Tarlac State University

College of Architecture and Fine Arts

Department of Architecture

Architectural Planning 03
CRITIQUE PAPER

Reading I: Farmer Power

Guns, Germs, & Steel by Jared Diamond

Santos, Charmierae M. -Archi 4B

Student Name & Section

Ar. Darylle Ann C. Cea, uap

Course Instructor
 Tarlac State University
College of Architecture and Fine Arts
Department of Architecture

Outline:
Reading I: Farmer Power
Guns, Germs, & Steel by Jared Diamond

What it really boils down to is working the land and livestock to get the most out of what
you can. Farming is something as simple as working the land to give to your family, and maybe
make some money on the side. These types of farms tend to be a smaller number of acres, and
usually family run. On the other hand, you can have large industrial farms where thousands of
acres are farmed.
Based on the Reading of the article of Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared that tackles about
the Farmer Power, Farming is emphasized direct and indirect values during the old times. It
keeps their body warm and can provide a lot of valuable materials for them. That is why farming
is very import in those time and even today. For our ancestors, before 7 million years ago they
learn how to hunt wild animals serve as their food to survive or also known as Hunting-gatherer
lifestyle. As time pass by, different people and different food production has been made because
as the ancient people learn and discover my things for living and to survive. And during this time
they have realized that not all the animals and species they can hunt are no all edible, some may
be poisonous, indigestible, low nutrition value and tedious to prepare, difficult to gather and
some are dangerous to hunt. That is why the people on those days look for growing plants that
they can plant, as a result they obtain to find edible plants and can feed many more herders and
farmers. And according to them the large domestic mammals interacted with domestic plants to
increase food production by pulling plows and thereby making it possible for people to till land
that had previously been uneconomical for farming. A more indirect way involved the
consequences of the sedentary lifestyle enforced by food production. And during that time
sedentary people who are devoted or into farming and food production, they are not bothered on
carrying and raising their children. They will have children as many as they can and feed. Their
birth interval was only two years unlike the nomadic-hunter

gatherer. Because for them the higher birthrate of food producers, together with their ability to
feed more people per arce, lets them achieve much higher population. Another reason why they
value farming is by this they have learn that the plows animals and large mammals are also
useful and can help them not just for food, but also to create ways on how to make food and
 Tarlac State University
College of Architecture and Fine Arts
Department of Architecture
some are for other use such as crops likes natural fibers for making clothing, blankets, nets and
rope. And most major center of plant domestications evolved only not for food crops but also
fiber crops like cotton, flax and hemp.
In short farming plants and raising animals has a great contribution, they meant much
more as food but also they help a lot into the development of human populations and ultimately
explains why empires, literacy and steel weapons developed. Today most of the people on earth
consumed food that they produce themselves or someone else produced for them. As years pass
by, a lot of changes and ways and means in gathering and producing food, according to the
article a few decades from now bands of hunter-gatherer will be vanished and more of new ways
of food production will be created.