Title: A history of world agriculture : from the neolithic age to the current crisis /
Authors: Mazoyer, Marcel, 1933-; Roudart, Laurence.
Publisher: Monthly Review Press,
Year: 2006
Subjects: Agriculture history; Agriculture History
Abstract: "Only once we understand the long history of human efforts to draw sustenance from the land can we grasp the nature of the crisis that faces humankind today, as hundreds of millions of people are faced with famine or flight from the land. From Neolithic times through the earliest civilizations of the ancient near East, in savannahs, river valleys and the terraces created by the Incas in the Andean mountains, an increasing range of agricultural techniques have developed in response to very different conditions. These developments are recounted in this book, with detailed attention to the ways in which plants, animals, soil, climate, and society have interacted."--Publisher's website.
Contents: Evolution, agriculture, history -- Neolithic agricultural revolution -- Systems of slash-and-burn agriculture in forest environments -- Evolution of hydraulic agrarian systems in the Nile valley -- Inca agrarian system -- Agrarian systems based on fallowing and animal-drawn cultivation with the ard in the temperate regions -- Agrarian systems based on fallowing and animal-drawn cultivation with the plow in the cold temperate regions -- Agrarian systems without fallowing in the temperate regions -- Mechanization of animal-drawn cultivation and the transportation revolution -- Second agricultural revolution of modern times -- Agrarian crisis and general crisis.