In the Book of
Genesis, we are told of another pair of brothers, Cain and Abel.
Their story is the story of the dry belt. Of these two, "Abel was a
keeper of sheep, but Cain was a tiller of the ground."
In its beginning in
the neolithic Near East, agriculture was mixed farming, based on
the combined use of crops and herds. But the growth of specialized,
irrigated, crop agriculture in the hydraulic societies gradually
divided people into two groups: farmers and herders. And it tended
to drive the herders out into the wilderness. In this sense, Cain,
the farmer, is accurately made the aggressor. We have seen how
intensively the peasant had to work during the whole growing period
of his crops. The passage of the seasons, however, would in theory
have left him free to vary his work and diversify his farming, by
keeping sheep or cattle on his farm. But, for every hour of his
time that was not urgently required for growing the food surplus,
the state needed him on the mass labour projects. It could not
permit him any other occupations. He did indeed maintain a few
beasts, oxen or buffaloes, to draw his plough and his carts. But
maintenance of a sizeable herd of cattle or sheep, for meat, milk,
hides, or wool, was out of the question. Moreover, livestock needs
plenty of room to graze, and as the population rose and farms
huddled closer together and shrank to smaller plots, there was
simply no room for stock.
One immediate
penalty was the loss of animal manure that provided valuable
organic matter for the soil and food for the plant crop. The few
draught animals did not produce sufficient manure to fertilize the
croplands. One answer to the problem was the fertile silt from
irrigating waters. Another was the use of green manure, that is, a
plant crop grown especially to be ploughed back into the soil as
food for the main crop. This technique, fully worked out, is
described in Chinese documents from 1134 b.c. onward. In general,
the hydraulic farmer could secure enough nourishment for his crops
and organic matter for his soil without the manure from a large
herd.
