World History Scrapbook #2 Agriculture

The first article that I read was talking about how the Mayans home was a very tough environment with a lot of droughts, and rising sea levels, but the worsed thing was the land that that they had to farm. The land that they had to farm was rough, rocky terrain interixed with vast swamps, or wetlands. The other article that I read was talking about the very poor soil in Malawi, Africa, and about how it is very hard to farm, and that Agriculture expertes are worring that Africa's soil problems are heading towards a crisis. 

Some simularitys between the two are that both the Mayans and the Africans live in very tough enviroments, and that they are both very hard lands to farm on. Africa is has very dry soil, and the soil is also pretty rocky, and where the mayans lived in mexico was also very rocky, but it was also wetlands. Another simularity between the two is that they both really depend on mothernature because   if they have a bad season, they could die of starvation. In the end the Mayans did find a very good and smart way to farm. They would dig ditches, which would elavate the root system of their crops above the waterlogged soil. But Africa still does not know what they should do. But African goverments and scientists all agree that the farmers of Africa must refertilize their soils. But they do not know the best way to do this. So for now Africas farmers will strugle for a little bit longer, unless they can aford to buy fertilizer by them selves. 

So as you can see farming has been quite an issue throught history, and we are still learing the best way how to do it.

Urls of articles:

www.nature.com/news/african-agriculture-dirt-poor-1.10311

www.nature.com/news/2010/101105/full/news.2010.587.html

Mexico 

Malawi Africa