A History of World Agriculture

Since the dawn of human society, humans have taken to cultivating plants and domesticating animals for food. However, we are now facing a crisis as hundreds of millions of people are faced with famine or flight from the land. From Neolithic times through the earliest civilizations of the ancient Near East, in savannahs, river valleys, and the terraces created by the Incas in the Andean mountains, an increasing range of agricultural techniques developed in response to very different conditions. These developments are recounted in this book, which details how plants, animals, soil, climate and society have interacted throughout human history.