Lecture 16

Wednesday, March 11, 2015

7:54 AM

Food and Economics continued

Subsistence strategies
Agricultural food production
Ramifications of producing your own food, versus foraging
You are dependent on a comparatively, extremely limited roster of food
supplies
Makes you more vulnerable to weather patterns, and disaster in general
Agriculture is extraordinarily scheduled
Farmers are at the mercy of time, having to gather the huge majority of
their annual nutritional intake at, at most, a few times; nothing, thus, can
interrupt these narrow windows of time
Farming is a lot of work, requiring intense and sustained physical effort
throughout the year
e.g. clearing land of vegetation, stones, etc; fertilization
Far beyond what foragers have to do
Other challenges; not problems necessarily, but things that must be managed
Storage: how to keep food edible and in sufficient supply for the rest of
the year
A strategy to defend food from pests, moisture, thieves, etc
A strategy for measuring out supplies to last the year, plus extra for
planting in the following year
A new, delayed return relationship with food
Foragers don't typically have any incentive to store food, nor any to
refrain from
With agriculture comes the possibility for surplus food production
Much more food can be obtained per unit of land than foraging; this can
be controlled as well
Much denser populations can be supported than in foraging;
villages/cities can now be supported; much larger families [literally] grow
out of this
Denser populations (and persistent contact with animals) have
significant implications as well
Communicable and epidemic diseases due to more people,
and people living in closer proximity
Some farming populations developed immunity to certain
pathogens in response to this; people were changed
genetically (by farming)
Agriculture has been the most important cause of changes in human gene
frequencies in the past 10k years, by far
A result of many of the above
Gene spread, genetic resistance, adult lactose tolerance, etc
The way you obtain food totally shapes the way you live
Why would people take up farming? It's not less work, not necessarily more
nutritious
There isn't a single clear answer, but a variety of hypotheses
With farming, you can increase the availability of more palatable food
Food and economics interact in other ways as well
Food was used as money at many times, in many places
Pepper as currency in Medieval Europe, and important as far back as at least
the first century AD
Cacao beans throughout Mesoamerica
These currencies could be counterfeited and/or adulterated as well, e.g. wax
How We Eat ANT260 Page 1

 These currencies could be counterfeited and/or adulterated as well, e.g. wax

cacao beans, pepper mixed with juniper or mustard
A lot of economic life is spent producing/processing/preparing food, e.g. processing
toxic acorns
Time spent producing/processing/preparing food is time that cannot be spent in
other economic activities, such as manufacturing
What labor goes into the food that you eat? Who is producing it? How much
time does that represent? Who is preparing/serving it?
Food production is one of the greatest labor-mobilizing force in the world; a
huge motivator of immigration
78% of farm workers in the US are foreign born, spending an average of
10 years in the US
These workers sustain our food economy
National cuisines change based on such volumes of immigration,
e.g. salsa "dethroning" ketchup in the US
The American food system produces enough food for all Americans, generally, to
feed everyone nearly twice over, after exports
We produce an overabundance of food
We are also rich enough, generally, that people can afford more food than they
need
We, therefore, have a system set up for competition; food companies compete
for every dollar spent on food, making products that are designed to sell, not
necessarily to nourish us
Many foods that enter our diet do so b/c of deliberate efforts on the part of
food companies

How We Eat ANT260 Page 2