Agricultural Prairies PDF

PREFACE

Natural prairies have evolved and thrived on the earth's surface since several million years ago. They have adapted to diverse physiographic conditions that occurred at various times during history. Several plant species have evolved, peaked at certain periods, and perished. Natural species that we witness today are the resultant situation derived through the biological evolutionary process that has occurred in response to environmental conditions.

Agricultural cropping is said to have begun sometime during the 12th millennium B.C. Human ingenuity has consistently played its role in domesticating crops, mending soils, and augmenting water to crop species. In due course, human intellect was responsible for developing exclusive crop lands—that is, "agricultural prairies." Through the ages, agricultural prairies and human species have coevolved into interdependence. However, it may not be so. Human dependence on food grain/ forage generating agricultural prairies seems to be relatively more obligated than we usually acknowledge. During the past few centuries, we have excessively focused on very few cereals, legumes, and oilseeds, and preferentially accentuated them in the croplands. Agricultural prairies occupy more than 80 percent of crop land on earth. It is a lopsided preference of prairie vegetation. Further, we may realize that together, three major cereals—maize, wheat, and rice—dominate the cropland and master the human dietary preference. Such excessive preference and dependence, after all, exposes the crops and humans alike to detrimental factors with potentially large-scale disasters. Perhaps, there is a strong need to diversify the food generating vegetation pattern.

This book, titled Agricultural Prairies: Natural Resources and Crop Productivity, deals with several aspects of agricultural prairies such as geology, geographical settings, natural resources such as soil types, water and irrigation, and crop genetic stocks. Human resource, migration, and settlement patterns within each prairie zone have been described lucidly. Land use change and environmental concerns such as climate change have also been discussed in detail for each prairie zone. Fluctuation in expanse and productivity of grain generating systems provides insight into performance of prairies. There are eight chapters in this book. The first three deal with agricultural vegetation of the Americas. They deal with large agricultural prairies of North America, in particular the Great Plains of North America, the Cerrados of Brazil, and the Pampas of South America. Chapter 4 deals with the agricultural prairies of Europe, especially those traced in the French and German Plains, Central Europe, and Russian Steppes. Detailed and lucid discussions on cereal-dominated prairies of Sahelian, Sudanian, and Guinea-Savannah zones of West Africa are presented in Chapter 5. The South Asian agricultural prairies are important food grain suppliers to the over 1.4 billion human population. Several aspects of the croplands in India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh are found in Chapter 6. Chapter 7 deals exclusively with relevant discussions on North China Steppes. These are among the most intensely cultivated zones with high food grain output and biomass turnover. Apart from the above-mentioned prairie regions, there are a few other agricultural prairies that flourish in Southern Africa, West Asia, and Southern Australia. They serve a large population of humans in situ with food grains and are important in terms of financial resources. However, they have not been dealt in this book.

Agricultural prairies are almost entirely a human effort to answer his requirements of food grains and few other items. Human involvement in the prairies is varied. In nature, there are many facets to prairie versus human coexistence and interaction. Agricultural crops have induced large-scale migrations, altered human dwelling and settlement patterns, and influenced his food habits, affected monetary funds, and several other aspects of daily life. In a way, agricultural crops, especially a few grain cereals, have driven humans to subordination and enslavement. There are no tangible alternatives to agricultural prairies as yet. However, admixtures of prairies and plantations could be envisioned to overcome lopsided dependence on prairies for food grains and other goods. Evidences and arguments for many of the above aspects have been listed, and lucid discussions are presented in Chapter 8, titled "Agricultural Prairies and Man."

This book on agricultural prairies is a scholarly edition useful to those interested in studying earth systems, biomes, vegetation, ecology, environment, and food crops. It is apt as a textbook for students in geography, natural sciences, ecology, environment, and agriculture.