History of agriculture

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"Agricultural history" redirects here. For the journal, see Agricultural History (journal).
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Ploughing with a yoke of horned cattle in Ancient Egypt. Painting from the burial chamber of Sennedjem, c. 1200 BC.

centers of origin
. The development of agriculture about 12,000 years ago changed the way humans lived. They switched from nomadic hunter-gatherer lifestyles to permanent settlements and farming.[1]

Wild

azuki beans. Rice was also independently domesticated in West Africa and cultivated by 1000 BC.[8][9] Pigs were domesticated in Mesopotamia around 11,000 years ago, followed by sheep. Cattle were domesticated from the wild aurochs in the areas of modern Turkey and India around 8500 BC. Camels
were domesticated late, perhaps around 3000 BC.

In

black eyed peas, along with tree crops such as the kola nut and oil palm.[16] Plantains were cultivated in Africa by 3000 BC and bananas by 1500 BC.[17][18] The helmeted guineafowl was domesticated in West Africa.[19] Sanga cattle was likely also domesticated in North-East Africa, around 7000 BC, and later crossbred with other species.[20][21]

In South America, agriculture began as early as 9000 BC, starting with the cultivation of several species of plants that later became only minor crops. In the

teosinte was domesticated about 7000 BC and selectively bred to become domestic maize. Cotton was domesticated in Peru by 4200 BC; another species of cotton was domesticated in Mesoamerica and became by far the most important species of cotton in the textile industry in modern times.[22] Evidence of agriculture in the Eastern United States dates to about 3000 BCE. Several plants were cultivated, later to be replaced by the Three Sisters
cultivation of maize, squash, and beans.

root vegetables were domesticated in New Guinea around 7000 BC. Bananas were cultivated and hybridized in the same period in Papua New Guinea. In Australia, agriculture was invented at a currently unspecified period, with the oldest eel traps of Budj Bim dating to 6,600 BC[23] and the deployment of several crops ranging from yams[24] to bananas.[25]

The

manioc to Europe, and Old World crops such as wheat, barley, rice, and turnips
, and livestock including horses, cattle, sheep, and goats to the Americas.

farm subsidies. In response, organic farming
developed in the twentieth century as an alternative to the use of synthetic pesticides.

Origins

Main article: Neolithic Revolution

Origin hypotheses

Indigenous Australian
camp by Skinner Prout, 1876

Scholars have developed a number of hypotheses to explain the historical origins of agriculture. Studies of the transition from hunter-gatherer to agricultural societies indicate an antecedent period of intensification and increasing sedentism; examples are the Natufian culture in the Levant, and the Early Chinese Neolithic in China. Current models indicate that wild stands that had been harvested previously started to be planted, but were not immediately domesticated.[27][28]

Localised climate change is the favoured explanation for the origins of agriculture in the Levant.[1] When major climate change took place after the last ice age (c. 11,000 BC), much of the earth became subject to long dry seasons.[29] These conditions favoured annual plants which die off in the long dry season, leaving a dormant seed or tuber. An abundance of readily storable wild grains and pulses enabled hunter-gatherers in some areas to form the first settled villages at this time.[1]

Early development

Further information: List of food origins
Sumerian harvester's sickle, 3000 BC, made from baked clay

Early people began altering communities of flora and fauna for their own benefit through means such as fire-stick farming and forest gardening very early.[30][31][32] Wild

Monophyletic characteristics were attained without any human intervention, implying that apparent domestication of the cereal rachis could have occurred quite naturally.[33]

scratch plough
pulled by two oxen. Similar ploughs were used throughout antiquity.

Agriculture began independently in different parts of the globe and included a diverse range of taxa. At least 11 separate regions of the Old and New World were involved as independent

Camels were domesticated relatively late, perhaps around 3000 BC.[39]

Centres of origin identified by Nikolai Vavilov in the 1930s. Area 3 (grey) is no longer recognised as a centre of origin, and Papua New Guinea (red, 'P') was identified more recently.[40]

It was not until after 9500 BC that the eight so-called

parthenocarpic fig trees were domesticated.[41][42]

Domesticated

radiocarbon dates, and identifications based solely on grain, rather than on chaff.[46]

By 8000 BC, farming was entrenched on the banks of the

teosinte in southern Mexico by 6700 BC.[47]
The
squash (8000 BC) and several varieties of bean (8000 BC onwards) were domesticated in the New World.[citation needed
]

Agriculture was independently developed on the island of New Guinea.[49] Banana cultivation of Musa acuminata, including hybridization, dates back to 5000 BC, and possibly to 8000 BC, in Papua New Guinea.[50][51]

Pontic steppe around 4000 BC.[56] In Siberia, Cannabis was in use in China in Neolithic times and may have been domesticated there; it was in use both as a fibre for ropemaking and as a medicine in Ancient Egypt by about 2350 BC.[57]

Clay and wood model of a bull cart carrying farm produce in large pots, Mohenjo-daro. The site was abandoned in the 19th century BC.

In northern

azuki
beans.

Chronological dispersal of Austronesian peoples across the Indo-Pacific[60]

In southern China, rice was domesticated in the

Kra-Dai-speakers.[61]

In the

boar, and nilgai were all hunted for food. These are successively replaced by domesticated sheep, goats, and humped zebu cattle by the fifth millennium BC, indicating the gradual transition from hunting and gathering to agriculture.[72]

sunflowers in the Eastern Woodlands of North America.[73]

Civilizations

Sumer

Domesticated animals on a Sumerian cylinder seal, 2500 BC
See also: Neolithic Revolution

dates, grapes, apples, melons, and figs. Alongside their farming, Sumerians also caught fish and hunted fowl and gazelle. The meat of sheep, goats, cows and poultry was eaten, mainly by the elite. Fish was preserved by drying, salting and smoking.[74][75]

Ancient Egypt

Agricultural scenes of threshing, a grain store, harvesting with sickles, digging, tree-cutting and ploughing from Ancient Egypt. Tomb of Nakht, 15th century BC.
Main article: Ancient Egyptian agriculture

The civilization of

Nile River and its dependable seasonal flooding. The river's predictability and the fertile soil allowed the Egyptians to build an empire on the basis of great agricultural wealth. Egyptians were among the first peoples to practice agriculture on a large scale, starting in the pre-dynastic period from the end of the Paleolithic into the Neolithic, between around 10,000 BC and 4000 BC.[76] This was made possible with the development of basin irrigation.[77] Their staple food crops were grains such as wheat and barley, alongside industrial crops such as flax and papyrus.[76] Archaeological evidence also suggests that the spread of agriculture was facilitated by the influx of farming communities from the tropical Sahara 6,500 years ago.[78]

Indian Subcontinent

See also:
Agriculture in the Indus Valley Civilisation

Pastoral farming in India included threshing, planting crops in rows – either of two or of six – and storing grain in granaries.[81][83] Cotton was cultivated by the 5th–4th millennium BC.[84] By the 5th millennium BC, agricultural communities became widespread in Kashmir.[81] Irrigation was developed in the Indus Valley Civilisation by around 4500 BC.[85] The size and prosperity of the Indus civilization grew as a result of this innovation, leading to more thoroughly planned settlements which used drainage and sewers.[85] Archeological evidence of an animal-drawn plough dates back to 2500 BC in the Indus Valley Civilization.[86]

Ancient China

Further information:
Agriculture (Chinese mythology)
rice terraces in Yuanyang County, Yunnan

Records from the

Wang Zhen and his groundbreaking Nong Shu of 1313.[88]

waterwheel

For agricultural purposes, the Chinese had innovated the

Thomas Glick, however, argues for a development of the Chinese plough as late as the 9th century, implying its spread east from similar designs known in Italy by the 7th century.)[96]

Asian rice was domesticated 8,200–13,500 years ago in China, with a single genetic origin from the wild rice

Pearl River valley region of China. Rice cultivation then spread to South and Southeast Asia.[97]

Ancient Greece and Hellenistic world

Further information: Agriculture in ancient Greece
An ear of barley, symbol of wealth in the city of Metapontum in Magna Graecia (i.e. the Greek colonies of southern Italy), stamped stater, c. 530–510 BC

The major cereal crops of the

the rise of the Roman Republic. In the Seleucid Empire, Mesopotamia was a crucial area for the production of wheat, while nomadic animal husbandry was also practiced in other parts.[99]

Roman Empire

Further information:
Roman agriculture
Roman harvesting machine, a vallus, from a Roman wall in Belgium, which was then part of the province of Gallia Belgica

In the

latifundia) were over 500 iugera. The Romans had four systems of farm management: direct work by the owner and his family; slaves doing work under the supervision of slave managers; tenant farming or sharecropping in which the owner and a tenant divide up a farm's produce; and situations in which a farm was leased to a tenant.[100]

The Americas

Agricultural history took a different path from the Old World as the Americas lacked large-seeded, easily domesticated grains (such as wheat and barley) and large domestic animals that could be used for agricultural labor. Rather than the practice which developed in the Old World of sowing a field with a single crop, pre-historic American agriculture usually consisted of cultivating many crops close to each other utilizing only hand labor. Moreover, agricultural areas in the Americas lacked the uniformity of the east–west area of Mediterranean and semi-arid climates in southern Europe and southwestern Asia, but instead had a north–south pattern with a variety of different climatic zones in close proximity to each other. This fostered the domestication of many different plants.[101]

At the time of first contact between the Europeans and the Americans, the Europeans practiced "extensive agriculture, based on the plough and draught animals," with tenants under landlords, but also forced labor or slavery, while the Indigenous peoples of the Americas practiced "intensive agriculture, based on human labour."[102] Europeans wanted control of land for the grazing of their livestock and property rights for the control of production. Though they were impressed with the productivity of traditional farming techniques, they saw no connection to their system and were dismissive of Native American practices as "gardening" rather than a commercializable enterprise.[102][103] Due to several thousand years of selective breeding, maize, the hemisphere's most important crop, was more productive than Old World grain crops. Maize produced two and one-half times more calories per acre than wheat and barley.[104]

South America

See also:
Incan agriculture, History of agriculture in Chile, and Pre-Columbian agriculture in the Amazon Basin
Agriculture terraces were (and are) common in the austere, high-elevation environment of the Andes.
Inca farmers using a human-powered foot plough

The earliest known areas of possible agriculture in the Americas dating to about 9000 BC are in

squash (Cucurbita species), and bottle gourd (Lagenaria siceraria). All are plants of humid climates and their existence at this time on the semi-arid Santa Elena peninsula may be evidence that they were transplanted there from more humid environments.[105][106] In another study, this area of South America was identified as one of the four oldest places of origin for agriculture, along with the Fertile Crescent, China, and Mesoamerica, dated between 6200 BC and 10000 BC.[107] (To facilitate comprehension by readers, Radiocarbon calibrated BP
dates in the above sources have been converted to BC.)

In the Andes region, with civilizations including the

Inca, the major crop was the potato, domesticated between 8000 and 5000 BC.[108][109][110] Coca, still a major crop to this day, was domesticated in the Andes, as were the peanut, tomato, tobacco, and pineapple.[71] Cotton was domesticated in Peru by 4200 BC.[111][112] Animals were also domesticated, including llamas, alpacas, and guinea pigs.[113] The people of the Inca Empire of South America grew large surpluses of food which they stored in buildings called Qullqas.[114]

The most important crop domesticated in the

Pre-Hispanic agriculture near 44° South latitude,[116] as noted by the mention of the cultivation of Chiloé potatoes by a Spanish expedition in 1557.[117]

Mesoamerica

Main article: Agriculture in Mesoamerica
teosinte
(top), maize-teosinte hybrid (middle), to maize (bottom)

In Mesoamerica, wild

squash and beans, while cocoa, also domesticated in the region, was a major crop.[71] The turkey, one of the most important poultry birds, was probably domesticated in Mexico or the U.S. Southwest.[119]

In

terraced hillsides, fertilized their soil, and developed chinampas or artificial islands, also known as "floating gardens". The Mayas between 400 BC to 900 AD used extensive canal and raised field systems to farm swampland on the Yucatán Peninsula.[120][121]

North America

Further information: History of agriculture in the United States, Eastern Agricultural Complex, Prehistoric agriculture on the Great Plains, and Prehistoric agriculture in the Southwestern United States
Wichita village of grass houses surrounded by maize fields in the United States.

The indigenous people of the

Sunflowers, tobacco,[122] varieties of squash and Chenopodium, as well as crops no longer grown, including marsh elder and little barley.[123][124] Wild foods including wild rice and maple sugar were harvested.[125] The domesticated strawberry is a hybrid of a Chilean and a North American species, developed by breeding in Europe and North America.[126] Two major crops, pecans and Concord grapes, were used extensively in prehistoric times but do not appear to have been domesticated until the 19th century.[127][128]

The

natives controlled fire on a regional scale to create a low-intensity fire ecology which prevented larger, catastrophic fires and sustained a low-density agriculture in loose rotation; a sort of "wild" permaculture.[129][130][131][132]

A system of

developed in North America. Three crops that complemented each other were planted together: winter squash, maize (corn), and climbing beans (typically tepary beans or common beans). The maize provides a structure for the beans to climb, eliminating the need for poles. The beans provide the nitrogen to the soil that the other plants use, and the squash spreads along the ground, blocking the sunlight, helping prevent the establishment of weeds. The squash leaves also act as a "living mulch".[133][134]

Sub-Saharan Africa

Yam festival in the Ashanti Empire. Thomas E. Bowdich – 1817.

In the Sahel region, civilizations such as the Mali and Songhai empires cultivated sorghum and pearl millet, which were domesticated between 3000 and 2500 BC.[68][69] The donkey was domesticated in Nubia at approximately 5000 BC.[135][136] Archaeological evidence suggests that Sanga cattle may have been independently domesticated in East Africa at around 1600 BC.[137]

In the tropical region of West Africa, crops such as black-eyed peas, Sea Island red peas, yams, kola nuts, Jollof rice and kokoro were domesticated between 3000 and 1000 BC.[70] The coastal region of West Africa is often referred to as the "Yam Belt", due to its high production of yams.[138] The guineafowl is a poultry bird that was domesticated in West Africa, and while the time of the guineafowl's domestication remains unclear, there is evidence that it was present in Ancient Greece during the 5th century BC.[139]

Several species of coffee were also domesticated throughout Sub-Saharan Africa, with Coffea arabica originating in Ethiopia and serving as the main production of modern-day coffee since the late 15th century.[140]

Oceania

Australia

Native millet, Panicum decompositum, was planted and harvested by Indigenous Australians in eastern central Australia.
Main article: Fire-stick farming
See also: Dark Emu

hunter-gatherers. Due to the policy of terra nullius, Aboriginals were regarded as not having been capable of sustained agriculture. However, the current consensus is that various agricultural methods were employed by the indigenous people.[24][141][25]

In two regions of Central Australia, the central west coast and eastern central Australia, forms of agriculture were practiced. People living in permanent settlements of over 200 residents sowed or planted on a large scale and stored the harvested food. The Nhanda and Amangu of the central west coast grew yams (Dioscorea hastifolia), while various groups in eastern central Australia (the Corners Region) planted and harvested bush onions (yaua – Cyperus bulbosus), native millet (cooly, tindil – Panicum decompositum) and a sporocarp, ngardu (Marsilea drummondii).[30]: 281–304 [28]

Indigenous Australians used systematic burning, fire-stick farming, to enhance natural productivity.[142] In the 1970s and 1980s archaeological research in south west Victoria established that the Gunditjmara and other groups had developed sophisticated eel farming and fish trapping systems over a period of nearly 5,000 years.[143] The archaeologist Harry Lourandos suggested in the 1980s that there was evidence of 'intensification' in progress across Australia,[144] a process that appeared to have continued through the preceding 5,000 years. These concepts led the historian Bill Gammage to argue that in effect the whole continent was a managed landscape.[30]

Torres Strait Islanders are now known to have planted bananas.[25]

Pacific Islands

In New Guinea, archaeological evidence suggests that agriculture independently emerged around 7,000 years ago with the domestication of crops such as bananas and taro. Pigs and chickens were imported to New Guinea, which were later innovated by other Pacific Island nations, such as those in Polynesia.[145]

Middle Ages and Early Modern period

Europe

Main article: Agriculture in the Middle Ages

The

serfs.[146] During the medieval period, the Arab world was critical in the exchange of crops and technology between the European, Asia and African continents. Besides transporting numerous crops, they introduced the concept of summer irrigation to Europe and developed the beginnings of the plantation system of sugarcane growing through the use of slaves for intensive cultivation.[147]

Pietro de Crescenzi

By AD 900, developments in

legumes such as peas, lentils and beans.[150] Improved horse harnesses and the whippletree further improved cultivation.[151]

Watermills were introduced by the Romans, but were improved throughout the Middle Ages, along with windmills, and used to grind grains into flour, to cut wood and to process flax and wool.[152]

Crops included wheat,

nitrogen-fixation fertilizing properties. Crop yields peaked in the 13th century, and stayed more or less steady until the 18th century.[153] Though the limitations of medieval farming were once thought to have provided a ceiling for the population growth in the Middle Ages, recent studies have shown that the technology of medieval agriculture was always sufficient for the needs of the people under normal circumstances,[154][155] and that it was only during exceptionally harsh times, such as the terrible weather of 1315–17, that the needs of the population could not be met.[156][157]

Arab world

Noria wheels to lift water for irrigation and household use were among the technologies introduced to Europe via Al-Andalus in the medieval Islamic world.
Main article: Arab Agricultural Revolution

From the 8th century to the 14th century, the

water mills, dams and reservoirs.[158][159][160]

Columbian exchange

Main article: Columbian exchange

After 1492, a

manioc were the key crops that spread from the New World to the Old, while varieties of wheat, barley, rice and turnips traveled from the Old World to the New. There had been few livestock species in the New World, with horses, cattle, sheep and goats being completely unknown before their arrival with Old World settlers. Crops moving in both directions across the Atlantic Ocean caused population growth around the world and a lasting effect on many cultures in the Early Modern period.[161]

The Harvesters. Pieter Bruegel
– 1565

Maize and cassava were introduced from Brazil into Africa by Portuguese traders in the 16th century,

disease that resulted in widespread famine and the death of over one million people in Ireland alone.[165]

Modern agriculture

See also: History of agricultural science

British agricultural revolution

Main article: British Agricultural Revolution
See also: List of agricultural machinery and Mechanised agriculture
The agriculturalist Charles 'Turnip' Townshend introduced four-field crop rotation and the cultivation of turnips.

Between the 17th century and the mid-19th century, Britain saw a large increase in agricultural productivity and net output. New agricultural practices like

unprecedented population growth to 5.7 million in 1750, freeing up a significant percentage of the workforce, and thereby helped drive the Industrial Revolution. The productivity of wheat went up from 19 US bushels (670 L; 150 US dry gal; 150 imp gal) per acre in 1720 to around 30 US bushels (1,100 L; 240 US dry gal; 230 imp gal) by 1840, marking a major turning point in history.[166]

Jethro Tull's seed drill, invented in 1701

Advice on more productive techniques for farming began to appear in England in the mid-17th century, from writers such as Samuel Hartlib, Walter Blith and others.[167] The main problem in sustaining agriculture in one place for a long time was the depletion of nutrients, most importantly nitrogen levels, in the soil. To allow the soil to regenerate, productive land was often let fallow and, in some places, crop rotation was used. The Dutch four-field rotation system was popularised by the British agriculturist Charles Townshend in the 18th century. The system (wheat, turnips, barley and clover) opened up a fodder crop and grazing crop allowing livestock to be bred year-round. The use of clover was especially important as the legume roots replenished soil nitrates.[168] The mechanisation and rationalisation of agriculture was another important factor.

New Leicester sheep. Machines were invented to improve the efficiency of various agricultural operation, such as Jethro Tull's seed drill of 1701 that mechanised seeding at the correct depth and spacing and Andrew Meikle's threshing machine of 1784. Ploughs were steadily improved, from Joseph Foljambe's Rotherham iron plough in 1730[169] to James Small's improved "Scots Plough" metal in 1763. In 1789 Ransomes, Sims & Jefferies was producing 86 plough models for different soils.[170] Powered farm machinery began with Richard Trevithick's stationary steam engine, used to drive a threshing machine, in 1812.[171] Mechanisation spread to additional farm uses throughout the 19th century. The first petrol-driven tractor was built in America by John Froelich in 1892.[172]

sulphuric acid.[173]

20th century

Further information: Intensive farming
Early 20th-century image of a tractor ploughing an alfalfa field

Dan Albone constructed the first commercially successful gasoline-powered general-purpose tractor in 1901, and the 1923 International Harvester Farmall tractor marked a major point in the replacement of draft animals (particularly horses) with machines. Since that time, self-propelled mechanical harvesters (combines), planters, transplanters and other equipment have been developed, further revolutionizing agriculture.[174] These inventions allowed farming tasks to be done with a speed and on a scale previously impossible, leading modern farms to output much greater volumes of high-quality produce per land unit.[175]

Bt-toxins in genetically modified peanut leaves (bottom) protect from damage by corn borers (top).[176]

The

crop yields to overcome previous constraints. It was first patented by German chemist Fritz Haber. In 1910 Carl Bosch, while working for German chemical company BASF, successfully commercialized the process and secured further patents. In the years after World War II, the use of synthetic fertilizer increased rapidly, in sync with the increasing world population.[177]

Mao Tse-tung that resulted in the Great Chinese Famine from 1959 to 1961 and ultimately reshaped the thinking of Deng Xiaoping
.

In the past century agriculture has been characterized by increased productivity, the substitution of synthetic fertilizers and pesticides for labour,

gene manipulation,[181][182] hydroponics,[183] and the development of economically viable biofuels such as ethanol.[184]

The number of people involved in farming in industrial countries fell radically from 24 percent of the American population to 1.5 percent in 2002. The number of farms also decreased, and their ownership became more concentrated; for example, between 1967 and 2002, one million pig farms in America consolidated into 114,000, with 80 percent of the production on factory farms.[185] According to the Worldwatch Institute, 74 percent of the world's poultry, 43 percent of beef, and 68 percent of eggs are produced this way.[185][186]

Famines however continued to sweep the globe through the 20th century. Through the effects of climatic events, government policy, war and crop failure, millions of people died in each of at least ten famines between the 1920s and the 1990s.[187]

Green Revolution

Main article: Green Revolution
Norman Borlaug, father of the Green Revolution of the 1970s, is credited with saving over a billion people worldwide from starvation.

The Green Revolution was a series of research, development, and technology transfer initiatives, between the 1940s and the late 1970s. It increased agriculture production around the world, especially from the late 1960s. The initiatives, led by Norman Borlaug and credited with saving over a billion people from starvation, involved the development of high-yielding varieties of cereal grains, expansion of irrigation infrastructure, modernization of management techniques, distribution of hybridized seeds, synthetic fertilizers, and pesticides to farmers.[188]

Synthetic nitrogen, along with mined

Thomas Malthus famously predicted that the Earth would not be able to support its growing population, but technologies such as the Green Revolution have allowed the world to produce a surplus of food.[189]

Although the Green Revolution at first significantly increased rice yields in Asia, yield then levelled off. The genetic "yield potential" has increased for wheat, but the yield potential for rice has not increased since 1966, and the yield potential for maize has "barely increased in 35 years". It takes only a decade or two for herbicide-resistant weeds to emerge, and insects become resistant to insecticides within about a decade, delayed somewhat by crop rotation.[190]

An organic farmer, California, 1972

Organic agriculture

Main article: Organic farming

For most of its history, agriculture has been

Lord Northbourne developed these ideas and presented his manifesto of organic farming in 1940. This became a worldwide movement, and organic farming is now practiced in many countries.[192]

See also

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Further reading

Surveys

  • Civitello, Linda. Cuisine and Culture: A History of Food and People (Wiley, 2011) excerpt
  • Federico, Giovanni. Feeding the World: An Economic History of Agriculture 1800–2000 (Princeton UP, 2005) highly quantitative
  • Grew, Raymond. Food in Global History Archived 2011-06-04 at the Wayback Machine (1999)
  • Heiser, Charles B. Seed to Civilization: The Story of Food (W.H. Freeman, 1990)
  • Herr, Richard, ed. Themes in Rural History of the Western World (Iowa State UP, 1993)
  • Kiple, Kenneth F., and Kriemhild Coneè Ornelas, eds. The Cambridge world history of food (2 vol Cambridge University Press, 2000) online.
  • Mazoyer, Marcel, and Laurence Roudart. A History of World Agriculture: From the Neolithic Age to the Current Crisis (Monthly Review Press, 2006) Marxist perspective.
  • Pilcher, Jeffrey M. Food in world history (Routledge, 2023).
  • Whayne, Jeannie. The Oxford Handbook of Agricultural History (2024) excerpt; covers historiographical traditions within geographic regions across the world.

Premodern

  • Bakels, C.C. The Western European Loess Belt: Agrarian History, 5300 BC – AD 1000 (Springer, 2009)
  • Barker, Graeme, and Candice Goucher, eds. The Cambridge World History: Volume 2, A World with Agriculture, 12000 BCE–500 CE. (Cambridge UP, 2015)
  • Bowman, Alan K. and Rogan, Eugene, eds. Agriculture in Egypt: From Pharaonic to Modern Times (Oxford UP, 1999)
  • Cohen, M.N. The Food Crisis in Prehistory: Overpopulation and the Origins of Agriculture (Yale UP, 1977)
  • Crummey, Donald and Stewart, C.C., eds. Modes of Production in Africa: The Precolonial Era (Sagem 1981)
  • Diamond, Jared. Guns, Germs, and Steel (W.W. Norton, 1997)
  • Duncan-Jones, Richard. Economy of the Roman Empire (Cambridge UP, 1982)
  • Habib, Irfan. Agrarian System of Mughal India (Oxford UP, 3rd ed. 2013)
  • Harris, D.R., ed. The Origins and Spread of Agriculture and Pastoralism in Eurasia, (Routledge, 1996)
  • Isager, Signe and Jens Erik Skydsgaard. Ancient Greek Agriculture: An Introduction (Routledge, 1995)
  • Lee, Mabel Ping-hua. The economic history of china: with special reference to agriculture (Columbia University, 1921)
  • Murray, Jacqueline. The First European Agriculture (Edinburgh UP, 1970)
  • Oka, H-I. Origin of Cultivated Rice (Elsevier, 2012)
  • Price, T.D. and A. Gebauer, eds. Last Hunters – First Farmers: New Perspectives on the Prehistoric Transition to Agriculture (1995)
  • Srivastava, Vinod Chandra, ed. History of Agriculture in India (5 vols., 2014). From 2000 BC to present.
  • Stevens, C.E. "Agriculture and Rural Life in the Later Roman Empire" in Cambridge Economic History of Europe, Vol. I, The Agrarian Life of the Middle Ages (Cambridge UP, 1971)
  • Teall, John L. (1959). "The grain supply of the Byzantine Empire, 330–1025". Dumbarton Oaks Papers. 13: 87–139.
    JSTOR 1291130
    .
  • Yasuda, Y., ed. The Origins of Pottery and Agriculture (SAB, 2003)

Modern
  • Mintz, Sidney. Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History (Penguin, 1986)
  • Reader, John. Propitious Esculent: The Potato in World History (Heinemann, 2008) a standard scholarly history
  • Salaman, Redcliffe N. The History and Social Influence of the Potato (Cambridge, 2010)

Europe

North America

External links

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