Earth is currently entering the Anthropocene: a human-driven geological epoch that signals the end of the Holocene, the roughly 12,000 year period in which humanity transitioned gradually from the...Show moreEarth is currently entering the Anthropocene: a human-driven geological epoch that signals the end of the Holocene, the roughly 12,000 year period in which humanity transitioned gradually from the subsistence practices of hunter-gatherers to the “conventional” agricultural methods of the twenty- first century. Today, debates surrounding agriculture and food system reform lie at the heart of a worldwide “Decade of Action” on climate change (2020-2030), with approaches based on “sustainable intensification” characterizing the dominant paradigm supported by large-scale agriculture and world governance. In order to provide macrohistorical, “deep-time” perspectives on the suitability of “sustainable intensification” as a food-production strategy for the Anthropocene, this paper juxtaposes the present climate and food crisis with the subsistence transitions that occurred during the last climate epoch shift (Pleistocene-Holocene). As the only other climatic “game-changer” experienced by human societies, this period presents an opportunity to highlight through analogical analysis otherwise non-observable commonalities between how we and our distant ancestors have adapted our subsistence practices to massive climatic shift. On this basis, I argue that many of the recent “revolutionary” advances in agricultural methodology and technology that underpin confidence in sustainable intensification’s success in coming decades and centuries are little more than continuations of strategies developed by Early Holocene cultivators, upon which we have remained reliant. Moreover, because these strategies were developed under and for a specific set of climate conditions which are coming to an end, I question the continued success of these strategies under an Anthropocene climate regime. This leaves us in dire need of novel approaches to food-production. This paper also examines why modern societies are prone to such oversights and offers suggestions for how they can be overcome by incorporating historical macroperspectives into near-term climate decision-making. Finally, I make recommendations for an approach to cultivation based around the concept of syntropy that breaks with the past and offers tangible steps for immediate climate adaptation without the massive costs traditionally associated with de-intensification.Show less
