The Worst Mistake In The History Of The Human Race

For Americans, it is a traditional belief to think that each successive generation has been better than the last, and that agriculture was a great invention that provided us with more food and leisure time. But this isn't necessarily the case. Tribes today that rely mostly on hunting and gathering activities have more leisure time than the farmers neighboring them, and have a more rich and varied diet, consuming more calories than the US recommends an adult eat in a day. Skeletal remains show that hunter-gatherers were tall, 5'9'' for men and 5'5'' for woman, before agriculture came around and those heights plummeted to 5'3''and 5'. Farmers enamel defect rate, indicative of malnutrition, rose 50% higher than the rates of pre-agriculture hunter-gatherers. Life expectancy rates for hunter-gatherers was 26, agriculturalists 19 years. There are three reasons for why agriculture turned out to be bad for our health. One is the loss of a varied diet in favor of cheap, starchy calories. The other is a reliance on one type of a crop due to limited space. If this crop failed, the farmer ran the risk of starvation. Agriculture also clumped people together, resulting in the spread of disease. Agriculture also created class divisions. Material wealth and food could now be collected, and those who had alot of material goods became powerful. Woman suffered from the onset of agriculture as well. They faced higher birth rates and heavy manual labor compared to the men.
After reading this, I see agriculture in a new light.Despite this, I believe with the number of people on the planet currently it is a necessary evil because without it we have far and away exceeded our carrying capacity. This article should be used as an argument for preserving biodiversity for the sake there being many possibilities for us to use more of the environment than we do. The tendency of this society is to take as much as we can without practicing sustainable harvesting however, so even if we were aware of what nature can still offer us the environment is probably better off keeping it's secrets. It is a good example of why we need to maintain genetic diversity in our crops though. If a corn disease were to strike the US, a major industry would be crippled because there are no other varieties of corn being grown that could possibly be resistant to the disease.