

Photo taken from the BHAC website

The diet was founded by Dr. Loren Cordain of the Colorado State University, and is based on the notion that the most beneficial eating habits for human health are the ones that we are genetically adapted to (i.e. the diet of the hunter gatherer). The diet is supposedly associated with a wide range of health benefits from weight control to the reversal of autoimmune disease (Österdahl et al., 2007; Cordain et al., 2005; Frassetto et al., 2009)

So, what can you eat on the paleo diet? In short, modern foods that replicate what our hunter-gatherer ancestors used to eat. The diet is centred around these following food characteristics:

• Higher protein
• Low carbohydrate and glycemic index
• High fibre
• Moderate to high polyunsaturated fats with Omegas 3 and 6
• High potassium, low sodium
• Alkaline
• High vitamin, mineral, antioxidant, and phytochemical content

For example, the paleo diet allows you to eat food items such as grass-produced meats, fish and seafood, fresh fruits and vegetables, eggs, nuts and seeds, and oils such as olive, flaxseed, and avocado. A "paleo-friendly" meal could be this lemongrass chicken curry.

If this post has piqued your interest and you'd like to learn more about the paleo diet, check out PaleoHacks' post on the top 25 paleo blogs. Although I do think that consuming more foods rich in vitamins, antioxidants, fibre, etc. is important for overall health, I think I'll be sticking to a more modern diet for the time being. The paleo diet also brings up some environmental questions - for example, if the globe's population increased their intake in protein from animal sources, what would be the consequences in terms of global emissions?  

What are your thoughts on the paleo diet?

Environmental Impacts of the Rise of Agriculture

An event as important as the Neolithic Revolution (Bar Yosef, 1998) is one that most certainly leaves a mark. This mark can still be seen today, as the food system many modern human populations rely on continues to revolve around agriculture. The event has been so pivotal, progressivists argue, that it has allowed early human populations to spend less time hunting and gathering, and more time innovating (Diamond, 1987). Were it not for the Neolithic Revolution, would I still be blogging here today? 

An event so monumental for human populations must also have had impacts on the surrounding biotic communities. Zeder (2008) examined the environmental impacts of Neolithic economies in the Mediterranean Basin, which were most important in the large islands of the region. In these locations, domesticated and wild mainland fauna replaced endemic fauna. In Cyprus, for instance, only five endemic species existed before the arrival of humans, namely the pigmy hippopotamus, the pygmy elephant, the genet, and a mouse (Smithsonian Institution, 2013), all of which are now extinct. Zeder (2008) argues that despite the role of humans in the extirpation of endemic island fauna still being unclear due to a lack of definitive evidence, the progressive east-to-west disappearance of these mammals occurring around the time of human colonisation suggests that humans did play a significant role.

Pygmy hippopotamus skull ca. 10,000–8,500 BCE from Aetokremmos
(Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History)

The environmental impacts of the rise of agriculture have also been studied in the other major centres of domestication. Zhou et al., (2011), for example, have shown that an agricultural transition occurred in the Longdong area of China during the Neolithic period. This transition was marked by a shift in early agriculture from producing common millet exclusively to producing other grains including foxtail millet, rice, and soybeans in addition to the common millet. Agricultural civilisations grew rapidly during this period and this expansion altered the Longdong basin ecosystem. Pollen analysis revealed that the predominant effects of the intensification of agriculture in the region were the degradation and simplification of local shrub-grasslands and the expansion of Graminaceae farmlands. Following the abandonment of settlements and agriculture in this location, the ecosystem recovered.

The studies described above are only two of the many examples of the environmental impacts of early agriculture. They highlight that even the earliest agricultural civilisations managed to alter the natural environment, just as we do today albeit at a much larger scale. 

A Field Trip, and Gardens in the City

Dear readers, today I'm going to tell you about a little field trip I went on recently with my friend Elena. We visited Camley Street Natural Park this week, a natural gem right in the heart of King's Cross!

Personally, living in London has been a bit... hectic for me. As a Canadian who's lived in Ottawa, Ontario, for most of her life, I've spent a lot of time surrounded by nature. Taking a break from the city is something I've come to take for granted, from heading up to Gatineau Park just over the Quebec border for a relaxing afternoon to spending weeks in the Laurentians. So naturally, I've been feeling a bit wildlife-depleted since moving here in September. 

Seeking to get my fill of nature, I came across the London Wildlife Trust and their Wildlife on your Waterways project for Central London. The project is based at Camley Street Natural Park, just behind King's Cross on Regent's Canal, and its goal is to protect wildlife along the city's waterways. Elena and I had our first volunteering induction session this week, and we had the opportunity to visit and learn about this fascinating nature reserve. It was a great success, and I'm happy to report that spending a morning at Camley Street Natural Park really does feel like leaving the big city. What's more is that inside the park I found something that is relevant to this blog: food!

Camley Street Natural Park is located on the site of an old coal yard and was created in 1984. The park, vastly changed from what it used to look like before its inception, now has pond, meadow, and woodland habitats. Walking through the park you can admire a wide variety of animals and plants, both native and non-native. The park is extremely popular, and is largely used as an educational site for children. I was very surprised to learn that this site is the first point of contact with nature for many children living in the urban core.

The main goal of the park being the protection of wildlife, I was happily surprised to learn that due to the growing popularity of the site and an increased demand for urban gardens, agricultural activities are now taking place here as well. As you can see in the photo below, the grounds are now also being used for growing food in the community. Gardens are interspersed around the site on raised beds due to the fact that the soil is contaminated from the industrial activities that used to occur here. The use of raised beds prevents the possibility of contaminants, such as heavy metals, of entering the food being grown.

What I found even more impressive is that the site is also home to a floating garden on the canal (photographed below). In previous posts on this blog, we covered topics such as food waste, where food comes from, and how agriculture came to be. I think this little bit of urban garden fits perfectly in this story - it shows us that even in a city as big as London, food can still be grown in a sustainable way that supports the community and the local environment. The site is also an excellent example of environmental change through time: what was once an abandoned contaminated site is now, as you can see, teeming with life.

What are the benefits of urban gardens such as these, you may ask? Studies have shown that the presence of these urban gardens has positive health and environmental impacts, including improved access to food, nutrition, and physical activity, as well as conservation benefits. Wakefield et al. and Goddard et al. respectively discuss these positive impacts in detail.

As I mentioned before, a big part of the project is the conservation of biological diversity along London's waterways. Why not head over to Elena's blog, Invasive Species Are Among Us, to find out about what we learnt on invasive species within the park? Her new post, entitled Invasives of Camley Street Nature Park, is a great read.

I'm leaving you with a video created by Greengage Films and Environment Films on a typical day in the life of Camley Street Natural Park. Follow the link on the photo below to access the video on Vimeo. Thanks for reading, and have a great Sunday!

The Origins of Agriculture, Part 2

Agriculture appeared globally across the continents during the Holocene, with major centres located in Southwest Asia, East Asia, sub-Saharan Africa, Central America, South America, and North America (Price& Feinman, 2005). Some of the most ancient plant domesticates include wheat and barley in Southwest Asia, millet and rice in East Asia, squash and maize in Central America, and arrowroot in South America (recall the map from part 1). Early animal domesticates include dogs, goats, cattle, and pigs in Southwest Asia (Zeder,2011), dogs being the earliest domesticates. 

The earliest beginnings of agriculture are seen in the Fertile Crescent, a crescent-shaped zone of relatively fertile land (as the name clearly suggests). The region has high agricultural productivity, and is thought to have been even more productive in the past when the climate was more moderate than today (Encyclopaedia Britannica, 2013).

The Fertile Crescent (Encyclopaedia Britannica, 2013)

More specifically, the Levant region, home to the Natufian people, has been extensively studied as the birthplace of agriculture. This region, which borders the Mediterranean Sea, possesses diverse landscapes and a distinct seasonality pattern, the amount of rainfall dictating vegetation patterns. The Levant's Mediterranean vegetation zone was biologically the richest, with large amounts of edible fruits, seeds, leaves, and tubers, as well as fauna including gazelle, wild cattle, roe deer, and wild boar. Around 13,000 years BP, the region experienced climatic improvements, and it is around this time that the Natufian civilisation emerged. A couple millennia later, environmental deterioration occurred due to the Younger Dryas climate crisis (11,000 years BP), and it is in the thousand years following this event that we see the earliest plant and animal domesticates in the region (Bar Yosef, 1998). 

Map of the Near East indicating the territories of the early Natufian homeland, the expansion of the late Natufian culture, and the area of the Harifian culture (Bar Yosef, 1998)

As we saw in part 1 of this post, the cause for the origination of agriculture is still hotly debated among archaeologists, climate scientists, anthropologists and the like. This is where I'll conclude this introduction on the early beginnings of agriculture. Keeping in line with this blog’s intent, I’ll be back to discuss the environmental impacts of the onset of agriculture in the Fertile Crescent. 

The Origins of Agriculture, Part 1

Wheat (source: Wikipedia)

The rise of crops and agriculture marks a major turning point in the story of human subsistence. The transition from a hunter-gatherer lifestyle to one where agriculture dominates has fundamentally changed humankind's relationship with its environment and has resulted in significant modifications to the structure and organisation of human populations (Price & Feinman, 2005). But how did it all begin?

Several hypotheses have been brought forward to explain the reason for the origination of agriculture, many of which have been outlined in Current Anthropology's Wenner-Gren Symposium Series (Price & Bar Yosef, 2011). These include the oasis hypothesis (Childe, 1936), the hilly flanks hypothesis (Braidwood, 1960), the population-pressure hypothesis (Binford, 1968), the edge hypothesis (Cohen, 1977), and the social hypothesis (Price & Bar-Yosef, 2010). 

The oasis hypothesis suggests that domestication occurred at oases at the end of the Pleistocene due to increased climatic aridity following deglaciation, while the hilly flanks hypothesis suggests that the earliest domesticated species appear in the original habitats of their wild predecessors. The population-pressure hypothesis, on the other hand, suggests that the imbalance between humans and their food supply created a necessity for agriculture, and expanding on this theory, the edge hypothesis adds that this population pressure was felt most harshly at the edge or boundaries of the habitats of the ancestors of domesticated species. The social hypothesis explores the idea that domestication resulted in social inequality, allowing certain populations to possess a surplus of food. More recently, evolutionary ecological approaches have been used to attempt an explanation for the origins of agriculture, which employ the biological theory of optimal foraging. Greenland ice cores have also been used to formulate hypotheses on the subject, where increases in carbon dioxide levels following the end of the Pleistocene are argued to have favoured agriculture in the Holocene (Bettinger et al., 2010). 

However, the cause of the origination of agriculture is still unclear today, and no single theory can explain why it has occurred. Further research will be necessary to better understand the origins of the global phenomenon that has revolutionised sustenance for human populations.

In the next part of this post, we will continue to examine the origins of agriculture, looking at some of the major centres of agriculture in the Holocene. Until then, I'm leaving you with a map of these centres displaying the earliest domesticated plants and animals, the most ancient including our modern-day staples of wheat and barley appearing in the Fertile Crescent some 10,000 years BP.

Major centres of domestication and dates for earliest plants and animals (Price & Bar-Yosef, 2011)