Technology vs Organic Essay -- Agricultural Research

Humanity’s timeline illustrates the past, present and future of human beings; commencing nearly 200,000 years ago when Homo sapiens first diverged from its ancestors (Evans,1998). For the next 188,000 years humans were content to forge and live within the constructs of a hunter-gatherer societal organization. Approximately 12,000 years ago agricultural systems began appearing in various places around the world. An astonishingly short period of time later the Agricultural Revolution transformed human ecology, social organization, demography, culture, and religion (Fagan: 2007). Man wholeheartedly embraced the sweeping changes bought on by agriculture and domestication, which definitely proved key to the long run success of agriculture and domestication as a primary method of procuring sustenance. Despite a rapidly changing world, basic and primal human nature and desire remain utterly unchanged. The most fundamental of these challenges is the establishment of an adequate supply of food. The modern food infrastructure employed by contemporary society is rooted in the creation and innovation of food production. Its effective utilization decreases the level of societal labor contribution required and discourages food shortage trepidation amongst individuals. It is hard to fathom given the current status of our society massive agricultural-industrial complex that the hunter-gatherer organization of society dominated for more than 99 percent of our existence (Fagan: 2007). The hunter-gatherer population was characterized by their primary subsistence method, which involved the direct procurement of edible plants and animals from the wild. The primary methods employed were foraging and hunting, which were conducted without any sig... ...y 22.New challenges in food preservation. (2011): 121-126. ScienceDirect. Web. 4 May 2012. Paarlberg, Robert. "The Ethics Of Modern Agriculture." Society 46.1 (2009): 4. MasterFILE Premier. Web. 4 May 2012. Evans, L. T. (1998). Feeding the Ten Billion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Fagan, Brian M. June 2007 World Prehistory: A Brief Introduction. Chapter 5: The Origins of Food Production. Prentice Hall. University of California: Santa Barbara. Pg 126, 129, 132, 132-133, 133, 133-134, 136-137, 137-138, 138 Pringle, Heather November 1998 Science Neolithic Agriculture: The Slow Birth of Agriculture. Vol. 282. No. 539: Pg. 1446 Porter, J., & Rasmussen, J. (2009). Agriculture and Technology. En B. J. Olsen, S. A. Pedersen, & V. Hendricks, A Companion to the Philosophy of Technology (pà ¡gs. 285-289). Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell