The Great Agricultural Transition: Crisis, Change, and Social Consequences of Twentieth Century US Farming

Lobao, Linda; Meyer, Katherine

doi:10.1146/annurev.soc.27.1.103

Cited by 245 publications

(163 citation statements)

References 54 publications

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“…The change from an agrarian society to an industrial and postindustrial one has been well-noted (41). This change, along with others, resulted in dramatic shifts in the environments encountered by humans during the course of the 20th century.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Assortative mating and differential fertility by phenotype and genotype across the 20th century

Conley

Laidley

Belsky

et al. 2016

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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This study asks two related questions about the shifting landscape of marriage and reproduction in US society over the course of the last century with respect to a range of health and behavioral phenotypes and their associated genetic architecture: (i) Has assortment on measured genetic factors influencing reproductive and social fitness traits changed over the course of the 20th century? (ii) Has the genetic covariance between fitness (as measured by total fertility) and other traits changed over time? The answers to these questions inform our understanding of how the genetic landscape of American society has changed over the past century and have implications for population trends. We show that husbands and wives carry similar loadings for genetic factors related to education and height. However, the magnitude of this similarity is modest and has been fairly consistent over the course of the 20th century. This consistency is particularly notable in the case of education, for which phenotypic similarity among spouses has increased in recent years. Likewise, changing patterns of the number of children ever born by phenotype are not matched by shifts in genotype-fertility relationships over time. Taken together, these trends provide no evidence that social sorting is becoming increasingly genetic in nature or that dysgenic dynamics have accelerated.assortative mating | fertility | polygenic scores | cohort trends T he traditional view of evolutionary dynamics in humans was that the history of modern humans was too short for the species to have experienced substantive change in its genetic makeup (1, 2). However, findings from recent population genetics studies suggest the possibility that selective fertility, nonrandom mating, drift, and other violations of the Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium accelerated genetic divergence between modern human populations, particularly since humans began farming and civilization developed (3-6). Extending this logic, rapid economic development and the corresponding demographic transition over the past two centuries may have led to a further shift in the dynamics of reproduction and selection. The present paper uses genetic and phenotypic data from a nationally representative sample of US older adults to test whether the societal changes in the United States during the 20th century were reflected in (i) changes in patterns of genetic assortment in marriage, and (ii) changes in genetic influences on fertility.Understanding trends with respect to specific deviations from random mating and differential fertility is critical to both social and evolutionary scientists. For example, recent research in sociology has suggested that taking a prospective view on social stratification that incorporates differential fertility yields disparate results for estimands such as levels of intergenerational educational mobility (7). Likewise, genetic research on human populations often assumes that mating in a population is random with respect to genotypes (8, 9). Recent empirical evidence suggests otherw...

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Assortative mating and differential fertility by phenotype and genotype across the 20th century

Conley

Laidley

Belsky

et al. 2016

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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“…Leading into the 21st century, western nations experienced the processes of agricultural transformation (Lobao and Meyer 2001) creating new opportunities and challenges for values associated with agricultural and forestry production and biodiversity conservation. The conditions for landscape change are multiple and include the tangible as well as intangible realities associated with social and ecological aspects of climate and the persistent impacts of markets.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Transition Landscapes and Social Networks: Examining On-Gound Community Resilience and its Implications for Policy Settings in Multiscalar Systems

Beilin¹,

Reichelt²,

King³

et al. 2013

E&S

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Community based natural resource management groups contribute to landscape scale ecological change through their aggregation of local ecological knowledge. However, the social networks at the heart of such groups remain invisible to decision makers as evidenced in funding cuts and strategic policy documents. Our research is a pilot study of the social networks in two peri-urban landscapes in Victoria, Australia. We describe the social network analysis undertaken with regard to natural resource management issues. The findings are assessed against the qualities of resilience: diversity, modularity, connectivity, and feedback loops. A social network analysis tool is discussed with participants to assess its usefulness on-ground and with agency staff involved in the project. We concluded that the sociograms are useful to the groups, however, the management of the tool itself is complex and calls for agency personnel to facilitate the process. Overall, the project did make visible the networks that contribute to a multiscalar social and ecological resilience in these landscapes, and in this regard, their use is of benefit to policy makers concerned with supporting networks that build social resilience

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“…2 Nonetheless, up through the mid-19 th century, a majority of the U.S. population was engaged in farming; today the opposite is true (Bureau of Labor Statistics [BLS], 2010;Lobao & Meyer, 2001). Regular booms in agricultural and other markets throughout the late 19 th and early 20 th centuries encouraged farmers to plant more crops in subsequent years, which routinely created food surpluses.…”

Section: A Brief History Of (Industrial) Food Production In the Usmentioning

confidence: 99%

Close to Home: The Drive for Local Food

Trivette

2012

JAFSCD

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One popular approach in the recent discussion around sustainable food systems has been to encourage a shift to locally and regionally produced food. The logic of doing this is multifold: locally produced food is good for the environment, helps a regional economy thrive, and provides a greater connection between people, their food, and those who produce it, which should also lead to equitable labor practices and greater food security and access. Yet for all of the benefits of a locally based food system, there are certain problematic elements inherent to some of these claims. In this paper I link these social, economic, and environmental elements through a review of what we know about locally based food systems as a function of sustainable agriculture. A careful examination of the literature shows that although local food systems hold considerable promise, they are not inherent mechanisms of sustainability.

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The Great Agricultural Transition: Crisis, Change, and Social Consequences of Twentieth Century US Farming

Cited by 245 publications

References 54 publications

Assortative mating and differential fertility by phenotype and genotype across the 20th century

Assortative mating and differential fertility by phenotype and genotype across the 20th century

Transition Landscapes and Social Networks: Examining On-Gound Community Resilience and its Implications for Policy Settings in Multiscalar Systems

Close to Home: The Drive for Local Food

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