Food systems began to be organized on a grand scale to feed larger cities and fuel local economies. The Iron Age and the Roman Empire brought expanding empires and the beginning of global food systems, including regional specialization in products traded throughout empires. Extensive trading routes have existed for salt, spices, tea, and pepper for thousands of years. Advances in food storage, with sealed containers and curing methods, the use of animal transport, sailing ships, and trains to move larger volume than can be carried by individuals trade in ingredients like salt as well as live animals and agricultural products and increasing political and military conflict for resources all have been developments of the city-state. The emergence of city-states has been a major driver of food system changes, bringing together large populations within defined boundaries and requiring complex governance to deliver sufficient quantities and quality of food. This paper looks backward to the drivers of change and forward to the challenges faced by producers, consumers, and policy makers of tomorrow. Since agriculture began, food systems have constantly evolved, each change bringing new advantages and challenges and ever-greater diversity and complexity. The ability to produce a surplus of grain also set the stage for the development of art, religion, and government. Different grain cultures emerged in each of the cradles of civilization: maize in Mexico, rice in China, and wheat and barley in the Middle East.
Cultivating grain allowed for drying and storage of some of the harvest for later consumption. This changed human culture unlike earlier hunter-gatherers, agriculturalists did not need to be in constant motion to find new sources of food. Inhabitants could grow more crops and raise more animals than necessary to feed those who tended them. Food systems emerged with the dawn of civilization when agriculture, including the domestication of animals, set the stage for permanent settlements.
0 kommentar(er)
