ABSTRACT
This chapter examines traditional farming in four old high cultures-Egypt, China, Mesoamerica, and Europe-as well as in the United States in the nineteenth century. It looks at particular agronomic practices and cropping systems in these cultures and calculate energy budgets of principal cropping practices. Although all traditional agricultures grew a variety of grain, oil, fiber, and feed crops, the sequence of common field tasks described, was performed most often in cultivating cereals. All traditional agricultural societies subsisting on largely vegetarian diets dominated by cereal grains found the solution in eating combinations of the several kinds of seeds. The energy balances of grain production are the most revealing indicators of agricultural productivity in traditional cultures. The traditional reliance on various species and various types of harnesses resulted from an interplay of environmental and socioeconomic conditions.
