Thread: Did Agriculture improve human quality of life?

Haha, this discussion is quite bland, isn't it? But anywhooooooo - it's time for my bland opinion.

I begin by evaluating the question. "Did Agriculture improve humans' quality of life?"
Does this mean "Did Agriculture contribute to the improvement of humans' quality of life?"
Or does it mean "Did Agriculture improve humans' quality of life over that of the hunter-gatherers".

I believe the second was the one that you intended to try and answer, Omnis. You covered a wide array of topics in that respect, but I want to kind of make a few points on the first question...

Agriculture became a new method of acquiring resources - and the more diverse the pool of occupations becomes, the more lucrative the economy becomes. Let's say a farmer farms more than he and his family needs to survive. But the farmer has only vegetables, and no meats. The hunter has meats but less vegetables than the farmer. These are the basics for trade. I would say that the economy has an impact on the quality of life of humans. And because of that, I would say that agriculture has impacted the quality of life for humans to this day. Because farmers grew the corn the corn that's in the engineer's pantry, and the engineer built the combine on the farmer's land... The farmer doesn't have to use hand tools to farm, and the engineer doesn't have to grow his own corn. Making both of their lives... Have a little bit more quality.

Individual countries do matter because we are talking about a huge trend. Birthrates in all developed countries, US, Canada, all of Europe and throughout most of Asia birthrates are dropping. Advances in technology and medical care is causing global birthrates to fall. In nearly every country that is considered developed is facing a declining population when looking at people born in that country. Though some of them are still accepting a lot of immigration from other countries with population growth. If we were to cut off immigration every country with modern infrastructure would be declining right now, and I literally mean every. It is scary how absolute the trend seems to be. The more developed and the more healthy a country is the less children they have.

The only reason the world population is still growing is because there is still a lot of really shitty countries in the world, and a lot of them already have huge populations. Even with those countries though most estimates show the world population leveling off in 20-30 years and then falling. It will happen even faster than that if we are successful in spreading technology to the poor countries, which we are doing.

Which goes to the real reason why people have a lot of children. People have a lot of children because the children have have chances of dying and so they need more of them to insure someone survive to pass their genes on, and to insure you have family to take care of you when you are old and sick. The truth is the population didn't grow just because we had more food though that played a role, a huge part is because we needed the children because people died so often. Finally we have gotten to the point where people can live very long and healthy lives and children are going out of style.

It is true that people have children as an insurance policy, and they don't need this insurance policy when the country has developed to the stage where it's got social safety nets. However that speaks to birth-rates, it does not speak to global population trends. Every major boom in population is related to food, not poverty. The first major population growth happened 10,000 years ago and started in Mesopotamia, and population growth stayed relatively in line with the spread of Mesopotamia's totalitarian style agriculture. They were not the only society to farm, simply the only society to force everyone around them to farm as well. When this practice hit Europe, the population grew larger and denser in Europe. When it hit Asia, the population grew larger and denser in Asia. When it hit the New World, the population grew larger and denser in the New World. When synthetic fertilizers hit the market after the turn of the 20th century (by this guy: Fritz Haber - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia) this led to another population boom which is responsible for the ridiculous numbers we see today. This invention is also responsible for the Dead Zones in the Oceans: Dead zone (ecology) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Since the birth of Mesopotamia's particular style of agriculture, the population has doubled 9.5 times. Between the birth of modern humans 200,000 years ago to 8000 BCE, the population had doubled probably 100 times. This means it took 19,000 years on average for the population to double before totalitarian agriculture while it only took about 1000 years on average for the population to double after. This of course is skewed, the last population doubling in human history only took about 30-40 years.

Now part of the problem is definitely that people are having kids in order to breed free labor and ensure they'll be taken care of when they retire, especially in countries with higher mortality rates. People are having kids not only that they couldn't necessarily feed but because they can't feed them. This is something that didn't happen in H/G lifestyle but that's not the point, the claim I'm responding to now is whether or not our current lifestyle is sustainable. And my answer is still no. Whether or not part of the problem with population growth is because kids are used an insurance in developing nations, that doesn't change the fact that humans, at large, abide by an ecosystem's rules. In an ecosystem, more food means for feeders, more feeders means less food, less food means less feeders, and so on. If we continue making more food, we will continue having more feeders. There will naturally be exceptions to the rule, as nations develop children will be used less often as insurance policies and so in some places we may see the population appear to drop. But the reason the population is growing is not purely the result of using kids as insurance policies. The reason is because we keep making more food.

See the thing you don't seem to get is that people are made out of food. If there's not enough food, there will be less people because they aren't made out of sunshine and hugs, they need to eat food. Whether or not kids are being used as an insurance policy is not the dilemma. If it were the only problem, then they would starve the population would not still be growing, it would level off with higher mortality rates to circumvent higher birth-rates. Because people are made of food, and the population is still growing, that means there's still more food.

Originally Posted by Omnis Dei

Let me explain how biology works. Everything is made of food, without food the population does not increase because there's no food to make it increase. When the food supply increases, the feeder populations increases. When the food supply decreases, the feeder supply decreases. Feeder populations do not exceed what can be supported by the food populations. They can't, there's not enough food. This is known as a negative feedback loop.

Right, I guess those african couples having 10 children each have plenty of food.

The problem with that though is the developed countries have an abundance of food and population is starting to fall, while poor countries with a lack of food are still growing rapidly. Also along with advanced technology and health care comes things like birth control. Sure birth control has been around forever, but the ones we use today are far better than anything we had in the past. From this point forward trends in global population are probably no longer linked with food, and we will keep increase our food supply while population will stabilize and then eventually start to fall.

Unless of course the food supply drops drastically, due having no energy from peak oil, having no fertilizers from peak phosphorus, or extreme desertification from global climate change. Everyone can still starve to death, that link hasn't changed. Though we do have technology available to solve all those issues, it is just a matter if we can implement them all to high levels.

Originally Posted by dutchraptor

Right, I guess those african couples having 10 children each have plenty of food.

This is a secondary problem that must be addressed, which is that countries must develop to the point where they aren't using children as insurance policies, therefore having more than they can feed. This is something that started when agriculture was born. People had a lot of children because it provided free labor and because disease and malnutrition increased causing them to need to have more children because some were guaranteed to die. Fertility rates do not imply there is enough food, but population growth as a whole does mean there is enough food. Unless you believe people can survive off sawdust.

Originally Posted by Alric

The problem with that though is the developed countries have an abundance of food and population is starting to fall, while poor countries with a lack of food are still growing rapidly. Also along with advanced technology and health care comes things like birth control. Sure birth control has been around forever, but the ones we use today are far better than anything we had in the past. From this point forward trends in global population are probably no longer linked with food, and we will keep increase our food supply while population will stabilize and then eventually start to fall.

Unless of course the food supply drops drastically, due having no energy from peak oil, having no fertilizers from peak phosphorus, or extreme desertification from global climate change. Everyone can still starve to death, that link hasn't changed. Though we do have technology available to solve all those issues, it is just a matter if we can implement them all to high levels.

Something to keep in mind about developed nations is that just because a portion of people can feed themselves abundantly doesn't mean every single person has access to enough food. If a wealthy person has 10 kids, that's 10 children than must compete to remain in the wealthy zone. The number of wealthy people does not increase with the population of wealthy people's kids. It remain proportionate, and people who don't make the cut must settle for lower income brackets. So in this way, the distribution of wealth has caused it's own type of population control because the impoverished have a very limited number of resources to compete for, whether or not the country as a whole is much wealthier than others. Distribution of wealth is big factor. Even in countries where there is a narrower gap between wealth and poverty, there is still competition for resources.

You also have to take into account that the moment synthetic fertilizers and modern farming equipment hit the market, they didn't instantly traverse the entire planet. Many developing nations are growing faster than developed nations because they're still feeling the boom from this technology.

Human beings are simply not exempt from the natural tendencies of a species, constantly increasing our food supply creates a positive feedback loop.