agriculture

Since rice has higher yields than wheat and the Nile provides plenty of floodwater, How would growing rice have on the development of Ancient egyptian civilization?

Wondering about the labour-intensiveness of rice agriculture especially in the colder regions like Central China, Japan, and Italy, I have been left to wonder whether a breed of water buffaloes that can withstand colder temperatures is plausible at all. And in the case that it can be, I do also...

Introduction Hello everyone and welcome to my first timeline! This has been an idea I've had for quite sometime - as can be attested by the sorts of topics I've contributed to in my time on the site. I've finally gotten around to getting ideas to the page and have something I think is worth...

The book Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond essentially details why the pre-Columbian American civilizations never really developed to the technological and political level of Europe. I read the book before, but I believe CGP Grey (in his video "Americapox") sums up the main, underlying...

So a common problem for countries always seems to be lack of modern agriculture, and here I'm specifically referring to Greece. Wikipedia says: So how could a country such as Greece modernise their agriculture in the 19th century? They clearly don't have the government funding to do it, but...

I found this on tumblr of all things. So what does having knowledge of moveable frame hives as a Thing from much earlier on do? The only guesses I've got on this are that more places outside of bits of northern europe would have mead as a drink. Perhaps having more alcohol tolerance as a...

Without the Industrial revolution and its subsequent cheap human shipping between Europe and America and ending of subsistence agriculture how does the Anglo-Celtic migration across north America proceed. Would a lack of railways prevent commercial agriculture away from the...

As title says-which areas of North America that are not cultivated today could be turned into farmland? Pre-Columbian agriculture in colder parts of N. America was limited by the fact, that native crops were not particulary good adapted to cooler climates (like maize). European settlers OTOH had...

As this article points out starting in the 19th century sunflower farming exploded in the Russian Empire with the seeds being used for both oil production and as a common snack. This has had lasting impact: even today, Ukraine + Russia produce more sunflowers seeds/oil than any other nation on...

Polyculture is the cultivation of several crops and/or animals as a source of food, this is in contrast to monoculture which tends to create imbalances in the environment as specific nutritions are depleted while others are overproduced. While the green revolution with its pesticides...

As we all know the French created a Vietnamese rural proletariat in Indochina through the fish salt tax. This was equivalent to the 18th and 19th century enclosures in the UK. To a certain extent the Vietnamese revolution was chartism writ large complete with Guardian buying liberals cheating it...

Something that I have heard from geopolitically savvy and politically inclined friends and colleagues of mine are frequent laments about how resource rich the Congo is. One of them constantly asks me why the Congo of all places is and was not more economically advanced in the past. Now, I am of...

(Sorry for the length, btw, sort of a favourite topic of mine) Many people know Cabral as one of the foremost political theorists and authors active in the African liberation wave, with his writings being crucial to the "language of freedom" employed by others across the continent. A...

The Asian water buffalo (or simply water buffalo) (Bubalus bubalis) is a large domesticated bovid of Asian origin, with its ancestor possibly being the wild water buffalo (Bubalus arnee). The yak has also been domesticated. The American bison (Bison bison) and muskox (Ovibos moschatus) have...

during much of the middle ages, the agricultural situation in europe changed a lot - the heavy plow allowed large population in eastern europe, and the three-field system produced generally larger yields. but what if these things were made earlier, during middle or late antiquity? the ancient...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wild_rice Could a succesful civilisation form around wild rice agriculture? It was (and still is) a common food source for groups like the Ojibwe and is now grown as a food source in North America. What other plants could this civilisation grow? Bulrush?

As it says in the title, why didn't New Guinea develop an advanced civilisation like those in Eurasia and the Americas? It was among the first places on earth to develop agriculture, it's relatively large, it has an OK crop package and it's pretty fertile.

I'm not talking about the development of better indigenous crops for Australia, that was covered by Lands of Red & Gold pretty well - this thread also delves into some interesting ideas and is one of the inspirations for this thread - I'm talking about foreign crops that could be brought over...

Even today Africa produces only 5% of the world’s cane sugar, with the bulk of production in East and South Africa, although there is production in West Africa. Is there something to do with soil? Since climate wise tropical West Africa seem ideal. Had sugar been available as a commercial...

What if Stalin didn't collectivize the soviet agriculture? How might have it changed this country? What about agricultural productions? Famines? Any analogy which is helpful I see in Poland, the only european country in the Soviet sphere, which didn't have collectivization. No collectivization...