The “Age of Agricultural Ignorance”: Trends and Concerns for Agriculture Knee-Deep into the Twenty-First Century

Allied forces in World War II knew they would need massive amounts of fiber to make enough rope for the thousands of ships that were being made for the war effort. [...]the US government, along with the United Fruit Company of Boston experimented with abaca plantings in Panama, the US Canal Zone, an...

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Published in:	Agricultural history 2019-01, Vol.93 (1), p.4-34
Main Author:	Evans, Sterling
Format:	Article
Language:	eng
Subjects:	20th century Age Agricultural economics Agricultural policy Agricultural production Agriculture Agronomy Beef Black, Baxter Case studies Corn Cotton Farmers Farms Fish Fish farms Food Hightower, Jim Ignorance Intersections Knee Plantations Population Pulp Recycled materials Rural areas Ships Soybeans Sugar Trade policy Trends Urbanization War Wheat Wood Wood pulp
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Summary:	Allied forces in World War II knew they would need massive amounts of fiber to make enough rope for the thousands of ships that were being made for the war effort. [...]the US government, along with the United Fruit Company of Boston experimented with abaca plantings in Panama, the US Canal Zone, and Honduras-in similar tropical conditions and at similar latitudes to abaca plantations in the Philippines. [...]products made of abaca consume less energy in their production than similar products made from other materials and can be recycled several times more than wood pulp.37 It is thus an extremely promising agricultural commodity on many transnational, economic, and ecological levels that warrants our scholarly attention.38 And what sugar and cotton meant for the interconnections of Atlantic World history, abaca adds an intriguing agricultural case study to the important developing field of Pacific World, or Pacific Rim, history.39 Historian Matt Matsuda noted that the oceanic region was hardly "an empty expanse," but rather was a "crowded world of transitions, intersections, and transformed cultures." [...]in 2011 world farmed fish production overtook beef production for the first time-66 million tons of fish compared to 63 million tons of beef-according to a study conducted by the Earth Policy Institute. According to an important study conducted by the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy in 2015, for example, producers exported wheat at 32 percent less than the cost of production, corn at 12 percent less, soybeans at 10 percent less, and rice at 2 percent less.
ISSN:	0002-1482 1533-8290