North Africa in antiquity

North Africa was famed for being the breadbasket of the Roman world. Is the area much less fertile today? What were the most important factors that led to the decline in fertility and around what time did it start to happen? (Demographic studies put the population of North Africa at 6.5 million prior to Antonine Plague and Italy at 7.6 million. North Africa managed to feed itself and a large chunk of Italy's urban population, 40 percent urbanization rate)
 
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I'm actually pretty curious as well whether this idea is actually true to begin with and whether it's really connected to the human usage of the land, I've seen people blame both Arabs and Romans for it but never seen anything proving either.
 
IMO, it's because of the spread of the heavy plow, expanding agricultural capacity further north into Europe and therefore making the Mediterranean breadbaskets less relevant.
 
North Africa was famed for being the breadbasket of the Roman world. Is the area much less fertile today? What were the most important factors that led to the decline in fertility and around what time did it start to happen?

IIRC a major cause was a general increase in unchecked logging, herding, and pastoralism in the post-Roman era, and later on during a drought, the Banu Hilal were sent to North Africa by the Fatimids and devastated the region, which increased the trends toward desertification. Agricultural land became pastoral land, while pastoral land became desert. Granted, I haven't read anything recent on this issue, but this is a pretty commonly repeated view for most 20th century scholarship on the issue (into the 80s/90s, going by the date of publication).

Given the fragile nature of the ecosystem, North Africa would have benefitted immensely from an early system of sustainable forestry, which probably could have occurred pretty early given OTL efforts at early forestry.
 
While I generally agree with @metalinvader665 (up to a point, that said : Tunisia and Algeria remained exporters of grain until the Late Middle-Ages and still so under some periods until the XIXth) , it's worth remembering that Africa being treated as a gigantic farmed land is mostly a Roman things. Carthage was of course supported by a large agricultural production, but safe trade goods as wine, wool, horse, and olives (whom a significant part came from Numidia), grain doesn't seems to have been a main export to the Mediterranean basin, except what was sent (admittedly a significant part until the IVth) to Phoenician cities.

The use of North Africa as the breadbasket of Rome depended a lot from Roman predominance and rule : it held for a time in the late Vth century, but with the generalized revolt of Berbers against Vandals, and their incapacity (then Romans) to really dominate much of the hinterland, it reverted to being "just" particularly productive.

On the other hand, it's hard to really assess the consequences of the Hillalian invasion long-term : it was probably destructive for the hinterland, but what's more important long-term was the inability of Ifriqiyan polities to recover from it and from Italian particularily active (and aggressive) concurrence.
Eventually, more the region shattered and lost political unification, less productive agriculturally it was (in no small part because f the need of irrigation features in the hinterland), and more unified, more productive. Since the Fatimid takeover of Ifriqiya and until the Hafsids, it was hard on this regard.
Again, it's to be noted that Hafsids exported grain to Near East, so it must be nuanced.

In addition to what was said, there's the agricultural-related technology gap compared to other parts of the Mediterranean basin, such as the lack of wheelbarrow, at least as we understand it (there was the use of a barrow led by a sheep).
 
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IMO, it's because of the spread of the heavy plow, expanding agricultural capacity further north into Europe and therefore making the Mediterranean breadbaskets less relevant.
The difference is mostly spottable in late Middle-Ages, tough. Sicily remained a large grain exporter in the X/XIth centuries while being an, obviously, mediterranean agriculture. Ifriqiya exported grain to Near East and Italy (mostly because European production wasn't able to meet the population growth from the late XIIIth onward) until the XVth century IIRC
 
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So basically we all have come to a consensus that agriculture production declined as a result of collapsing demand from the fallen Roman empire. What I'm interested in is did the agricultural potential of the region decline as well? Or was it just a lack of demand? We can all agree that the fertility of the soil is worse today than 2000 years ago i think. So when did that happen or was it a gradual process? Was it accelerated by any changes to land use?
 
I think it's both the lack of demand and a lesser agricultural capacity to begin with : without strong unified administration to manage infrastructure and buy a large part of the production (it would be interesting to know how much Vandal confiscation of lands in Proconsularis influenced or not on this). The revival of Rhone/Rhine trade road might be interesting on this perspective (even if it's quite hard to tell how much grain was traded there on the Late Antiquity).
Long story short, it's sort of a vicious circle on which lesser production leads to lesser demands, which in turn...

It could be prevented relatively easily enough trough a relatively unified and wealthy administration such as Aghlabids, Fatimids or Hafsids (even if Fatimids tended to rely a lot on export to sub-Saharian Africa of Sicilian grain), playing a similar role than Carthage, without reverting to "let's make these whole province a mega farmland" Roman approach.

EDIT : Again, regular declines and destruction didn't systematically prevented North Africa to export grain : in the XVIIIth and early XIXth century, 9/10 of grain sold in Marseilles came from North Africa. So, really IMO, conjunction of demand and relatively coherent administration.
 
IMO, it's because of the spread of the heavy plow, expanding agricultural capacity further north into Europe and therefore making the Mediterranean breadbaskets less relevant.
So what would the agricultural dynamics of a Roman Empire (or a surviving whole western Roman Empire that lasted into the Middle Ages) that invented the heavy plow be like then? I mean sure gaul would almost certainly outproduces North Africa but most of that grain is more inland then in Africa so it would take a lot more effort to export to the huge metropolis of the Mediterranean.
While I generally agree with @metalinvader665 (up to a point, that said : Tunisia and Algeria remained exporters of grain until the Late Middle-Ages and still so under some periods until the XIXth) , it's worth remembering that Africa being treated as a gigantic farmed land is mostly a Roman things. Carthage was of course supported by a large agricultural production, but safe trade goods as wine, wool, horse, and olives (whom a significant part came from Numidia), grain doesn't seems to have been a main export to the Mediterranean basin, except what was sent (admittedly a significant part until the IVth) to Phoenician cities.
So when Cato was complaining about the sheer wealth of Carthage just before the third Punic war, he wasn’t talking about vast fields of wheat but huge vineyard, olive groves, and sheep ranches?
The difference is mostly spottable in late Middle-Ages, tough. Sicily remained a large grain exporter in the X/XIth centuries while being an, obviously, mediterranean agriculture. Ifriqiya exported grain to Near East and Italy (mostly because European production wasn't able to meet the population growth from the late XIIIth onward) until the XVth century IIRC
yeah wasn’t the kingdom of Sicily(and Naples after the loss of Sicily proper) one of main forces in the European wheat trade from the the very founding of the kingdom to the Black Death? That was the biggest reason why the kingdom was so damm rich.
 
So what would the agricultural dynamics of a Roman Empire (or a surviving whole western Roman Empire that lasted into the Middle Ages) that invented the heavy plow be like then?
Relatively minimal, I think, for some reasons : first, the difference between the moldboard ploughs used by Germans in parts of Roman Germania and, IRRC, Britain and heavy ploughs as well some moldboard ploughs (with wheels, apparently) used by Gauls were relatively limited (it's part of the limitations of Roman agricultural tools that were often reconstitued in the worst manner possible in the XXth, such as horse collar, while it was less idiotic than that) and really fit for Northern European soils.
Heavy plough didn't really made its way to mediterranean soils until a later period, not just because of the soils but, and I must admit I forgot the explanation about it, as well irrigations networks.

I mean sure gaul would almost certainly outproduces North Africa but most of that grain is more inland then in Africa so it would take a lot more effort to export to the huge metropolis of the Mediterranean.
Gaul historically used to be one of the main breadbasket of western Med. and Europe which explains its development and trade role. Its what Punic and Phocean traders came to take in addition to metals, and it's attested archeologically as well as in historical sources at such point troubles between late Halstatt and early La Tène could be explained trough production/commercial decline of old Rhone/Rhine principalties.


So when Cato was complaining about the sheer wealth of Carthage just before the third Punic war, he wasn’t talking about vast fields of wheat but huge vineyard, olive groves, and sheep ranches?
Certainly Carthage (and I'm speaking of Carthage in its narrower sense, roughly centered on Cap Bon had a very important grain production:I admittely should have said that grain itself was not necessarily a main local export, while it was a main trade, especially with Greeks, beside Carthage's own consumptions and what they traded for cash products with their neighbors and allied city-states.
The desire to monopolize trade grain led Carthage to both develop an agricultural-minded colonisation takeover most of Sicily (among other reaons) that tended to be a great farm happening to be an island too, especially as exports of grain seems to slow down at the benefit of self-consumption in the IVth century, at least as I understood it.

yeah wasn’t the kingdom of Sicily(and Naples after the loss of Sicily proper) one of main forces in the European wheat trade from the the very founding of the kingdom to the Black Death?
Sicily proper seems to have remained a main grain exporter even after the political division (and if fact, might have supplied part of Naples' kingdom). I'm not sure that the Black Death put an ends to the exports, while in the early XIVth and mid XVth they might have slowed down wdue to more demands from the population. Very roughly around 50% of the grain was exported until the mid-XVth century when it went to less than 10%. It was accompanied bt the desire to support regional production in the peninsula, IIRC.
 
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