History

            Sustainability means endurance into the future. How well we endure depends upon what the future holds and how we address the challenges and opportunities that lie before us. realistic assessment of the challenges and opportunities that are likely to appear may influenceour attitude about the future and can provide us with a basis for developing plans for meetingthose challenges. However, such assessments are necessarily based on speculation aboutuncertain future events, and thus, ought to include safety margins and contingencies for dealingwith unexpected events.
             How do we develop a realistic assessment of the future? We could extrapolate currenttrends into the future. This approach is probably reasonable for anticipating what the future mayhold in the next 5 years. However, current trends are likely to change in unpredictable directionsas new technologies, laws, and forms of social and business organization emerge. Since manytrends do not continue indefinitely, we need other approaches to develop a realistic assessment ofthe longer term future.
             The dynamics of long-term change in the future may resemble long-term change in thepast and therefore, understanding the dynamics of how agriculture and society have changed inthe past may help us anticipate future changes and challenges. Agricultural history may revealthe recurrence of certain challenges that are likely to reappear in the future. It may reveal strategies that have been successful in meeting these challenges and that may be worth preservingor reviving. This history may also reveal unsuccessful strategies that we would do well to avoid. If nothing else, understanding the history of agriculture may at least help us understand how wearrived at the present state of affairs.
             The next few pages provide an introductory overview of the history of agriculture. Amore thorough examination of this topic can be found in the references provided.