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Environment & crises: history of agriculture

11 topics: Norse farms in Greenland; The Great Famine of 1315–1317: Rain, Grain and Vulnerable Farms; The Guano Boom: Peru and the Global Fertiliser Trade…

Norse farms in Greenland: c. AD 985–15th century, Southwestern Greenland. Husbandry and hunting formed an integrated provisioning system; settlement decline reflects overlapping pressures rather than a simple failure to adapt.
The Great Famine of 1315–1317: Rain, Grain and Vulnerable Farms: 1315–1317; some regional crises extended into the 1320s, Northern and north-western Europe, including England, Wales and Flanders. Harvest failures exposed the dependence of farms on weather, reserves, prices and access to land. Warfare and a subsequent cattle epidemic deepened several regional crises.
The Guano Boom: Peru and the Global Fertiliser Trade: from c. 1840 · expansion in the mid-nineteenth century, Chincha Islands, Peru; routes to Europe and North America. A marine ecosystem supplied nutrients to distant farms. Export expansion linked soil fertility with coerced labour, state finance and the depletion of accumulated deposits.
The Great Irish Famine: Farming, Poverty and Migration: 1845–1852, Ireland. Potato blight combined with poverty, unequal access to land and inadequate relief to produce a profound social catastrophe.
Phylloxera: the crisis that rebuilt Europe’s vineyards: Approximately 1863–1900; consequences extending into later centuries, Southern France and other European wine-growing regions. A root-feeding pest forced growers to combine European grape varieties with more resistant rootstocks of American origin.
Rinderpest: African catastrophe and global eradication: c. 1887–1897; eradication 2011, Eastern and Southern Africa; later worldwide cooperation. An epizootic that undermined many agricultural economies, followed by more than a century of work to end transmission worldwide.
From Gros Michel to Cavendish: Crisis and the Banana Trade: Late nineteenth century–1960s · a prolonged transition, Central America and the Caribbean; connections to importing markets. The Gros Michel crisis required changes in cultivars, packaging and transport, reshaping production networks and work in exporting regions.
Organic Farming: From Koberwitz to IFOAM: 1924–2000; Koberwitz course 7–16 June 1924, Kobierzyce, India, Britain, United States, France and Switzerland. Courses, composting, experiments and associations turned dispersed ideas into an organic farming movement and systems of market standards.
The Dust Bowl: Drought, Soil Erosion and Agricultural Change: 1930s, Great Plains, United States. Repeated drought, exposed soils and economic distress produced dust storms, migration and a lasting expansion of public soil conservation.
The Bengal Famine: Rice, War and Access to Food: 1943–1944; commission report in 1945, Bengal, British India; now India and Bangladesh. The damaged 1942 crop, wartime restrictions, lost purchasing power and delayed relief in the catastrophe of rural Bengal.
Silent Spring: agriculture and ecological responsibility: 1962 publication; 1963 report; 1972 EPA decision, Silver Spring, Maryland; a US debate with wider influence. Rachel Carson’s book accelerated debate over pesticides in the environment, risk investigation and the organisation of crop protection.