Lecture 4: “Growing agriculture: Farming

after 10,000 years ago”

CCGL 9042
Dr. Larry Baum
Music
Preparation
Before watching this lecture, watch this video:

The Green Revolution: Waging A War Against Hunger

[Link]
(10:04)
 Brief review
Trade drives human progress
Comparative advantage
– Benefits both parties in a deal
– Rewards specialization and increases output
Innovation networks (collective brain)
– Stimulate inventions
– Grow faster if they’re bigger
Individuals acting in their self-interest (rationally)
– May benefit everyone (invisible hand)
– May harm everyone (tragedy of the commons)
Trade coevolved with
– Some emotions: trust, retaliation, guilt, forgiveness
– Some culture: trust, rules for ownership
 • Farming concentrated wealth, stimulating trade
Main points of The and specialization.

Rational Optimist, • Farming improvements have allowed more and

more people to be fed on less land.
Chapter 4 • Rejecting the improvements (organic, anti-GMO)
o Requires more and more land.
o Has some emotional causes.
Iceman
• In 1991, hikers found a body in the
Ötzal Alps, Northern Italy.
• Was it another hiker who died here
and froze in the snow?
• Yes… 5300 years ago!
• [Link]
p5T2PWk?start=0&end=30
• His stuff tells us of life then.
Ötzi’s gear
Many items
• Bow
• Arrows in a quiver
• Copper ax: Copper Age, not Stone Age
• Stone knife with woven sheath
• A sharpening flint
• Backpack of wood and string
• Goat bone
• Bark cylinders
• Leather pouch
• Mushroom on a string
• Other tools
Domesticated animals
• Sheep skin coat
• Leather slippers

Otzi consumed the specialized labour

of other people and animals.
Ötzi’s Food
Food?
• Analysis of his stomach contents
• Goat bacon

Can we learn what we ate then—

without finding ice people?
(Not-so-fresh) Bread
o 23 ka old bread
o How do we know?
• Excavation of a Lake Kinneret (Sea of Galilee) camp
ü Preserved since usually submerged
ü Excavated since exposed in dry years
• Ohalo II had 6 brush huts, an oven, and a grave.
• 14C dating of artifacts to ~23 ka ago

• Made flour
ü Large stone with microscopic, edible, starch grains
ü Used to grind flour
• Oven: to bake bread?
Why make
bread?
Extracts more energy by
breaking down grains
• Grinding
• Cooking
4400 year old bread from Egypt
Hard work, but it pays off
Farming begins
• We also ate grains…
o ~100 ka ago in Mozambique
o 14 ka ago in Jordan
• Did farming start before then?
o Maybe trial cultivation
o But widespread farming only started
~10 ka ago (why then?)
• How a gap?
o Gathering
o Wild grains

Credit: Wikimedia Commons

What is farming?
Growing plants and animals for food
or materials

• Domestication
– Plants
– Animals
– How?
• Growing
– Tools
– Techniques
– Ownership
Why farming?
Advantages
– Easier
– More reliable

Disadvantages
– Big investment
– Risk of big loss
 Domestication
Natural Selection Artificial Selection
• Natural variation in gene variants and • Goal: accentuate a desirable trait
thus traits • How? People choose individuals with that trait to
• Organisms with a gene variant reproduce. (What about other individuals?)
predominate if its trait gives a – Plants: grow from seeds of plants with desirable
reproductive edge. traits.
• Survival of the fittest – Animals: breed individuals with desired traits.
• Desirable traits
– Larger muscles
– More tame
– Bigger grains
• Drastic changes in characteristics
• Selective breeding
 Domestication
Mutant Superheroes

SUPERCOW

[Link]
[Link]
[Link]
[Link] [Link]
[Link]
 Credit: Owlcation/ NatureScientist

Superchickens

Selective breeding in
recent decades has made
young chickens giants.
• Much cheaper meat
• Many health problems

[Link]
 Credit: Owlcation/ NatureScientist

Supercow

The Belgian Blue:

[Link]
QeVhQTc?start=13&end=289 (5:11)
 Lactose intolerance
• Lactose in milk gives adults diarrhea.
• But milk could be valuable food.
• Solution 1: Technology
– How?

– CHEESE!
– Cheese has low/no lactose.
– Turn milk into cheese.
– Use clay pottery strainers to separate
solids (for cheese) from liquids (with
lactose).
– Found in Poland, from 7 ka ago
Lactose
intolerance
Solution 2: Mutation
• Mutation for child
lactase to stay in adults
• Appeared in several
places in world,
megameters apart (7-8
ka ago in central Europe)
• Why did it spread?
– Vitamin D in dark
climates?
– Nutrition during
famine?
 Canis Lupus Familiaris
• Dogs 1st domesticated animal: 20-40 ka ago
• Why? Humans and wolves similar
– Both hunters
– Both very social
– Both good at understanding and communicating
emotion
Wikimedia Commons
• Domestication began as co-evolution?
– Wolves willing to approach humans got food scraps.
– The tamest got more access and thus an advantage.
• Humans later selectively bred the dogs.
– Dogs helped humans as weapon to hunt animals.
– Humans helped dogs access larger prey, food scraps,
and protection.
• How long to breed biggest & smallest dogs?
Breeds
of Dogs
Domestication of Dogs
• Domestication mutually beneficial:

• Um…maybe.
 Domestication of Wheat
o Wild wheat
• Stems easily shatter, scattering
the seeds to reproduce
• Small grain: what we eat
• Tall: gets more sunlight
o Domesticated wheat
• Stems don’t shatter, so seeds
stay on when harvested.
• Large grain: more food
• Short: plants won’t collapse
from the weight of their seeds.
 Origins of crops and animals
Examples
Asia:
- Rice
- Tea
- Soybeans
Africa:
- Melons
- Coffee
- Cotton
America:
- Potato
- Beans
- Blueberry
Credit: [Link]
New food displaced old?
Hunting
small
animals

Fewer big
More food
animals to eat

Hunting
More
more big
people
animals
New food displaced old?
Gathering
more
plants

Fewer small
More food
animals to eat

Hunting
More
more small
people
animals
New food displaced old?
Farming

Fewer wild
More food
plants to eat

Gathering
More
more
people
plants
 Domestication by plants
• Were humans domesticated by plants? (instead of plants
domesticated by humans)
• For example, wheat has become the world’s most
successful crop through human cultivation.
• Farmers’ lives were more difficult, risky, and unsatisfying
than lives of hunter-gatherers.
• Farmers worked harder than foragers but had worse diets.
• Discrepancy between evolutionary success and individual
suffering.

Reference: Chapter 5: History’s Greatest Fraud of Harari YN, 2015, Sapiens: a brief history of humankind.
 Man-made
enclaves
• Nomadic hunter-gatherers lived in
territories hundreds of square
kilometres.
• Farming forced humans to settle
small areas and protect them.
• Farmers grew strong attachment
to their ‘home’ territory and
separated from neighbours (more
self-centred).
• Compared to hunter-gatherers,
farmers lived in artificial
environments (built houses, cut
forests, cleared fields, ploughed
furrows, pulled weeds, killed
pests, built fences).

Reference: Chapter 6: Building Pyramids of Harari YN, 2015, Sapiens: a brief history of humankind.
Capital
• Adam Smith: Capital, “labour stocked
and stored up to be employed, if
necessary, upon some other
occasion”
• Farming accumulated food and land
(wealth, capital).
• Capital fueled trade, investment,
productivity.
• Example: Furnace to smelt copper
into axes, as done over 5 ka ago
 Consequences of Domestication
• Did capital accumulation from agriculture
lead to the development of social classes?
• More complex imagined orders invented
to allow the elite to exploit lower classes.
• Domestication and increased proximity of
animals and humans led to the rise of
infectious diseases.
• Farming translated into more food but
also led to population explosions (and risk
of famine subject to natural events).

Reference: Chapter 5: History’s Greatest Fraud of Harari YN,

2015, Sapiens: a brief history of humankind. Social structure in ancient Egypt
Farming begins: summary
• Hunting & gathering gradually shifted
to growing, ~10 ka ago.
• Possible causes:
– Animals depleted by hunting?
– Ice age ending?
– Trade encouraged specialization?
• Farming extends specialization to
other species.
• Selective breeding increased food
from crops and animals.
• Farming allowed bigger population
and capital accumulation, thus more
specialization, thus more trading.
 Modern farming

[Link] [Link]
G

[Link]

[Link]
[Link] [Link]
Technology improves
farming
• Since farming began, inventions and
new techniques keep increasing
efficiency.
• Farming feeds more and more people.
• Artificial fertilizers
• New farming techniques
• New crop strains
The future of
farming
 Artificial fertilizers

Artificial fertilizers quadrupled

crop yields in the past century.

[Link]
 Haber-Bosch process
• To make nitrogen fertilizer.
• Plants need nitrogen.
• Nitrogen abundant in air (78%), but
plants can’t get it because it’s held
together by strong triple bonds.
• In 1909, Fritz Haber found how to turn
nitrogen and methane (natural gas) into
ammonia to make fertilizer.
• Bosch adapted this to industrial scale.
• Nobel prizes:
– Haber in 1918
– Bosch in 1931

[Link]
 Haber-Bosch process
• Worldwide, 1-2% of power or 3-5% of
methane is used to make fertilizer with
~ 120 Tg (teragrams, or 1 trillion grams)
of nitrogen per year.
• Compare to mass of humans:
– 120 trillion g / 8 billion people
– 120 G kg / 8 G people
– 15 kg / person
• In a few years, we eat our weight in
nitrogen from this process.

[Link]
 New techniques and crop strains
• The next steps
– Fertilized wheat grows tall but falls over.
– Diseases kill wheat.
• Norman Borlaug bred high yield wheat strains in 1940s to 1950s.
– Short: so won’t collapse
– Multiple disease-resistant: crosses of several lines
• He brought them to Mexico and South Asia in the 1960s.
• Indian obstacles
– Government slowed fertilizer imports to protect local market.
– State grain monopolies slowed import of the new wheat.
• Meanwhile, hunger continued
– The Population Bomb (1968), by Paul Ehrlich
– “The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s hundreds of
millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash
programs….”
Child suffering stunting: India, 1972
 The Green Revolution
• By 1963, Mexico became a net exporter of wheat.
• In India, the 1968 wheat harvest was “so prolific that there
was a shortage of labor to harvest it, of bullock carts to
haul it to the threshing floor, of jute bags, trucks, rail cars
and grain storage facilities. Local governments in some
areas were forced to shutter schools temporarily to use
them for grain storage.”
• By 1974, India was a net exporter of wheat.
• Borlaug’s wheat strains “unleashed the power of fertiliser,
made from fossil fuels”.
• Borlaug won 1970 Nobel Peace Prize for basically saving a
billion people from starving.
• [Link] (3:06)
• Previewed: [Link] (10:04)
 The human effects
• Synthetic nitrogen
fertilizers feed
almost half of
people.
• Reliance on these
fertilizers is rising.
 The environmental effects
• More food
– Fertilizer made from
natural gas
– New crop strains
• How do fossil fuels
affect the
environment?
 The Green Revolution is incomplete
• Many developed and developing
countries raised crop yields.
• But many of the poorest farmers
didn’t.
• Poor farmers can’t afford things that
raised yields elsewhere, such as
– Fertilizer
– Pesticides
– Herbicides
– Machinery
• Optional: game to experience
difficulties of a poor farmer:
[Link]

[Link]
 Technology improves farming
• Since farming began, inventions
and new techniques keep
increasing efficiency.
• Farming feeds more and more
people.
• Artificial fertilizers
• New farming techniques
• New crop strains

[Link]
 GMOs
• Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs): usually
defined as having DNA altered by genetic engineering
• Do you believe GMO foods pose a serious health
hazard?
– Yes
– No
– Not sure
• Do you try to avoid eating GMO foods?
– Yes
– No
• Are you more likely to buy organically-grown foods
than the non-organic version?
– Yes
– No
 GMO surveys in USA
• ABC News survey on GMOs
– 52% say unsafe
– 35% say safe to eat
– 13% not sure
 Why are we afraid of GMOs?
Maybe due to several feelings:
– We prefer eating living things: natural
over artificial.
– We fear some things, regardless of
the amount of risk.

Thus, because of their artificial part,

GMO foods seem bad no matter how
small the possible risk.
 History of genetically modified food
• When was the first genetic
modification of a food crop?
• ~10 ka ago because
domestication involves
genetic modification by
breeding.
• All conventional selective
breeding involves DNA
mutations, so no essential
difference from modern
genetic modification.
What are
GMOs?
o Genetic modification of organisms
vs. genetically modified organisms?
• Genetic modification
ü Anything that changes the genes
ü DNA change: may be unknown
• GMO
ü Genetic engineering
ü DNA change: known
o A common type of GMO is
transgenic technology
• Inserting gene from one organism
into an unrelated organism
• First transgenic plant in 1983
 Example of GMO
• Bt maize
– A gene from Bacillus thuringiensis
bacteria
– Kills corn borer, but harmless to
people
– Corn borer damages ~US$1 billion
maize/year
– Alternative to Bt or damage is
insecticide

(Top) [Link]: European Corn Borer

(Bottom) The Organic & Non-GMO Report
GM crops: A story in numbers
 How much GMO?
GMO crops worldwide (2012): a 1.4 megameter square (185 Mha), 13% of arable land.
GM crops: A story in numbers
Are GMOs good or bad?
GMO animals
• Salmon with growth
hormone
• Grows twice as fast
as wildtype.
• It’s the first GMO
food animal
approved.
• In USA & Canada
• In 2022, a little was
being sold in the US.
 Do GMOs induce superweeds?
• GM crops encourage evolution of
weeds resistant to herbicides, or
“superweeds”.
• But superweeds have also arisen
without GMOs.
• The main cause of superweeds is not
GMOs, but over-reliance on
herbicides that work by one
mechanism of action, which selects
for weeds resistant to those
herbicides.

[Link]
 Do GMOs cause farmer suicides?

• High initial price of Bt cotton seeds in

India resulted in non-Bt seeds being
mixed with the real ones to lower
prices, causing crop losses.
• But 90% of Indian cotton crop is now
Bt.
Is GMO food safe to eat?
“…consuming foods containing ingredients derived from
GM crops is no riskier than consuming the same foods
containing ingredients from crop plants modified by
conventional plant improvement techniques.” – AAAS
statement

News: Once again, U.S. expert panel says

genetically engineered crops are safe to eat
([Link]
engineered-crops-are-safe-eat)
 Main benefits of GMO crops
• Lower cost
– Biggest benefit so far
– Helps farmers and consumers
• Less herbicide & pesticide use
– Hard to measure because type
and amount constantly change
– Overall, maybe decrease, thus
maybe environmental benefit
• Better nutrition
– Not a benefit yet because new
varieties not yet used Review of studies of effects on
farmers who adopted GMO crops
Modern organic
farming

• Presume that GMOs and

synthetic chemicals bad for
us
• Use natural fertilizers and
pesticides
• No GMOs
 Organic farming
efficiency
• Yield
o Same or less than modern farming
o Depends on which crop. The best:
Ø Strawberries yield 3% less.
Ø Soybeans yield 11% less.
• Cost of organic produce much higher than
modern farming produce.
• Lower efficiency partly since organic fertilizer
extracts nitrogen from air
o by growing legumes (alfalfa, clover, beans) to
use as fertilizer,
o rather than chemically, by Haber-Bosch process.

Market in Milan
 Organic farming
results
• Sri Lanka banned synthetic fertilizer and
pesticide imports in 2021, to:
o Save money spent on them
o Protect health and environment
• Rice and tea production fell by 1/5 in 2022
o Government had to spend more on rice imports
than it had saved on fertilizer
o Vegetable prices rose by several times
o Government fell, though not due only to organic
farming.
• Balanced approach better
o Slower transition, to give farmers time to adapt
o Use best of both worlds

Market in Milan Rice farming in Sri Lanka

Organic farming
safety
• Natural pesticides for organic
farming break down easily and are
less likely to contaminate land and
water.
• Natural pesticides not necessarily
safer
o Need higher or lower doses than
synthetics
o Safe limits higher or lower than
synthetics
o Natural pesticides often not tested
in studies comparing pesticide
levels between organic and regular
produce, which only focus on
synthetic pesticides
Credit: Slate
 Synthetic pesticide safety

• Example of a chemical and safety issue:

DHMO
• Read this poster, then take a poll.
• Do you support a ban of DHMO?
• If so, you’ll be thirsty, because DHMO is…
water!
 Are pesticides safe?
90% of US apples had pesticide residues.

[Link]
Is food safe?
• Consider risk not only of
synthetic pesticide, but also
of the pesticides plants make
for defense.
• Example: nicotine is a
powerful insecticide made by
tobacco plants, and was used
as a commercial insecticide
• At home, please watch Bruce
Ames, Professor of
Biochemistry and Molecular
Biology, UC Berkeley:
[Link]
DCCvOv3qZY?start=3646&end=4231
(only from 1:00:46 to 1:10:31)
 Ball of chemicals
• If I gave you a ball
of chemicals,
would you take it?
• Would you touch
it?
• Would you eat it?
HAPPY FUN BALL -- [Link]
 Food is chemicals
• Everything, including food, is
chemicals.
• Many chemicals, whether
natural or artificial, can be
toxic.
• Which chemical, and its
amount, determine safety,
not whether natural or
synthetic.
– Which is toxic: cyanide or salt?
– Which is toxic: 1 µg cyanide or
1 kg salt?
– Cyanide naturally in many
foods: almond, cashew,
cabbage, potato, radish
 Ball of chemicals
• I’ll give a ball of
chemicals to each of
you.
• Warning:
– After prolonged
exposure, may stick to
skin.
– If eaten, may contribute
to tooth decay.
• Enjoy your chocolate!
• Everything is chemicals.
Local food
• Is it good for the environment if
we buy food grown locally?
• Good: transport reduced
• Bad: farming less efficient
• Net effect: depends, but often
better to grow where it grows
best, then transport it.
 Farm subsidy example: Japan
• 780% import tariffs on rice
• Government pays rice
farmers to not plant rice,
idling 30% of Japan’s paddy
land.
• Rice policies cost Japanese
people US$10 billion/yr: half
to farmers and half in more
costly rice.
• Subsidies encourage small
farms (92% are <1 ha), but
larger are more efficient.
Wikimedia Commons
 Farm subsidies

• Governments
often subsidize
farmers.
• Why?
• What problems
are caused?

The Economist
 Food waste

“We are trashing our land to grow food that no one eats.” – Tristram Stuart.

At home, please watch: “Food waste is the world's dumbest problem”:

[Link] (9:22)
Food waste problems
Uneaten food to be thrown away
Waste at each step:
• On plant/animal
• After harvest/slaughter
• In transit
• At store
• In home/restaurant
• After cooking
• Total waste ~HK$3 trillion/year
Consequences
• Raises food cost: Poverty and hunger
• Raises disposal cost
• Harms environment
― Depletes fish
― Wastes energy to grow extra food [Link]

― Changes climate
SCMP: China’s tradition of hospitality may need reshaping if food waste is to end
Food waste solutions
• Producer: On plant/animal, after
harvest/slaughter, in transit
• Consumer:
– Buy ugly veggies ([Link]
– Short-dated stores ([Link]
– Save leftovers: store if home or take home from
restaurant
– Collect extra for poor or composting
• Feeding Hong Kong
• Food Angel
• SCMP: Group turning food waste into compost wants to cut down
on landfill and make Hong Kong more self-sufficient

GreenPrice sells ‘short-dated’ groceries and other goods

Quiz
• Remember to watch the videos in this lecture to prepare for the quiz. Quizzes cover
material in the videos of the corresponding lecture. Here are the videos from this
lecture:
– The Green Revolution: Waging A War Against Hunger
[Link] (10:04)
– [Link] (0:30)
– The Belgian Blue: [Link] (5:11)
– [Link] (3:06)
– Bruce Ames, Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, UC Berkeley:
[Link] (only from 1:00:46 to 1:10:31)
– Vox: “Food waste is the world's dumbest problem”: [Link]
(9:22)
Enjoy your
dinner!