Expansion of agriculture

With the advent of urban life and agriculture, migration did not cease. People have always sought out and discovered new places to settle. Climate change, poverty, diseases, conflicts or just curiosity have been and are still reasons for migration (Puleston and Tuljapurkar 2008). Together with the men and women: seeds and livestock, who brought them to new locations (Diamond et al. 2003, Figure 20). These expansions occurred gradually, over generations, step by step, but consistently. Eventually, humans spread domesticated animals and plants across the entire world as invasive species .

While this migrations and settlements in new agri-ecosystems, adaptation was necessary. Hu-mans body, knowledge, skills, and behavior changed. Domestication of livestock and crops was one of the adaptations to survive. Cattle, chickens, sheep, goats, horses, pigs, wheat, potatoes, maize, bananas, and many other domesticated animals and crops are now distributed throughout the world (Figure). They have adapted to new conditions through human involvement, such as breeding, protection, feed-ing, fertilization, and care.

Figure: Migration of humans from Centers of Origins, defined by Vavilov (1940, 1987), with their domesticated crops and livestock.
Source: Diamond et al. (2003)

The most significant impact on the global expansion of livestock and crops occurred during the era of European outreach to other continents and ending in colonization. An important date was 1492, as Columbus found America by chance. After this great discovery, the world became dominated by the Europeans. Today, the effects of this colonization and global expansion are evident everywhere, in Europe, the Americas, Africa, Asia, and Oceania, the oceans and the arctic regions (Figure).

Photo: Vis-a-versa, the „Columbus exchange“ brought, e.g. cattle from Europe to Americas: a „gift“ as well

Photo: Pirates of the 18th century left goats on the Caribbean islands to have fresh meat while their tours from Europe to Americas. Today the feral goats are just for nothing and the sailing boots for hobby.

Photo: Millions of slaves from Africa brought to Americas to work in agriculture. Sweet-sour fruits from the Tamarind tree were a little memorial of home Africa.

Photo: After the discovery of Americas by Columbus (1492) global important crops like potato, maize, tomato and others have been transferred from Americas to Europe. Today, those crops are found worldwide. 150 years ago, maize was brought to Mali. Farmers learned to cultivate the crop. the germination was 30%, therefore they planted 3 seeds in wone hole. Today, the germination is nearly 100%, but still three seeds in one hole. That is the tradition. That all three seeds germinate, and fight for nutrients, water and space is obvious. There is enough space in-between the holes, enough to give every seed enough space (10-15 cm in the row, 60 cm be-tween rows), but farmers do not understand.

With the symbiotic global outreach of humans and their crops and livestock, not intended wild plants, animals and other organisms have reached other regions with human expansion ("blind passengers in the cloths, equipment, transport facilities, seeds, the wool and bodies of the live-stock or even the humans (parasites). The regional novel wild biodiversity is called neobiota  in the regions of arrival. Extreme im-pact had those organisms in Americas (Ficek 2019) and Australia (Saltzman et al. 2011) with significant changes in the ecology, together with the human settlements. With the European conquerors diseases appeared in Americas and have killed most of local people, who were not tolerant against the pathogens. Rodents came into areas with the ships, where they have not been before. In New Zealand wild and ground bound birds have been erased by rats . In Aus-tralia rabbits  and frogs  found excellent living conditions. Carbs, mussels, and other species came with the ships in the ballast water. Orchids, insects, spiders and snails came with seeds and livestock already in the history with human migration from the Levante to northern Europe (Fischer 1996). In northwest Europe, most of endangered wild plants and insects are relicts of the migration of people (Ellenberg 1986). Human made biotopes have been created by settle-ment, a symbiosis of human, their crops, livestock and related wild biodiversity. They created manmade biospheres, and they need protection with agriculture (biotope management).

Photo: Sheep in the rainforest. In 1964, oil was found in the rainforest of Ecuador, in the province of Sucumbios. The US oil company Texaco started exploiting with immense impact on ecology. The oil industry has constructed roads via 4,000 m high mountains to access this re-mote aera of Sucumbios in the east of Ecuador for oil exploitation already in the 1970s, 500 km long oil pipelines have been constructed via the rainforest and the mountains towards the Pacific coast. The new established city of Lago Agrio (sour lake) was established in the heard of Sucumbios to refine the oil. Already 1979 were 45 million barrels of oil exported. Between 1964 and 1992, around 100 million liters of crude oil and more than 50 billion liters of toxic wastewater were discharged into the rainforest through 339 wells, devastating and polluting more than 21,000 km2, a damage are calculated by 27 billion US-Dollar. The indigenous peo-ples, the A'i Cofán and Waorani, have lost their home and their food source as hunters and gatherers of wild animals and plants in one of the most species-rich rainforests on earth. In ad-dition to the loss of the rainforest due to oil extraction and the dumping of waste (oil ponds), poor and landless people from the Andes have followed to find work and a future. Illegally, they occupied rainforest land next to the roads into the rainforest and started deforestation, house constructions and plantations. This was illegal land occupation and deforestation. They cut down and burned the unique biodiversity and established plantations of palm oil, cocoa and coconut palms. They had no other choice and knowledge to do so. That was their way to sur-vive. Hairsheep were introduced by them to maintain the cocoa plantation from weeds and to have a double purpose with mutton for home consumption (Rahmann 2003). Probably, the rain-forest and the biodiversity - including the indigenous people - will be extinct in the next dec-ades. Oil is too important and who will not understand and accept, that people take land for their livelihood.