Question

Discuss the origins of agriculture and the role of humans in the evolution of crop plants?

What is the connection between agriculture and the Dust Bowl event?

Answer 1

Answer:

During the early time of humans were hunters and gatherers i.e. they used to hunt down the other animals and gathers the fruits from trees in order to survive. At the time, the temperature on the earth was also low, which was not much suitable for the growth of current plant species. With the time humans got evolved. They understood the different uses they can make from animals for their survival and started domesticating the animals. With some natural observations, human understood how they grow the plants and conditions required for their growth. Then the climatic conditions on the earth started to change and the earth started to warm with the shift away from the ice age. With increasing knowledge about plants and change in climatic conditions, humans start to grow the plants needed for their survival. Thus, at around 9000 BCE (12000 years ago from today) humans started agriculture and got settled. With time humans improved their agricultural practices by the use of different tools. Again with time, humans started to move beyond the bare situation of survival. They started trading and business. They lead to the growth of other cash crops. Again in the 20th century with the advent of science and technology, came the green revolution, which changed the course of agriculture. Due to the green evolution, new high yielding varieties of crops, new fertilizer and pesticides came. Thus, with human evolution agriculture also evolved.

Dust bowl is an event of a series of dust storms occurred in the US. This event damaged American agriculture very badly. These huge storms blew away the upper layer of soil (topsoil), which is vital for the growth of agriculture and thus harmed agriculture in the US.

Reasons related to agriculture that caused the Dust Bowl Event:

1) Constant droughts in the US removed the grass cover. This was more of a natural reason.

2) Farmers of the great plains in the US moved away from the dryland farming practice, which is important for the prevention of wind erosion in the arid and semi-arid region.

3) Growing the water-intensive plants in the water scarcer arid/semi-arid region, which is clearly an unscientific practice. This lead to erosion by water in that region.

4) Farmers over-grazed the cattles in theses areas which further removed the vegetation cover.

5) To decrease the prices of cottion and wheat in the market, the farmer started to devote more lands to them. This was done by clearing the prairries for the cotton and wheat production. This was done on the tremendous scale and it lead to a shift in the land use change pattern.

All the above and others such practices lead to the decline of vegetation cover due to the soil erosion. This eroded soil turned into a dust, which was further converted to dust storm due to the large wind force. This lead the series of dust stroms, the event called as 'Dust Bowl Event'. This event affected the large number of people in the US by harminf their agriculture.