The Past, Present and Future of Agriculture

Plants are Mother Nature’s ultimate factories. Powered by light from the sun, plants combine the earth’s most basic chemical elements with water and gases in the air to create food and energy for growth. They not only feed themselves, but just about every other living organism in the food chain, including us. Much of modern medicine is also based upon botanical extracts and compounds found only in plants. In fact, the sciences of phytochemistry and pharmacognosy are all about making medicines from plants. In addition, almost every manufacturer in the health and beauty business uses botanical extracts to help their products nourish our skin and hair.

You Are What You Eat

Throughout my career in hydroponics, this is the one message that has always stayed with me. I’ve witnessed this phrase unfold before me every time I’ve planted a seed and harvested a fruit. The care that goes into cultivating that plant is mirrored in what comes out of it, so feed and care for your plants well, especially if you plan to eat them!

In this day and age when our industry is constantly bombarded with new fangled technology, plant tonics and formula one growing systems, I thought it would be interesting to take a step back in time to look at where agriculture and hydroponics got started, as well as how far and how fast the industry as a whole has come in such a brief amount of time. On a planet where our diets are so simple that more than three quarters of what we eat is provided by less than a dozen species of flora and fauna, there’s been so many breakthroughs along the way that it’s mind boggling how something so simple as cultivating plants has become so high tech. In this series of articles, I’m going to take us back to the past, revisit the present and try to grab a glimpse into the future of agriculture.

Long before the thought of agriculture entered into the mind of man, we lived by hunting the plains and woodlands for wild animals and spent our days gathering wild, edible plants. Due to climactic changes and other forces of nature, food was always a moving target for early man, so he lived the life of a nomad. In many cases, early humans either enjoyed healthy feasts or suffered through horrible famine. One of the first most significant discoveries was that of learning how to preserve meat through smoking and salting. This helped stay the tribes for longer periods of time as the idea of constantly foraging for food remained unsettling, to say the least.

In this first installment, I’ll do a little digging, in the “dirt” at first, to provide a brief synopsis of the human agricultural experience during our brief parentheses in time here on mother earth.

Considering our planet is somewhere around 4.6 billion years old and what we might call easily recognizable life about 1 billion years, the first hominid life formed about 4 million years ago. The first records of human farmers date back about 12 thousand years and the global agricultural revolution only about 355 years. Not until 1950 did what we call the “modern agricultural revolution,” begin, which continues today at an accelerated pace, much like many other high tech industries. But before we get to the present and future, let’s take a step back into time and take a look at how we got here.

The Past

Just determining the origin of agriculture presents a problem, especially since it’s been in practice long before any written language. While some scholars guess 7,000 years, others surmise more than 10,000. But what impetus first forced the hunter to put down his spear and start sprinkling seeds upon the ground? A question that boggles my mind even more so is how did our ancestors know what to eat from the cornucopia of greens, fruits and flowers so abundant in the wild in all sizes, shapes and colors?

Conjecture would lead most to guess that perhaps we played a game of “monkey see, monkey do,” with indigenous wildlife giving us clues along the way as to what to eat. I’m sure at that point in time a bad choice was probably many a poor soul’s last choice, as a call to poison control wasn’t even a thought at that juncture! As they say, “when in Rome, do as the Romans do”, so perhaps that is exactly what the first hominids did - they ate what they saw wildlife eat and over time, came to realize just what items on the menu were agreeable.

Cultivars

Some of the first crops humans cultivated belonged to the grain family, primarily wheat and barley with a concentration of rice in the Asian countries and Maize and Squash in the Central Americas. But even something as simple as bread isn’t so simple. Recent DNA research on ancient finds of breadcrumbs have uncovered cross breeds with some being significantly more nutritious than others. Not a bad bit of information to pull from a 10,000 year old petrified crouton! You’ve just got to love modern science! Any CSI fans out there?

In fact, evidence has been surfacing that humans have been taking place in the genetic engineering of food crops over the last 7000 years! One such experiment resulted in producing one of our all time BBQ favorites, corn on the cob. It seems Neolithic farmers in North America pooled a strain of wild Mexican grass called Balsas Teosinte and cross pollinated it into hundreds of varying strains of seeded maize over the years. Now try telling that story at your next family BBQ and let me know where they haul you off to! I’m sure this also may bring a seed to thoughts about GMO being such a controversial topic these days.

While most of our protective egos will take full responsibility for inventing farming, it’s quite a shell shocker to learn that neither the Chinese nor Mayans were the first - in fact, it was the insects (ants to be exact). Studies have revealed that ant colonies dating back to 50 million years ago grew mushrooms in their nests which they protected with their own herbicidal secretions and fed with their own special #2. In fact, there is a species of mushrooms that can only be “grown” by ants. It seems that their symbiotic relationship maintains just the right temperature and humidity for the mycelium to grow fruit from deep inside the colonies. To date, scientists have deduced that this specialized technique of “ant farming” was passed from colony to colony as the queen would bring to the nest her own strain of fungi. Some species of ants even favor the same cultivar, even when found thousands of miles apart in the wild.

What agriculture did for the human race was to provide a shift from the hunter-gatherer economy to one of a more stabilized platform from which larger masses of people could congregate and build upon. In fact, some of the first farming communities in northwestern Mexico consisted of 25 acre villages where they grew corn and squash using only the most primitive stick tools to prepare the earth and usually not staying very long in one place.

With the advent of early farming practices, many otherwise nomadic tribes became centralized and the trade of cultivars and fauna began to develop, which widened the gene pool for even more strains of food crops and domesticated fauna to proliferate and provide for us a feast at the dinner table.

The switch between hunting and gathering to farming and raising livestock was gradual and spotty across the world. There were no phones to call caveman Carl and let him know his spear isn’t so dear anymore since your neighbor just perfected raising livestock. People learned directly from others and traditions were handed down from generation to generation.

The main difference between cultivation and domestication are as follows:

Cultivation means to support or expand by means of protection and care for an indigenous species of plant, one that doesn’t vary much from those that grow in the wild.

Domestication involves more human intervention in that humans choose which strains to breed so as to ultimately combine the best of both offerings through cross breeding. Some of the more popular domesticated areas existed in the Near East, North & South China, Sub Saharan Africa, Central America and the Eastern USA.

Characteristics of domesticated plants had favorable qualities over wild strains making them easily harvested and re-sown for quick regeneration. Primarily they were the salad bowl greens and various strains of wheat.

Tools For Preparing the land

The Plow – Nothing more than a forked timber which was drawn behind a mule to loosen the soil for better planting. Later plows had metal appendages called a share which would actually slice and flip the topsoil for better preparation. Later generations of plows were outfitted with seats and self polishing blades which put the name “John Deere” on the map and eventually onto the stock market. When the tractor was invented and fitted to the plow, the “auto plow” came to be, which today is still the industry standard for preparing large farmlands.

The Harrow – After the plow turned the soil, it still needed to be broken down into smaller granules. The Harrow was a rake shaped device pulled by horse or ox which did exactly this - it broke down the large chunks or earth into nice, even, loamy soil, much better suited for productive seeding.

Planting

Humans first sowed seeds by hand. Whether broadcast by hand or placed individually, this system made for quite unruly farmland and difficult, lackluster harvests. With the invention of the dibbler, a board with seed sized holes through which they could be inserted into the ground in a somewhat more even manner, sowing became more precise, but nonetheless still tedious and tiresome. In 1701 Jethro Tull - no, not that one, fellow classic rockers - invented the seed drill. The drill would actually bore down into the ground and place a seed at the proper preset depth. This way fewer seeds would be lost to predators and germination rate would be improved due to the ideal soil moisture and temperature found just below the surface. Single, double, triple and multi headed seed drills were made which are still in use today.

Reaping The Harvest

In early Egypt, a flint sling blade was used to hack the wheat. The Romans invented the scythe and the Europeans used the sickle. By hand, most laborers could take a third of an acre/day. In the early 1800’s labor shortages forced farmers to automate harvesting. One of the first used in the United States was the McCormack Reaper.

Threshing and Winnowing

Separating the wheat grain from the stalks used to be done by beating them with a flail. From there, husks would be chaffed and then winnowed or basically thrown in the air to be separated from the chaff. Not a job for one with allergies I might add! It wasn’t until the advent of the combine in 1838 (that first was drawn by teams of up to 16 horses, and later by steam engines), were all these functions combined into a single efficient machine.

Fertilizers

As farmers realized that successive plantings of the same crop in the same field resulted in lesser and lesser yields, they would just move on since land wasn’t an issue. Some societies discovered that by slashing and burning the plants in a field they would become enriched and quite productive for a period of time. Potash or Potassium (K) is one of the primary nutrients returned to the soil from the technique of slash and burn.

Early farmers soon realized that fields left unplanted for a while would in turn become fertile again which prompted them to allow a field to go “fallow.” Smarter groups realized that allowing livestock to graze on the fallow fields yet increased their fertility even more (which is where the brainstorm of fertilizer came from and yes, it was all organic, and free!)

Irrigation

Since Mother Nature didn’t always cooperate with man, our early ancestors were forced to develop crude means of irrigation systems comprised of dams and canals. The first civilizations to utilize dam and canal irrigation inhabited the Euphrates River Valley nearly 4000 years B.C. In early America the Pueblo desert dwellers lived and died by their irrigation systems and in the Middle East it was the Petra. When the dams and canals ran full they thrived, and, when they dried up they died. Life was truly survival of the fittest back in the early day of mankind. Thousands of years later, and up until this very day, the fertile Nile Valley and Tigris-Euphrates crescent remain plentiful with water, yet if it weren’t for modern techniques, their loss in fertility may very well have made them barren by now.

A Hydroponics History Lesson

The science of hydroponics began with experiments to determine the elementary composition of plants. These experiments have been dated as early as 1600 A.D. In addition, historical records reveal plants have been cultivated in soilless mixtures of sand and gravel much earlier than that. The hanging gardens of Babylon and the floating gardens of the Mexican Aztecs are both examples of early hydroponics gardening. Historians have even found ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics that depict the cultivation of plants in water, some that date even as far back as several thousand years BC!

One of the earliest recorded experiments in modern history that led to the discovery of the organic makeup of plants occurred around the year 1600 when Jan van Helmont exemplified that plants roots absorb solutes from the soil solution. His experiment consisted of planting a small willow tree in a container with several hundred pounds of soil, and was protected from the infiltration of any airborne particles. Five years into his experiment, his willow tree had gained nearly 155 pounds in weight, yet the soil, when dried, lost fewer than a couple of ounces in weight. His hypothesis that plants obtain solutes from water was in fact correct, yet he didn’t realize that the bulk of a plant’s composition was made of the carbon that it absorbed from the air.

Nearly one hundred years later, an Englishman by the name of John Woodward tried cultivating plants in water with extracts from several types of soils and in doing so created the first nutrient solution. His findings also led him to disclose that plants grew the fastest in water with the most amount of “liquefied earth.” In the many years that elapsed since Woodward’s findings, botanical physiologists came to several conclusions. The first is that water is absorbed by the roots and that it makes its way up the stem and exhausts through the pores in the leaves. Secondly, that roots uptake beneficial solutes from the liquefied earth and that carbon dioxide is absorbed by the leaves. Thirdly, they discovered that roots also require oxygen and not just water.

When the science of modern chemistry came to be, great strides occurred in the area of plant physiology in the following centuries. It was proven that plants are composed of the chemicals found in water, soil and air. When the method of dissecting chemical compounds was invented, another Englishman by the name of Joseph Priestley came forth with the realization that plants absorb carbon dioxide and give off oxygen which led to the later discovery that this occurred during exposure to light and that the chlorophyll containing “green” parts were responsible for this seeming alchemy.

The actual discovery that plants are constructed of soil borne minerals and the constituent elements in air and water was made in the early 1800’s. Many years later, a list of nine primary chemical elements responsible for growth was published. A Frenchman by the name of Jean Baptiste Boussingault experimented in the 1850’s with inert growing media and later developed the first proportionately correct, chemical nutrient solution. The move to eliminate media entirely from the cultivation process occurred around 1860 by two German scientists named Julius von Sachs and W. Knop who have earned the title of the official fathers of nutriculture. About the same time, Julius von Sachs made public the first standardized water-soluble nutrient formula for the successful cultivation of most plants.

The word “Hydroponics” was coined by Dr. W.F. Gericke in the early 30’s to describe the cultivation of both edible and ornamental plants in a solution of water and dissolved nutrients which were previously called “nutriculture”. The simple meaning is derived from the Greek “Hydro,” meaning water, and “Ponos,” meaning labor. Now, truly a wonder of modern science, hydroponic gardens produce bountiful harvests of fruit, vegetables, grains, herbs and flowers in places never before able to sustain growth. Hydroponics gardens grow the healthiest crops with the highest yields and vitamin content, thanks to their perfectly balanced nutrient solutions and growing environments. Modern hydroponics methods provide food for millions of people worldwide, supplying us with superior quality produce, even when completely out of season. Even with all its advantages, the American consumer is sometimes wary of hydroponically grown produce. Many years ago, hydroponic produce were admittedly of poor quality, and this association still persists in some people’s minds. This old association is rapidly changing because hydroponics produce has evolved into a superior quality, premium product. So while many newcomers believe that hydroponics is a recent invention, its history can be traced back to the dawn of civilization.

In my next article, we’ll pick up a lot of speed and take a much closer look at the present of agriculture and where the future promises to take us. Until then, think twice about getting flustered when your reservoir springs a little leak or your grow lamp starts to flicker. Things could be a lot worse!

References:

USA News.com

AP - Athens, Greece

BBC

Discovery Channel Online News

Gary Deutschmann, Sr.