The Food Revolution Changed The World's Economy

The Columbian Exchange brought direct changed that modified the cultural characteristics of many people. Though religion was a weapon of domination, it was food that created a great cultural impact. This paper will focus on the cultural impact that food had in the world, and how much Native American food contributed to the economy and culture of the entire planet.

The long-term effects of the Columbian exchange included the swap of food, crops, and animals between the New World and Old World, and the start of the transoceanic trade. In order to produce a profit, Portuguese explorers were the first to established sugar cane plantations in Brazil. They then sold this crop to the Old World where it was a popular commodity because it provided Europeans with a sweetener for foods. In addition, European produce was brought to the New World, including “…wheat, vines, horses, cattle, pigs, sheep, goats, and chickens… Where they sharply increased supplies of food and animal energy.” This fusion of crops between the Old and New World became fundamental in enhancing the diets and food of both populations.

When, Columbus set foot on America he initiated a biological, ecological, and economic exchange. Exchanges of slaves, animals, technology, plants, animals, diseases transformed European and Native American ways of life. The plants that were exchanged in the Columbian Exchange changed both the culture and the economy of the Old and New Worlds. There were many new plants discovered in the Americas which included maize, chili peppers, peanuts, tomatoes, avocado, sweet potatoes, pineapple, and cacao, but the two main plants were the maize and potato. New farming equipment like the plow was also introduced to the new cultivate more land. Although some farming equipment were discovers slaves were still used to harvest sugar canes, field tobacco,

a. The cultivation of maize, introduced heavily by sophisticated civilizations such as the Incas, Mayans, and Aztecs, helped to feed large population sizes, thus facilitating the spread of its cultivation across North America. By 2000 BCE, Pueblo peoples, due to the new cultivation of maize, developed irrigation systems. By 1000 CE, maize reached to modern-day SE America, which influenced Creek, Choctaw, and Cherokee peoples by growing and feeding their populations.

The revolution is surrounded by many inventions including fertilizers and pesticides. It is through these innovations that developed countries were able to feed their people (Standage, 199). As Standage refers to it, feeding the world. Standage's descriptions of this revolution clearly indicate that developed countries achieved what they have by feeding their people first. As such, food can be used for the betterment of the nation. Through the book, the writer focuses on the impacts of agriculture on various aspects of a human's life. The main audience seems to be the people (leaders) who have the role in making and implementing food

In the book Good Food Revolution, it focuses on the main point of Will Allen’s life and how he has always been around food. I believe the book does a good job with tying in different connections and references with food and with Will Allen since he has grown up around food ever since he was little. When the book states “The fate of a seed can be predicted by the health of the soil where it takes the root” I believe that Will Allen is referring and connecting it back to himself. I believe he relates this to himself because a plant's roots are surrounded by soil and Will Allen has planted his roots around farming and food. A plant needs soil to survive and Will Allen needed farming to survive. His whole life and job has revolved around planting. A plant lives off of what it knows and its surroundings and Will Allen did the same. His parents planted the seed to get the initial start in farming so he picks up where they left off. Even though he was not into farming when he was younger he learned to grow and find a  passion for farming as he grew older because it has always been around him. No matter where he went he held onto farming because that is all he knew. I believe this connection between Will Allen and the quote about the plant enhances and helps tell the story of how Will Allen got involved in farming.

Virtually every aspect of life was affected by the Andes Mountain Range. The steep slopes, climate and altitude, forced the development of resilient breeds of crops such as potatoes, quinoa and corn. (Graber, 2011). The mountains were worshipped as gods and stone from the mountains were carved with great precision to create large cites and temples right into the sides of the mountains. For all of the reasons, The Andes Mountains are certainly one of the greatest contributors to the development of the ancient people of South American.

Many historians believe that the most significant “food revolution” was the Neolithic Revolution. This “food revolution” dramatically changed the way food was produced. This change had a major political, social, and economic impact on societies and regions. Due to this, many new advances were produced. This helped civilization to become more sophisticated, more civilized, and more organized.

After the Spanish settled in America, many new foods and species of plants were introduced to the people of Eurasia, none of which they had said before. Although most of the exchange of food was from the New World to the Old World, Eurasia also introduced the America’s to wheat and grapes, two very important foods for mass. Potatoes and corn were a major part of the Columbian Exchange as they provided a lot of nutrition and were very easy to grow. They could grow in soil that was previously useless for agriculture. Other foods that spread across Europe were tomatoes, peppers, chocolate, beans, pineapples, avocados and blueberries. This exchange of food was the main reason that the worlds population doubled from 545,000,000 in 1600 to 1,128,000,000 in 1850 and historians often describe this massive increase in the nutritional value and variety of

Which then led to people inventing other stuff and different kinds of food like maize which was made by a weed from from the indigenous americans this was a big food revolution in history. (corn was a human invention not a natural production.

these crops and others back to their countries where people began to grow them. Potatoes, for example,

The plants in the Columbian Exchange impacted both the economic and ethnic aspects of both sides of the Atlantic. The plants that were unknown to the Europeans were Maize also known as corn, potatoes (sweet and white), and many different varieties of beans including snap, kidney, lima and others. The plants that were obscure to the Americans were rice, wheat, barley, oats, wine grapes, melons, coffee, olive, bananas, “Kentucky” bluegrass, daisies and dandelions. This had a big impact on their day to day diet, which affected the way they developed physically because the different amount of calories in the new

Maize was paramount to the Americas as it could be dried up and stored. Thanks to its adaptive nature, it was able to be taken to Europe and harvested in various locations. It easily replaced wheat as it could grow quicker and in places wheat cannot. The surplus of maize caused a surplus and allowed for population growth to raise comfortably and support the economy. It was also a very prevalent way of trading.

1. Before Francisco Pizarro began the Spanish conquest in 1532, the Incan empire dominated the Andes Mountain region. An emperor who demanded strict obedience ruled the land. All business was run by the state, which could draft citizens for its projects. The Inca, terracing the landscape and irrigating the crops, farmed the mountainsides. The Inca were brilliant engineers, whose roadways included bridges. The city of Machu Picchu is an example of their skill with tools like the plumb bob and wooden roller, which they used for in heavy construction. Hundreds of years after their civilization was subdued by the Spanish, the descendants of the once-dominate Incas make up about 50 percent of Peru’s population.

The economic systems of early American societies were very similar. One of these societies, the Mayans, lived in southern Mexico and northern Central America from the 3rd to the 10th century CE, and they relied on the trade of goods such as obsidian and crops such as cacao beans. Another American civilization was the Aztec civilization. They were located in the Valley of Mexico around the 13th to 16th century CE, and they used slash-and-burn farming to plant crops to trade. The Inca Empire existed from the 13th to the 16th century CE along the Pacific coast of South America near the Andes Mountains. The Inca used terrace farming and irrigation to grow crops such as corn. The economies of these early American civilizations were heavily