Greece, followed by Rome, used a new model to eventually dominate large areas. In abstract, the model seems innocent: agree to Graeco-Roman culture, provide tribute. You get to keep your culture. Provide us with supplies and we can set up trade that benefits all parties. Simple and abstract, until you add that both cultures benefited greatly from sophisticated slave capture and exploitation. Both sides of that narrative matter. Both Greece and Rome encouraged trade that fit within their system. These blogs will show how that system has evolved, remains in effect and has expanded its reach.
A Surplus Trade System
Anthony courted Cleopatra for her grain. Roman citizens received grain as a birthright. Rome constantly sought grain and other goods. Cleopatra's demise ended the Macedonian influence over Egypt. Its grain then belonged to Rome. To ensure its delivery, Roman law replaced the Macedonian control over the people of Egypt. This model played out across what turned into the "Roman Lake", aka the Mediterranean. That the Christianity that transformed Rome used Greek language after it was subsumed tells us how deeply entrenched the model had become.
"The Roman Empire's intensive demand for wood for fuel, construction, and shipbuilding led to widespread deforestation. This deforestation, combined with overgrazing and intensive farming practices, led to soil erosion and decreased crop yields. One study published in the journal Quaternary Science Reviews found that the empire's agricultural practices may have contributed to significant soil erosion and land degradation.
These practices led to soil erosion rates up to 10 times higher than natural rates, leading to decreased crop yields and the loss of arable land. The resulting food shortages would have contributed to social unrest and weakened the empire's military and economic power."
Key factors in the fall of the Roman Empire: unsustainable farming practices and deforestation
If this example sounds familiar, we are one step closer to the heart of the problem that still faces us. The surplus agriculture model forever demands more land, more resources. The occupants in these places are very often abstract factors, with their fate often quietly deemed from places of great comfort. Rome dangled the benefit of Roman citizenry to further encroach into territory it needed to sustain its consumption levels. Because the surplus trading model, often dependent on a few crops, eventually fails because of its inherent weaknesses, the cycle of land and resource acquirement turns eternal...until it is not.
Different Time, Different Approaches
The way out is simple: the Graeco-Roman Surplus trading model is woefully obsolete. Regenerative, local farming, given current resources and technology, can easily replace a model that, for one thing, encourages wasteful consumption of food and resources. Food grown to solve marketing initatives is food that is not grown to sustain populations. We are on the verge of a global food crisis because the factors that created Graeco-Roman hegemony remain firmly in play: monoculure is by far the most practiced way of producing food worldwide. We still produce food in a crop-by-crop by method in ways that maintain political structures and agenda over ones that provide adequate nutrition worldwide.
Surplus farming makes sense to a point. A significant shift to regenerative farming does not mean that surplus farming will disappear. Subsistence farming today is much more practical than just about any other time in recent history. The practice of growing just enough food for a local community could be part of a larger community with the same goal. In the past, subsistence farming practice in isolation meant passing along knowledge was difficult. Current communication systems remove barrriers.
Industrial farming, which is what surplus farming has become, cannot sustain itself or us in current form. It will continue to cause significant warming of our planet, land degradation and water scarcity. Subsistence may become mandatory rather than an option. Perhaps, the first step is realizing to ask why we are still following the Graeco-Roman model of trade. Those cultures are long past and served a select geographic footprint. Yes, much comes with that statement. The Christian model of politics that is the foundation of the post-modern nation-state grew out of the evolution of the Graeco-Roman culture. That we can no longer follow the path set out by people four millennia past has become front and center.