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This chapter considers four ideas—suggested by Wes Jackson and Jon Piper in the classic paper, “The necessary marriage between ecology and agriculture”—for how agriculture might attempt to mimic nature: perennial grain crops; reliance on only local sources of nutrients; polyculture or intercropping (that is, deploying crop diversity as mixtures, as in many natural ecosystems); and reliance on biodiversity to control pests. The chapter examines each of the proposals in light of the conclusion that copying landscape-scale patterns from natural ecosystems is not necessarily a good idea, arguing that all of them are representative of many self-styled “agroecologists.” It also discusses complementarity in crop mixtures, specifically spatial complementarity, temporal complementarity, and nutritional complementarity.

This chapter describes some of the ways in which crop diversity has been used to address larger issues about human and agricultural evolution. Recognition and management of crop varieties are part of a single continuum of using and caring for plant species and plant communities, a continuum that is most apparent in the amazing diversity of crops. This diversity is renewed yearly during seed selection, a human routine that has guided crop evolution. The chapter discusses how engagement with crop diversity is ubiquitous in agricultural societies because farmers everywhere are aware of the potential of new crops or crop varieties to solve problems. It also reveals how many different societies have organized the search for new crop varieties, and how this search has eventually led to scientific crop improvement programs based on conscious selection, crosses among different varieties, and genetic manipulation.

This chapter examines various ways of defining and measuring crop diversity. Diversity can be measured in different ways. It exists at different levels, for instance within and between plants and within and between populations. Folk measures, which emphasize the useful part of the plant, are key to understanding crop species' distribution and evolution because it is folk knowledge that has guided the selection and maintenance of diversity over thousands of years. Genetic measures include both qualitative and quantitative traits and genetic markers. Ecological measures allow population structure and distribution to be addressed, and the relation between crop diversity and changes in agricultural environments to be analyzed. The chapter reveals that all three of these measures are necessary to address the pressing question of the fate of agricultural diversity as human population, society, and technology undergo rapid and fundamental change away from the conditions which generated diversity in the first place.

This chapter focuses on the future of crop diversity in a world with eleven billion people, reading case histories of crop diversity in developed societies as optimistic signs for the future of diversity elsewhere. The survival of crop diversity due to partial adoption and consumer demand for specialized crops provides the lesson that conservation can succeed by adding incremental value to landraces in selected environments and farming systems rather than posing landraces as an alternative to modern crops for all farmers. The chapter emphasizes that conservation of crops should follow the pattern of wildlife conservation to target key areas and populations. It also reveals that in situ conservation will not succeed as a policy for an entire agricultural sector because there are too many interests at stake in agricultural intensification—consumers, governments, agricultural scientists, and farmers.

This chapter focuses on crop diversity and explains how human ecology came to the study of it. The diversity of crops is testimony to individual and collective creativity. The myriad forms of simple grains, fruits, and tubers are a singular human accomplishment and measure of social identity. The chapter reveals that the issue of crop diversity has emerged as an important policy area with implications for agricultural development, environmental protection, resource conservation, and the rights of cultural minorities and poor farmers. It also reveals that crop diversity is now perceived as a fundamental resource for crop improvement in modern agriculture, one which has become more valuable because of record population numbers, the exodus from agriculture, and the threat of climate change.

This chapter considers how the integration of different methodological approaches to crop growing conditions—stable isotope analysis of crop remains and ecological analysis of associated weeds—can refine social interpretations of Neolithic farming practice. Plant isotope values also constrain palaeodietary interpretation of humans and animals. Case studies from south-east, central and north-west Europe contribute to an assessment of diversity in the Neolithic. Often characterised as small-scale and labour-intensive, significant variation in early farming regimes existed even across the arable landscapes of individual settlements. Different communities developed distinct solutions to the problem of limited labour, manure and crop diversity. The absolute dietary importance of crops in early farming diets can only be assessed by taking actual stable isotope values of associated crop remains into account; initial results suggest that crop values were affected to varying extents by manuring, leading to the role of crops systematically under-estimated in standard palaeodietary interpretation.

The chapter focuses on Mewat’s ecology and its impact on economy. It discusses the region’s physiography: soils, rocks, minerals, and climate. Mewat being largely semi-arid and rocky with limited sources of ground and surface water, irrigation was the most vital input in agricultural production. While wells were the major source of irrigation, the region’s rivers, streams, lakes, nullahs, and dams also played an important role. The climate and terrain of the region induced the development of an adaptive pattern of agriculture—crop rotation, mixed cropping, and cultivation of drought-resistant crops. Notwithstanding ecological and topographic constraints, Mewat had significant agricultural productivity owing to soil diversity and crop diversity, reflected in the percentage of area under the cultivation of both kharif and rabi crops out of the total cropped area in select parganas. Simultaneously, sharp economic differentiation between rich and ordinary peasants was reflected in the disparities in landholding and cropping patterns.