Chapter 6 - Making a Living

Since the beginning of human life on earth there has always been a need for making a living. Until 10,000 years ago man survived by utilizing the adaptive strategy of foraging, where people wandered around the earth searching for provisions of any kind. Because of this dependency upon nature to provide for their needs, it led naturally to the next step of human procurement: cultivation.

Two types of cultivation developed; horticulture and agriculture, both of which still exists today in industrial and non-industrial societies. Horticulture or "shifting cultivation" is the simpler of the two methods and utilizes a "slash and burn" technique for land clearing. The land is used to the point of soil exhaustion at which the family simply moves on to another plot of land. Agriculture, the more complex of the two, involves the use of modern machinery, irrigation, and mass manpower to cultivate a single plot of land continuously. Because of this, families can now have a permanent home and a more stable lifestyle.

As societies began to modernize, a new means of procurement was introduced and today's economic system was born. The purpose of this economic system was to optimize the means of production. In other words, to take into account the land, territory, labor and technology needed in order to produce a product and optimize that process.

Time has changed the way people go about making a living in terms of food production. With the information from chapter six and your own personal knowledge or experience, compare and contrast the means of producing food through cultivation (either horticulture or agriculture) or within our current economic system. Make a choice on which you would personally like to see our society gravitate towards and tell us why you would like to see this change made.

For example would you prefer to be part of an industrialized economic system that utilizes of machinery and technology? This allows for effective mass production but on the other hand this also forces the worker as an individual to live in a more rigid work routine. Due to the concept of specialization a person would have the responsibility of just one simple task which he/she must perform all day.