agriculture

81:1.6The evo­lu­tion­ary peo­ples (no­tably the Chi­nese) early learned to plant seeds and to cul­ti­vate crops through ob­ser­va­tion of the sprout­ing of seeds ac­ci­den­tally moist­ened or which had been put in graves as food for the de­parted. But through­out south­west Asia, along the fer­tile river bot­toms and ad­ja­cent plains, the And­ites were car­ry­ing out the im­proved ag­ri­cul­tural tech­niques in­her­ited from their an­ces­tors, who had made farm­ing and gar­den­ing the chief pur­suits within the bound­aries of the sec­ond gar­den.

78:5.8The mi­gra­tory con­quests of the And­ites con­tin­ued on down to their fi­nal dis­per­sions, from 8000 to 6000 B.C. As they poured out of Mes­o­po­ta­mia, they con­tin­u­ously de­pleted the bi­o­logic re­serves of their home­lands while markedly strength­en­ing the sur­round­ing peo­ples. And to ev­ery na­tion to which they jour­neyed, they con­tributed hu­mor, art, ad­ven­ture, mu­sic, and man­u­fac­ture. They were skill­ful do­mes­ti­ca­tors of an­i­mals and ex­pert agri­cul­tur­ists. For the time be­ing, at least, their pres­ence usu­ally im­proved the re­li­gious be­liefs and moral prac­tices of the older races. And so the cul­ture of Mes­o­po­ta­mia qui­etly spread out over Eu­rope, In­dia, China, north­ern Africa, and the Pa­cific Is­lands.

52:2.8Dur­ing this age agri­cul­ture makes its ap­pear­ance. The growth of the fam­ily idea is in­com­pat­i­ble with the rov­ing and un­set­tled life of the hunter. Grad­u­ally the prac­tices of set­tled habi­ta­tions and the cul­ti­va­tion of the soil be­come es­tab­lished. The do­mes­ti­ca­tion of an­i­mals and the de­vel­op­ment of home arts pro­ceed apace. Upon reach­ing the apex of bi­o­logic evo­lu­tion, a high level of civ­i­liza­tion has been at­tained, but there is lit­tle de­vel­op­ment of a me­chan­i­cal or­der; in­ven­tion is the char­ac­ter­is­tic of the suc­ceed­ing age.

68:5.94. The ag­ri­cul­tural stage. This era was brought about by the do­mes­ti­ca­tion of plants, and it rep­re­sents the high­est type of ma­te­rial civ­i­liza­tion. Both Cali­gas­tia and Adam en­deav­ored to teach hor­ti­cul­ture and agri­cul­ture. Adam and Eve were gar­den­ers, not shep­herds, and gar­den­ing was an ad­vanced cul­ture in those days. The grow­ing of plants ex­erts an en­nobling in­flu­ence on all races of man­kind.

68:5.11There has al­ways been fric­tion be­tween the herders and the tillers of the soil. The hunter and herder were mil­i­tant, war­like; the agri­cul­tur­ist is a more peace-lov­ing type. As­so­ci­a­tion with an­i­mals sug­gests strug­gle and force; as­so­ci­a­tion with plants in­stills pa­tience, quiet, and peace. Agri­cul­ture and in­dus­tri­al­ism are the ac­tiv­i­ties of peace. But the weak­ness of both, as world so­cial ac­tiv­i­ties, is that they lack ex­cite­ment and ad­ven­ture.

79:8.2With the com­ple­tion of the con­quest of east­ern Asia the an­cient mil­i­tary state grad­u­ally dis­in­te­grated—past wars were for­got­ten. Of the epic strug­gle with the red race there per­sisted only the hazy tra­di­tion of an an­cient con­test with the archer peo­ples. The Chi­nese early turned to ag­ri­cul­tural pur­suits, which con­tributed fur­ther to their pa­cific ten­den­cies, while a pop­u­la­tion well be­low the land-man ra­tio for agri­cul­ture still fur­ther con­tributed to the grow­ing peace­ful­ness of the coun­try.

76:2.2Now, in those days it was cus­tom­ary to make of­fer­ings to the priest­hood of the things at hand. Herders would bring of their flocks, farm­ers of the fruits of the fields; and in ac­cor­dance with this cus­tom, Cain and Abel like­wise made pe­ri­odic of­fer­ings to the priests. The two boys had many times ar­gued about the rel­a­tive mer­its of their vo­ca­tions, and Abel was not slow to note that pref­er­ence was shown for his an­i­mal sac­ri­fices. In vain did Cain ap­peal to the tra­di­tions of the first Eden, to the for­mer pref­er­ence for the fruits of the fields. But this Abel would not al­low, and he taunted his older brother in his dis­com­fi­ture.

86:1.5The later herders held the same views of chance and luck, while the still later agri­cul­tur­ists were in­creas­ingly con­scious that crops were im­me­di­ately in­flu­enced by many things over which man had lit­tle or no con­trol. The farmer found him­self the vic­tim of drought, floods, hail, storms, pests, and plant dis­eases, as well as heat and cold. And as all of these nat­u­ral in­flu­ences af­fected in­di­vid­ual pros­per­ity, they were re­garded as good luck or bad luck.

79:8.3Con­scious­ness of past achieve­ments (some­what di­min­ished in the pres­ent), the con­ser­vatism of an over­whelm­ingly ag­ri­cul­tural peo­ple, and a well-de­vel­oped fam­ily life equaled the birth of an­ces­tor ven­er­a­tion, cul­mi­nat­ing in the cus­tom of so hon­or­ing the men of the past as to bor­der on wor­ship. A very sim­i­lar at­ti­tude pre­vailed among the white races in Eu­rope for some five hun­dred years fol­low­ing the dis­rup­tion of Greco-Ro­man civ­i­liza­tion.

84:3.10De­creas­ing prim­i­tive war­fare greatly less­ened the dis­par­ity be­tween the di­vi­sion of la­bor based on sex. But women still had to do the real work while men did picket duty. No camp or vil­lage could be left un­guarded day or night, but even this task was al­le­vi­ated by the do­mes­ti­ca­tion of the dog. In gen­eral, the com­ing of agri­cul­ture has en­hanced woman’s pres­tige and so­cial stand­ing; at least this was true up to the time man him­self turned agri­cul­tur­ist. And as soon as man ad­dressed him­self to the till­ing of the soil, there im­me­di­ately en­sued great im­prove­ment in meth­ods of agri­cul­ture, ex­tend­ing on down through suc­ces­sive gen­er­a­tions. In hunt­ing and war man had learned the value of or­ga­ni­za­tion, and he in­tro­duced these tech­niques into in­dus­try and later, when tak­ing over much of woman’s work, greatly im­proved on her loose meth­ods of la­bor.

66:7.19Man­kind was not con­signed to ag­ri­cul­tural toil as the penalty of sup­posed sin. “In the sweat of your face shall you eat the fruit of the fields” was not a sen­tence of pun­ish­ment pro­nounced be­cause of man’s par­tic­i­pa­tion in the fol­lies of the Lu­cifer re­bel­lion un­der the lead­er­ship of the traitorous Cali­gas­tia. The cul­ti­va­tion of the soil is in­her­ent in the es­tab­lish­ment of an ad­vanc­ing civ­i­liza­tion on the evo­lu­tion­ary worlds, and this in­junc­tion was the cen­ter of all teach­ing of the Plan­e­tary Prince and his staff through­out the three hun­dred thou­sand years which in­ter­vened be­tween their ar­rival on Uran­tia and those tragic days when Cali­gas­tia threw in his lot with the rebel Lu­cifer. Work with the soil is not a curse; rather is it the high­est bless­ing to all who are thus per­mit­ted to en­joy the most hu­man of all hu­man ac­tiv­i­ties.

68:5.13And now is in­dus­try sup­ple­ment­ing agri­cul­ture, with con­se­quently in­creased ur­ban­iza­tion and mul­ti­pli­ca­tion of nona­gri­cul­tural groups of cit­i­zen­ship classes. But an in­dus­trial era can­not hope to sur­vive if its lead­ers fail to rec­og­nize that even the high­est so­cial de­vel­op­ments must ever rest upon a sound ag­ri­cul­tural ba­sis.

81:1.4Since slaves were so gen­er­ally em­ployed by the ear­lier agri­cul­tur­ists, the farmer was for­merly looked down on by both the hunter and the herder. For ages it was con­sid­ered me­nial to till the soil; where­fore the idea that soil toil is a curse, whereas it is the great­est of all bless­ings. Even in the days of Cain and Abel the sac­ri­fices of the pas­toral life were held in greater es­teem than the of­fer­ings of agri­cul­ture.

81:1.5Man or­di­nar­ily evolved into a farmer from a hunter by tran­si­tion through the era of the herder, and this was also true among the And­ites, but more of­ten the evo­lu­tion­ary co­er­cion of cli­matic ne­ces­sity would cause whole tribes to pass di­rectly from hunters to suc­cess­ful farm­ers. But this phe­nom­e­non of pass­ing im­me­di­ately from hunt­ing to agri­cul­ture only oc­curred in those re­gions where there was a high de­gree of race mix­ture with the vi­o­let stock.

70:8.75. Ge­o­graphic—classes arose con­se­quent upon ur­ban or ru­ral set­tle­ment. City and coun­try have re­spec­tively con­tributed to the dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion of the herder-agri­cul­tur­ist and the trader-in­dus­tri­al­ist, with their di­ver­gent view­points and re­ac­tions.

69:9.14In early days only the crops were pri­vate, but suc­ces­sive crops con­ferred ti­tle; agri­cul­ture was thus the gen­e­sis of the pri­vate own­er­ship of land. In­di­vid­u­als were first given only a life tenure­ship; at death land re­verted to the tribe. The very first land ti­tles granted by tribes to in­di­vid­u­als were graves—fam­ily bury­ing grounds. In later times land be­longed to those who fenced it. But the cities al­ways re­served cer­tain lands for pub­lic pas­turage and for use in case of siege; these “com­mons” rep­re­sent the sur­vival of the ear­lier form of col­lec­tive own­er­ship.

81:2.13The in­sti­tu­tions of slav­ery and pri­vate own­er­ship of land came with agri­cul­ture. Slav­ery raised the mas­ter’s stan­dard of liv­ing and pro­vided more leisure for so­cial cul­ture.

49:4.5Sea­sons and tem­per­a­ture vari­a­tions oc­cur on all sun­lighted and sun-heated plan­ets. Agri­cul­ture is uni­ver­sal on all at­mo­spheric worlds; till­ing the soil is the one pur­suit that is com­mon to the ad­vanc­ing races of all such plan­ets.