Agriculture, Preindustrial

Throughout much of the world today, and throughout the bulk of human history (indeed, dating back to the Neolithic Revolution 8,000–10,000 years ago), societies fed themselves through an assortment of preindustrial agricultural systems. Preindustrial or nonindustrial agricultural systems differ from industrialized ones in a variety of respects. Perhaps most important, preindustrial systems do not use the inanimate sources of energy that are vital to industrialized agricultural systems (e.g., fossil fuels) and, therefore, are markedly less energy intensive in nature. Rather, work in preindustrial farming systems is accomplished entirely through human or animal labor power. Thus, these types of farming are much more labor intensive. In societies fed predominantly through preindustrial agriculture, the vast bulk of people are engaged as farmers or peasants. Second, because many preindustrial societies are not fully commodified (i.e., capitalist social relations have not come to dominate every aspect of production), preindustrial agricultural systems are generally organized around production for subsistence rather than production for profit. In other words, food is grown mostly for local consumption rather than for sale on a market.

[Page 5]Preindustrial agricultural systems played an enormous role in history, including the variety of slave-based and feudal social systems that unfolded across much of the world. For example, Roman latifundia—large estates worked by slaves—formed the backbone of agricultural production during the empire. The expansion of medieval agriculture into the dense soils of Northern Europe was made possible by the introduction of the heavy plow and, later, the three-field system. The manorial system that formed the social and economic basis of feudal Europe involved peasants and serfs who rented land from large land owners, paying rent with a fraction of their output. Variations of peasant-based production continue to be important in many contexts.

Today, there is a great diversity of types of preindustrial agricultural systems throughout the world, with large variations in the types of crops grown, the methods used, their productivity, and their relative vulnerabilities to drought or other hazards. Although Nomadic herding is not technically a form of agriculture, many observers classify it in this category; however, it involves only the domestication of animals, not crops. Typically, nomadic herders measure their wealth in terms of livestock (generally cattle, goats, or reindeer) and often follow their herds in annual migratory cycles such as transhumance, the movement between summer pastures in higher elevations and winter pastures in lower ones. Nomadic herding has been slowly vanishing throughout the world over the past two centuries, but contemporary examples include the Masai of East Africa, the Mongols of Mongolia and northern China, the Tuareg of northern Africa, and the Lapps of northern Finland.

The best-known example of preindustrial agriculture is slash-and-burn, also known as swidden or shifting cultivation. This form is found only in tropical areas such as parts of Central America, the Amazon rain forest, West and Central Africa, and Southeast Asia, to which it is ideally suited. Roughly 50 million people continue to be fed this way in these regions. Due to heavy rainfall and the leaching of nutrients, tropical soils are generally quite poor and most nutrients are stored in the biomass. The first step in slash-and-burn, therefore, is to cut down existing trees and bushes in a given plot of land and to burn them, releasing nutrients into the soil through the ash. Crops are then planted for several years. However, because the rate of nutrient extraction exceeds the rate of replenishment, the site can be used for only a brief period—generally 2 to 6 years—before the farmers must move on to a new site. Abandoned sites may gradually recover with a sufficient fallow period. If rapid population growth occurs and fallow periods are reduced, the soil may permanently decline in fertility. This form of farming was widely practiced in the Mayan kingdoms prior to the Spanish conquest, and declining soil fertility may have played a role in the collapse of the Mayan states.

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