The impact of agriculture

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Atkins, P.J., Simmons, I.G. and Roberts, B.K. (1998) People, Land and Time London:
Hodder Arnold ISBN: 0340677147 and 0470236590
http://www.routledge.com/books/details/9780340677148/
CHAPTER 13. THE IMPACT OF AGRICULTURE
‘In a country full of civilized inhabitants timber must not be suffered to grow.
It must give way to fields and pastures, which are of more immediate use and
concern to life’. Morton, J. 1712, cited in Thirgood, J.V. (1989) Man’s impact
on the forests of Europe, Journal of World Forest Resource Management 4,
127-67.
INTRODUCTION
In previous chapters we have looked at the impact of agriculture upon the landscape in the
pre-industrial era, including the enclosure of the medieval open fields and commons up to the
middle of the nineteenth century. Here our task will be to carry the theme forward into the
modern era by investigating agricultural technologies in the twentieth century and also by
looking at cases studies of how present-day rural landscapes have evolved.
THE CREATION OF AGRICULTURAL LANDSCAPES
Old settled European and Asian countries have long since carved their agricultural
landscapes out of wood and marsh, achieving a relatively stable balance between humans and
their environment up to a thousand years ago. This process is either recent or continuing in
the Americas, Africa and Oceania (Table 13.1), and we are only too painfully aware of this as
tropical rainforest yields to the chainsaw (Chapter 8). Over a third of the world’s land area is
now to a greater or lesser extent harnessed to agriculture, and a further forty per cent has
been disturbed by humans (Hannah et al. 1994).
Table 13.1 Changes in land use at the global scale (million ha)
1700 1850 1920 1950 1980
Forests and woodland 6215 5965 5678 5389 5053
Grasslands 6860 6837 6748 6780 6788
Cropland 265 537 913 1170 1501
Source: Richards, J.F. (1990) Land transformation, pp 163-78 in Turner, B.L. et al. (Eds)
The earth transformed by human action Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
According to Simmons (1987), the agricultural landscape was modified by the following:
 The use of fire to clear forests and grasslands for cultivation.
 The development of stone and later, metal, axes accelerated woodland clearance.
 Modifications to the soil by digging sticks, spades, and ploughs.
 The construction of terraces, mounds, ridges and furrows for agricultural use.
 Irrigation and artificial drainage works.
 The use of fences, dykes, ditches and bunds as boundaries and livestock barriers.
 The domestication, selective breeding and spread of useful animals and plants.

Apart from the physical extent of land-use change, agriculture has involved the modification
of natural ecosystems). According to Tivy (1990), the differences between agro-ecosystems
and wild ecosystems are:
 Less diversity of plant and animal species.
 Less complex structure (spatial organization of its components).
 Reduction of the length of the food chain. In the wild this may be four trophic levels
of plants, herbivores, carnivores and top carnivores. In agriculture humans replace
the carnivores and in arable farming the herbivores as well.
 A larger proportion of biomass is comprised of animals, especially large ruminants.
 A much smaller proportion of the energy pool is routed through dead and decaying
matter in the soil.
 Nutrient cycling is speeded up and is usually maintained by inputs of organic or
inorganic fertilizers.
 Agro-ecosystems are more open in the sense that they exchange more energy and
material with the outside world. Thus livestock on a farm in Britain may consume
concentrated feed produced in America. Some exports from the agro-ecosystem may
be unwanted and unplanned, especially the leaking of polluting chemicals into other
wild or managed systems.
Modern commercial agriculture has deliberately reduced the number of crops, and varieties
of those crops, upon which it relies. There are probably between 10,000 and 80,000 edible
plant species in the world, of which roughly 3,000 have been exploited at one time or another
throughout history. Of these only 150 have become widespread and 29 species currently
account for 90 per cent of food production. Table 13.2 lists the major groups of plants and
animals and gives an estimate of their output by weight. It should be remembered that food
products are difficult to compare, one tonne of butter hardly being equivalent to one tonne of
sugar cane, unless the nutrient content of each is calculated.
FACTORS WHICH HAVE ACCELERATED CHANGE IN TWENTIETH CENTURY
AGRICULTURAL LANDSCAPES
There have been many significant economic and technological changes in modern times
which have widened and deepened the environmental and landscape impacts of agriculture.
We will summarize them here only in the briefest form. For greater detail see Grigg (1987).
Von Thünen argued in 1826 that transport costs were a major differentiating factor in land
use variations. He was writing before the railway age and of course he could not have
predicted the easing of time schedules and unit costs that would come with better road, sea
and air transport, to the extent that food is now traded globally and demand in one country
may stimulate a supply elsewhere in the world. The interconnexions are now becoming so
complex that one can reasonably assert that environmental change in the producing areas is
driven to an extent by global factors.
The most basic elements of any farming enterprise are called the factors of production: land,
labour, capital, entrepreneurship. In the twentieth century there has been a major shift
towards the last two, especially in developed countries, with capital-intensive inputs such as
machinery and chemicals being substituted for labour, and to a certain extent even for land in
certain enterprises such as pigs, poultry and horticulture. As a result farms have become

larger in order to achieve economies of scale and the human contact with the soil has been
greatly reduced, with an exodus of redundant farmers and farm labourers from the
countryside that has undermined much of the earlier logic of landscape elements. Thus,
small enclosed fields in Europe are being replaced by large, open, prairie-like fields in some
areas, in order to provide easy turning circles for tractors and combine harvesters, and hedges
are particularly threatened.
Table 13.2 The major plants and animals
Group
Output
1990
(million
tonnes)
Species in descending order of economic significance
Cereals
1,955
Wheat, rice, maize, barley, sorghum, oats, rye, millet
Roots, tubers
597
Potatoes, cassava, sweet potatoes, yams, taro
Vegetables
442
Tomatoes, cabbage, onions, carrots, cucumbers, pumpkins,
aubergines, cauliflowers, green peas, green peppers, green
beans, garlic, artichokes
Fruit
342
Grapes, oranges, bananas, apples, water melons, plantains,
mangoes, pears, pineapples, cantaloupes, peaches, lemons,
plums, papayas, grapefruit, pomegranates, dates,
strawberries, avocadoes, apricots, raisins, currants,
raspberries
Beverages &
stimulants
128
Hops, tobacco, coffee, tea, cocoa beans
Oil crops
74 (oil)
Soya beans, cotton seed, coconuts, oil seed rape, groundnuts,
sunflower, olives, palm kernels, linseed, sesame, castor
beans, safflower, hemp
Pulses
59
Beans, peas, lentils
Sugar
26
Sugar cane, sugar beet
Fibre
25
Cotton, jute, flax, sisal, hemp
Rubber
5
Treenuts
4
Almonds, walnuts, hazel nuts, chestnuts, cashews, pistachios
Animals
Bovine
53 (meat)
514 (milk)
Cattle, buffaloes
Poultry
36 (eggs)
40 (meat)
Chickens, ducks, turkeys
Pigs
69
Sheep, goats
9 (meat)
17 (milk)
Source: Food & Agriculture Organization
Marketing has also played its part. Proximity to a well-organized market of significant size
undoubtedly encourages the production of perishables such as fruit and vegetables (Figure
13.1), and producers’ marketing cooperatives or a state scheme such as the British Milk

Marketing Board (1933-94) also shift the spatial structure of production. Most recently the
buying power of food processing factories and of retail supermarket chains has reduced the
independence once enjoyed by individual farmers over varieties of crops and their quality.
State policies were significant in the nineteenth century, not least Britain’s decision in the
1840s to abolish the Corn Laws and enter the world of free trade for its foodstuffs, but the
last fifty years has seen a drift to greater intervention. Most advanced countries support their
farmers financially but the European Union’s Common Agricultural Policy has attracted the
most comment. Its subsidies for decades encouraged the expansion of arable land through
the draining of marshes, the ploughing of heath, and a general intensification of production in
order to achieve the EU’s aim of self-sufficiency in a range of commodities.
The breeding of new, high-yielding varieties (HYVs) of crops and animals has been
remarkably successful in recent decades, with the result that many fields are now occupied by
species or varieties that would not have been grown fifty years ago because of the
environmental limits of climate and soil (Figure 13.2). In May much of the British landscape
now turns yellow with the flowering of oilseed rape and in many poor countries the Green
Revolution has enabled the spread of new HYVs of wheat, rice and other cereals. In the
latter case these crops require substantial quantities of moisture and there has been a
concerted effort by governments to introduce irrigation works into new areas, thereby
modifying hydrological régimes and making different demands upon local skills and
resources.

Finally, technology has made available an array of agro-chemicals. There are fertilizers to
increase yields, herbicides to kill competitive weeds, and pesticides and fungicides to repel
the problems of disease and attack to which the crop plants themselves are prone.
Worldwide about 4.4 million tonnes of pesticides are used every year and the market for
agro-chemicals as a whole is worth $25 billion (Mannion 1995).
NEGATIVE ASPECTS OF AGRICULTURE
Soil erosion
Unfortunately the unforseen consequences of some of these improvements have led to land
degradation, especially in the drylands (Table 13.3). Amongst the worst is soil erosion
which, although it occurs naturally, has been exacerbated by human action. Estimates put the
present sediment yield of the world’s rivers at 2.7 to 5.0 times greater than before human
disturbance of the landscape (see Chapter 4). The clearance of forest may be enough to start
erosion of fragile soils which are subject to heavy tropical downpours; elsewhere
overgrazing or the lack of soil conservation measures on slopes may increase erosion by
water or wind. Soil type is a crucial factor, with the easily erodible loess soils of the Yellow
River basin in China losing 100 tonnes per hectare annually. Globally a loss of 10 tonnes per
hectare is considered high and 20 tonnes very high. Varying estimates suggest that roughly
26-75 billion tonnes of topsoil are lost globally every year.
There are three main effects of soil erosion:
 Loss of soil nutrients and organic matter, reducing the natural fertility and water
retentive capacity of the soil.
 Landscape modification by gullying, which in severe cases may make farming
difficult.
 Increased sediment loads in streams and rivers, causing the silting of irrigation
channels, dams and reservoirs, and affecting water supplies for towns and industry.
There may be an increased risk of flooding downstream.

Table 13.3 Land degradation by region
Susceptible drylands Other
hectares % hectares %
(millions) degraded (millions) degraded
Africa 1286.0 24.8 1679.6 10.4
Asia 1671.8 22.1 2584.2 14.5
Australasia 663.3 13.1 218.9 7.0
Europe 299.7 33.2 650.8 18.3
North America 732.4 10.8 1458.5 5.3
South America 516.0 15.3 1251.5 13.1
World 5169.2 20.0 7843.5 11.8
Source: United Nations Environment Programme (1992) World atlas of desertification
London: Arnold
It is not surprising that scientists have emphasised climatic factors such as the amount and
intensity of rainfall, and the variable resistance of the soil. We must remember, however,
that one of the most important influences upon local rates of soil erosion is the attitude and
customs of farmers and society at large (Figure 13.3). In particular, the adoption of intensive
farming practices in the search for a short-term profit may lead to long-term ruin if the soil
resource is eroded. If the costs of such environmental degradation are included in the price
of any crops produced on that land both farmers and consumers might be given pause for
thought.
The Indonesian island of Java is a case in point. It has a very high population density
sustained by the intensive cultivation of small farms of 0.4 ha or less. Erosion rates are
highest on limestone/marl soils where losses are 19-60 tonnes/ha. The most damaging land-

use is tegal or rainfed cropping of maize, rice and cassava on sloping upland fields (Table
13.4). The costs of this soil erosion are very difficult to assess but best estimates suggest
siltation damage to irrigation systems, reservoirs and harbours totalling £20-60 million per
annum and productivity losses on site of £230 million, equivalent to 4 per cent of the value of
tegal crops.
Table 13.4 Soil erosion in Java
Land use Area Erosion
(million ha) (tonnes/ha)
Sawah (wet rice) 4.6 0.5
Forest 2.4 5.8
Degraded forest 0.4 87.2
Wetlands 0.1 -
Tegal 5.3 138.3
Total 12.9 61.2
Source: Pearce, D, Barbier, E. & Markandya, A. (1990) Sustainable development:
economics and environment in the Third World London: Earthscan
Government policies, assisted to a certain extent by overseas aid, have sought to reduce
population pressure on the land by encouraging transmigration from Java to other, less
densely occupied outer islands, and to give advice to farmers on soil conservation measures
such as bench terracing to reduce downslope erosion. Declining oil revenues, however, have
persuaded the authorities to stress the export of agricultural products such as cassava,
especially since the European Community has granted Indonesia the right to export about 10
per cent of its cassava output to Europe. The response has been alarming. Many producers
have abandoned their traditional mixed farming systems, which have little impact on the soil,
to the monocropping of cassava, sometimes even removing terracing in order to increase the
cropped area.
The profitability of vegetable crops has also stimulated their intensive production on steeply
sloping volcanic soils, which are very fertile but erodible. Vegetables and sugar cane are
often grown on the land of absentee land owners by share tenants who have no incentive to
conserve the soil of their landlord.
We can identify two opposing types of thinking about soil erosion:
1. The classic approach. Here the problem is blamed on the farmers, who are accused of
conservatism, ignorance, apathy and laziness. In addition, over-population is thought to be
responsible for soil erosion through the demand for food beyond the carrying capacity of the
land. Several solutions are advanced:
(a) The authorities intervene strongly to forbid grazing in a certain area or to require labour
service to build terraces and other conservation works.
(b) Ignorance is countered by soil conservation education and the demonstration of new
technologies.
(c) It is thought that if farmers were more involved in the market economy they would have a
better reason to conserve soil resources and adopt technologies that would allow a greater

productivity of food.
2. Soil erosion is taken to be a socio-environmental problem. To see it only as a physical
process is profoundly mistaken. The political economy approach sees soil erosion as a
symptom and a result of an unjust system. Development is never in the interests of all
members of society: inevitably some groups or classes benefit more than others. In Third
World countries environmental degradation has little relevance for the urban-based élite
except perhaps in as much as it affects their interests as absentee owners of farm land. The
peasant families who suffer the immediate consequences of soil erosion have little political
power or influence on policy-making. Small-scale farming is neglected, and any government
support that there is for agriculture is likely to go to the larger, commercial farmers whose
exploitative attitude to the environment is often very damaging. Only when soil erosion is
seen adversely to affect the process of capital accumulation by the ruling classes will
attempts be made to reduce it.
Salinization
This second form of soil degradation occurs mainly in arid and semi-arid climates, where
concentrations of chloride, sulphate and carbonate salts of sodium, calcium and magnesium
may affect crop yields. Salts reduce the soil’s ability to hold air and nutrients and they are
toxic to many plants.
As with soil erosion, the process of salinization can be natural but human intervention has
also played a major rôle. The use of irrigation without adequate drainage may raise the water
table and increase the risk of salty ground water reaching the root zone and even the surface
by capillary action. Australia is perhaps the worst affected country, with over 40 per cent of
its soils saline or alkaline. Human responsibility is clear in the irrigated areas of South
Australia and Victoria. In Syria 50 per cent of irrigated land is salinized and in Uzbekistan
up to 80 per cent of some large-scale irrigated projects have been lost.
Dealing with salt accumulation is very expensive. Installing drainage systems to lower water
tables and dispose of salty water are technically feasible but who should pay and what are the
economic benefits? Alternatives to such physical works might be a change of land use, such
as from crops to pasture, or a switch to more salt tolerant species such as barley, sugar beet or
cotton.
Desertification
Desertification, a third form of land degradation, has in recent years been brought into the
popular vocabulary and acquired a broad meaning. It implies a reduction of biological
activity by the action of humans or by climatic change, especially desiccation, to the point
where desert-like conditions prevail. The popular image is of irreversible change in which
sand dunes encroach upon over-grazed, semi-arid pastures. In reality the process of
desertification can affect a wide range of environments through a complex set of processes.
In 1991 desertification impinged upon the lives of 850 million people (rising to 1.2 billion by
the year 2000) living mainly in the arid and semi-arid areas of the world. Impacts upon
agricultural land have been widespread. Annual losses of crop production are estimated to be
£28 billion each year, and a further 6 million hectares of land are lost each year, a process
which can be prevented only by the expenditure annually of £2 billion. Corrective measures

and rehabilitation of affected land would cost a further £11 billion a year.
The causes of desertification are:
 The shortage of water in desert fringe areas prompts a concentration of people and
livestock around the few water sources. Overgrazing around water holes leads to the
degradation of vegetation, especially in drought years when nomadic pastoralists may
be driven to seek temporary settlement.
 Poor people must rely upon fuel sources for cooking and lighting such as animal dung
and wood. The latter is problematic because a dense rural population will quickly
clear a sparsely vegetated area of its trees and shrubs, sometimes to a distance of
many kilometres from a village. The loss of the binding effect of vegetation upon the
soil can lead to soil erosion. Many African countries derive over 80 per cent of their
domestic energy from fuelwood, such as Mali (97 per cent), Burkina Faso (94 per
cent), Tanzania (94 per cent), and Sudan (81 per cent).
 Traditional nomadic pastoralism was in balance with the harsh environment of arid
areas until recently. The increase in herd numbers since the 1950s and the restriction
of nomads to smaller and smaller areas beyond the settled zone, has meant a greater
pressure upon the carrying capacity of the meagre pastures (Figure D1.4).
 Unfavourable climatic cycles, such as the 1968-73 drought of the Sahel belt to the
south of the Sahara and the 1980s dry period in southern Africa.
 Unsustainable agriculture, particularly the over-cultivation of soils of marginal
fertility and fragile structure.
The reduction of biodiversity
The reduction of biodiversity is the fourth negative consequence of agriculture. Tropical
forests contain 62 per cent of known plant species and their biological diversity is
extraordinary. But such is the present rate of forest clearance, for agriculture and other uses,

that a quarter of the world’s species might become extinct within ten to twenty years. Such
wanton destruction is not only ecologically regrettable but also economically foolish. It is
difficult to tell what we might lose in terms of useful genetic material for medicines and the
improvement of crop varieties.
But there are also threats to biodiversity in developed countries. Many traditional crop
varieties are being abandoned by farmers because they do not have desirable characteristics
of high yield or marketability. Of the 9,000 apple varieties grown in the UK one hundred
years ago, for instance, only nine are now grown on any scale. In Greece 95 per cent of
native wheat varieties ceased commercial production between 1945 and 1986.
Such a simplification and concentration of genetic resources is dangerous. Many of the new
HYVs produced recently by plant breeders are not adapted to pest and disease resistance in
the way that the traditional varieties were after hundreds or thousands of years of careful
selection by peasant farmers. Hitherto the new HYVs have also failed to meet the varied and
very specific environmental constraints of agriculture in marginal areas, away from the
favoured realm of large-scale commercial enterprises. By maintaining the genetic pool of
species and their varieties, future science can perhaps use desirable characteristics such as
drought resistance, salt tolerance, and so on, which are presently scattered, perhaps
unrecognized, throughout the fields of traditional farmers around the world. Genetic erosion,
without serious attempts at preservation, is a very serious danger.
Agricultural pollution
Agricultural pollution is the fifth unplanned, negative side effect. Concern here is about the
use of toxic materials which may contaminate the environment and adversely affect the
health of plants and animals, including humans. The use of some agricultural chemicals such
as fertilizers, pesticides, fungicides and herbicides is hazardous, especially where they are
persistent in the soil and may accumulate in the food chain.
World fertilizer use has increased tenfold since 1950, and pesticides by 32 times. Insufficient
research has been done for us to know the full health implications for humans but the World
Health Organization has estimated that 200,000 people die each year through the effects of
pesticide poisoning and a further 3 million suffer acute symptoms.
Rachel Carson’s Silent spring (1962) alerted us to the shocking effect of agro-chemicals upon
the environment and was one of the stimuli of the modern conservation movement that has
begun to have an impact upon national and international politics. Carson, and the many other
writers who followed her example, pointed to the persistent nature of many pesticides, such
as DDT, whose poisonous character became most damaging in the higher levels of the food
chain, for instance amongst birds of prey. In other words, their impact diffuses far beyond
the initial location of spraying, as the chemical is carried in the bodies of animals or leaches
into groundwater or the drainage system.
Even natural animal waste, which normally would be welcomed in a low intensity organic
farming system, can become a nuisance in excess. In the Netherlands, for instance, a surplus
of manure has resulted from dairy farming and other intensive livestock rearing, to the extent
that there are severe problems of storage and disposal. 94 million tonnes are produced each
year but the land can only absorb 50 million tonnes safely as a fertilizer. Strict regulations

have to be enforced about its use on the land because of a problem of nitrates and phosphates
leaching into ground and surface water. In Britain the pollution of streams by accidental
discharges of slurry tanks and silage towers has increased alarmingly. Slurry is a hundred
times more toxic than domestic sewage and some other agricultural wastes a thousand times
stronger. Over 25 per cent of river pollution incidents in 1991 were caused by farming. Also
in 1991 the government introduced a Code of Good Agricultural Practice for the Protection
of Water in England and Wales.
In Britain in 1990 1.7 million people were drinking water with levels of nitrates (mainly from
fertilizers) above the World Health Organization’s recommended limit of 10 milligrams per
litre. This is especially worrying for people living in areas of arable farming on the limestone
rocks of eastern England. The government has designated several Nitrate Sensitive Areas
and their number is likely to increase as the threat comes to be recognized.
CASE STUDY: HEDGE REMOVAL IN BRITAIN
The English Midlands have had a strange experience with hedges. Any that were planted in
Romano-British times were grubbed out during the Dark Ages and the early medieval period,
to make way for the open vistas of the common field system (Chapter 11). Here parcel
boundaries were in the form of earth balks or marker stones and hedges were rare. From
1750-1850, during the period of enclosure (see Chapter 7), however, 320,000 km of hedges
were again planted as edges to the new fields carved out of the open fields. This was as
much as the planting in the previous 500 years put together. In the twentieth century hedges

have been removed again (Figure 13.5) in order to create sufficient space to turn their
modern agricultural machinery. Farmers can waste two-thirds of their time turning and
dealing with difficult corners. In a 40 hectare field this turning time is reduced to 20 per
cent.
Between 1947 and 1993, about 380,000 km of hedges (or 47 per cent of the British total)
were destroyed. The impact on wildlife, especially birds and hedgerow plants was
devastating. In recent years environmentalists have campaigned to stop the destruction of
hedgerows, attempting for instance to give hedges the same protection of preservation orders
enjoyed by valued trees. The government responded in 1986 and 1992 with the introduction
of subsidies for hedge replanting. The Countryside Commission’s Hedge Stewardship
Scheme has encouraged farmers to agree to a ten year plan of replanting and hedge
restoration, in return for a monetary payment of £2.50 per metre. This is more than a little
ironic since previously subsidies had been paid, often to the same farmers, for hedge
removal.
BIOTECHNOLOGY AND THE REFASHIONING OF THE LANDSCAPE
In the broadest sense biotechnology has been with us since the domestication of plants and
animals and their breeding to enhance useful characteristics. Recently, however, the term
has acquired connotations that have moved from the conventional experimental field plots
into the laboratory, with the manipulation of cells and increasingly the use of advanced
microbiological techniques such as genetic engineering. There are several approaches to the
use of biotechnology in plants.
Tissue culture involves chopping up a plant to make thousands of identical plants under
controlled conditions. This doubles the speed of traditional plant breeding. DNA Plant
Technology of New Jersey have recently used tissue culture to bring to market a tomato
variety for the Campbell Soup Corporation which is high in solids. It was produced by
manipulating leaf cells in an existing variety, in three years rather than the usual seven.
Genetic manipulation in the full sense is a relatively recent phenomenon, but it holds out
great promise for plants and animals with a range of desirable features such as increased
productivity and resistance to pest attack. So far only a few crops have been genetically
manipulated and released on to the market, not least because of the fierce opposition of
environmentalists who fear that there may be effects which cannot be predicted. Two
methods are employed. First, it is possible by the injection of DNA with a very fine needle
into the nucleus of an individual plant cell. More common is the use of a microbe,
Agrobacterium tumefaciens, to carry the new gene(s) into a plant’s cells.
The biotechnology corporations, such as Monsanto and Calgene, seem likely to change the
nature of agriculture over the long term. It is conceivable that they will develop crops
tolerant of saline, very dry or cold conditions, and thus the potential of what is presently
marginal land will increase. Alternatively, the enhanced productivity of agriculture in the
core areas may be sufficient to satisfy world demand and there may be reduced pressure to
intensify in environmentally fragile regions. The optimists even argue that there will be a
reduced demand for fertilizers and biocides, and that soil erosion and fossil fuel consumption
will decline (Mannion 1995). Either way, the environmental and landscape consequences are

likely to be fundamental.
One might hope that biotechnology could help to solve the world’s food problems by
allowing poor countries to become agriculturally self sufficient, but recent developments
suggest that this chance has already been lost. The market for the new products is dominated
by western based transnational biotechnology companies whose motivations are profit-
related rather than humanitarian. Third World farmers will be charged to use the genetically
improved seeds and Third World companies are unlikely to be able to replicate these seeds
because of a move to allow the patenting of transgenic products.
Interestingly, Goodman et al. (1987) hypothesize a radical scenario that, if even partially
correct, would change the face of the planet. They argue that the main applications of
biotechnology may well be in the factory rather than the field, and that the manufacture of
foodstuffs in future may resemble the culture of the mycoprotein which is the main
constituent of artificial vegetarian foods such as Quorn. Thus plants and animals, and
agriculture as conventionally understood, would be redundant and the ten millennia of agro-
ecosystem evolution would end.
CONCLUSION
The power of agriculture to transform landscapes stretches from the low-tech realm of poor
countries to the high-tech of the west. But in the minds of many the increased productive
power of farmers in the developed world has been won at the expense of the environment,
with a number of important negative processes set in train. It remains to be seen whether this
trend to intensification per unit of labour input can be managed sustainably, for instance by
the greater use of organic farming methods, or whether the landscapes of capitalist
agriculture will spread further.
Current indications are that rural areas will become more standardized in their organization
and appearance around the world, just as modern and post-modern urban landscapes have
become commonplace in the cities of all continents. This is because agriculture is
increasingly just another subset of the modern project (Chapter 16), exhibiting its features of
simplification, capital investment in technology to boost production, regulation of working
practices and quality of output, and restructuring for the extraction of maximum surplus
value.
FURTHER READING AND REFERENCES
David Grigg’s work is an excellent source of information about agricultural historical
geography and Antoinette Mannion (1995) has written the definitive account of the
relationships between agricultural and environment.
Goodman, D.E, Sorj, B. & Wilkinson, J. (1987) From farming to biotechnology Oxford:
Blackwell
Grigg, D.B. (1980) Population growth and agrarian change: historical perspectives
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Grigg, D.B. (1982) The dynamics of agricultural change London: Hutchinson
Grigg, D.B. (1987) The industrial revolution and land transformation, pp 79-109 in Wolman,

M.G. & Fournier, F.G.A. (Eds) Land transformation in agriculture Chichester: Wiley
Grigg, D.B. (1989) English agriculture: an historical perspective Oxford: Blackwell
Grigg, D.B. (1992) The transformation of agriculture in the west Oxford: Blackwell
Hannah, L. et al. (1994) A preliminary inventory of human disturbance of world
ecosystems, Ambio 23, 246-50
Mannion, A. (1995) Agriculture and environmental change: temporal and spatial dimensions
Chichester: Wiley
Simmons (1987) Transormation of land in pre-industrial time, pp 45-77 in Wolman, M.G. &
Fournier, F.G.A. (Ed.) Land transformation in agriculture Chichester: Wiley
Tivy, J. (1990) Agricultural ecology Harlow: Longman