Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations - Kootenay Local Agricultural Society

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uries such as sugar, coffee, and tea to basic foodstuffs like grains, meat, and
dairy products. By the end of the nineteenth century, many European
nations depended on imported food to feed their populations.
As Western empires spread around the globe, colonial economics displaced
locally adapted agricultural systems. Typically, introduction of
European methods replaced a diversity of crops with a focus on export
crops like coffee, sugar, bananas, tobacco, or tea. In many regions, sustained
cultivation of a single crop rapidly reduced soil fertility. In addition,
northern European farming methods developed for flat-lying fields
shielded under snow in winter and watered by gentle summer rains led to
severe erosion on steep slopes subject to intense tropical rainfall.
Europe solved its perennial hunger problem by importing food and
exporting people. About fifty million people left Europe during the great
wave of emigration between 1820 and 1930; many European peoples now
have more descendants in former colonies than live in the motherlands.
Colonial economics and policies that favored plantation agriculture unofficially
encouraged soil degradation and perpetual hunger for fresh land.
Paradoxically, the drive to establish colonies was itself driven by European
land hunger fueled by degradation of upland regions and enclosure of
communal farmland into large estates.
Europeans emerged from under the cloud of malnutrition and constant
threat of starvation because their colonial empires produced lots of cheap
food. Europeans outsourced food production as they built industrial
economies. Between 1875 and 1885, a million acres of English wheat fields
were converted to other uses. With a growing industrial economy and a
shrinking agricultural land base, Britain increasingly ate imports. By 1900
Britain imported four-fifths of its grain, three-quarters of its dairy products,
and almost half its meat. Imported food pouring into Europe mined
soil fertility on distant continents to further the growth of industrializing
economies.
After Europe’s colonial empires dissolved at the end of the Second World
War, Josué de Castro, chairman of the executive council of the United
Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, argued that hunger not only
prepared the ground for history’s great epidemics but had been one of the
most common causes of war throughout history. He viewed the success of
the Chinese Revolution as driven by the strong desire for land reform
among tenant farmers forced to surrender half their harvest from microscopic
fields to owners of huge estates. Mao Ze-dong’s strongest ally was
let them eat colonies